Gordon riots

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Gordon riots, 1780. The greatest outburst of civil disorder in modern British history. They lasted for six days from 2 to 8 June and did enormous damage in London. They began with the presentation by Lord George Gordon of a petition to Parliament against recent concessions to the catholics, but violent and criminal elements soon took over. Prisons were attacked and the inmates released, catholic chapels destroyed, breweries, taverns, and distilleries plundered, and the houses of catholics and magistrates set on fire. Order was with difficulty restored after troops had been called out. Many members of the mob lost their lives, shot by the military, engulfed by flames, or buried in rubble. In all, 135 were put on trial, 59 capitally convicted, and 26 hanged, including a Jew, a negress, a one-armed man, and ‘a poor, drunken cobbler’. The riots were used by Dickens as the backcloth to Barnaby Rudge.

J. A. Cannon

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