Page 36 - Top Cover Issue 8

36 TOP COVER ISSUE 8

HISTORY

The Metropolitan Police Act authorises There is a strike at the Percy Main Colliery, Chirton in North Shields. Special Edward Oxford attempts to shoot
the formation of a ‘New Police’ for constables under the ‘Chief of Constables’, Ralph Falcus, are appointed to keep Queen Victoria in Constitution Hill in
London under (later Sir) Charles order. Most if not all have pistols intended as a means of raising an alarm. Constable London.
Rowan and (later Sir) Richard Mayne George Weddell and Falcus try to arrest Alexander Clark but a mob rescues him. After Chartists are arrested for
who are appointed as justices of the There is a general scuffle between strikers and constables during which Weddell gathering arms (see above) magistrates
peace. Section 5 of the Act requires that: shoots and kills a pitman named Cuthbert Skipsey (the various witness accounts in Stockport in Cheshire appoint 1,000
‘The said justices may from time to time, of how this occurred are impossible to reconcile – either Weddell pushes Skipsey special constables and arm them with
subject to the approbation of one of His away and then shoots him or there is a struggle for the gun and it is fired or Weddell 500 pistols and 800 cutlasses supplied
Majesty’s Principle Secretaries of State, is ordered to fire and does so). Weddell is charged with murder but the trial judge from the Tower of London.
frame such orders and regulations as at Northumberland Assizes instructs the jury that it is to decide only if he is guilty
they shall deem expedient … [including] of manslaughter. He is convicted of manslaughter with a recommendation to mercy
the description of arms, accoutrements and is sentenced to six months hard labour. The Sheffield Election Riot.
and other necessaries to be furnished At Sheffield in South Yorkshire a poll to select a representative for the newly
to them.’ enfranchised town results in Mr Parker being elected. However ‘for some
The first record of pistols being inexplicable cause’ this is not popular with those not entitled to vote. A mob
acquired by the Met. A memo from assembles in the Haymarket and stones the Tontine Inn where Parker has his
Mayne to John Wray, the Receiver of the headquarters. Infantry are sent for from Rotherham and that evening a detachment
Met, says that: ‘The following articles of the 18th (Irish) Regiment of Foot arrives under Captain Graves. The soldiers are
are required for the service of the given the order to fire to disperse the mob and three men and two boys are shot and
Police Force. 100 Staffs – 1000 Rattles killed with many others wounded. One of them, a member of the Sheffield night
– 50 pair of Pistols – same quantity of watch, dies later of his wounds.
handcuffs as furnished before to each.

1829 1832 1840

1830 1833 1835 1848

The Agricultural Riots (a.k.a. The Four poachers are arrested in The Wolverhampton Riot. At a The Orange Tree Plot. Leading
Swing Riots). Farm labourers face Cumnock, Ayrshire, in Scotland and contested by-election the local Chartists are having meetings in
unemployment due to the introduction held in a house (there is no lock-up) magistrates anticipate disorder. A London planning insurrection.
of farming machinery and there to await trial. One goes to court and troop of the 1st Royal Dragoons is Superintendent Nicholas Pearce (Met)
are riots in many agricultural sentenced to imprisonment but he is therefore stationed nearby. After the who is armed with a pistol, and about
districts including Kent, Hampshire, rescued by a mob as he is being taken first day’s polling a mob gathers outside twenty officers, many also armed,
Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset in a cart to Ayr prison. The trial of the campaign headquarters of one of raid the Orange Tree public house in
and Wiltshire. At one incident in the the others is postponed until the next the candidates and begins to stone the Holborn, and Superintendent Anthony
village of Semley in Wiltshire several day and gamekeepers and parish building. When the soldiers are called Rutt (Met) with ‘several constables’,
hundred men smash machinery and constables are assigned to guard them one of their horses is killed and they fire (three hundred by one account) who
the Hindon Troop of the Wiltshire overnight. However, the mob breaks into the crowd wounding four. have ‘pistols and cutlasses,’ raid the
militia arrive under Captain William in and Constable David Reid is shot Angel Tavern in Webber Street,
Wyndham. They charge with sabres and killed by a rioter who has taken a Blackfriars. Eleven men are arrested
and pistols drawn. A man named John gun from one of the gamekeepers. The at the Orange Tree and thirteen more at
Harding is shot and killed and many three poachers are rescued. Two men the Angel. Weapons and incriminating
others are injured. At Salisbury Special are later only convicted of ‘riotous documents are found. Joseph Ritchie,
Assizes fourteen rioters are convicted behaviour’. William Lacey, Thomas Fay, William
and sentenced to be transported for Cuffey, William Dowling and George
life. A member of the jury is Captain Mullins are charged with intending
Wyndham and the jury foreman is John ‘to levy war against the Queen’. They
Benett, the man on whose property are sentenced at the Old Bailey to be
much of the riot took place. transported for life. Fifteen others are
sentenced to imprisonment for up to
two years.