VAGUE 33 HM KING MOB THE GORDON RIOTS
THE MADNESS OF LORD GEORGE AND THE GREAT LONDON RIOTS OF 1780
Gordon Riots 230th anniversary Malcolm McLaren tribute edition
Tom Vague London Psychogeography 2010
The Riot in Broad Street Francis Wheatley
‘When tumult lately burst his prison door and set plebeian thousands in a roar, when he usurped
authority’s just place and dared to look his master in the face; when the rude rabble’s watchword was
destroy and blazing London seemed a second Troy.’ William Cowper ‘Table Talk’ 1781
‘I wander through each dirty street, near where the dirty Thames does flow, and in every face I meet
marks of weakness marks of woe, in every cry of every man, in every child’s cry of fear, in every voice in
every ban, the German forged links I hear, but most the chimney sweepers cry, blackens over the church
walls, and the hapless soldiers sigh, runs in blood down palace walls.’ William Blake ‘London’ 1792
‘The Gordon riots made a profound impression on contemporaries. They took place at a time of acute
political crisis, at the most dangerous moment of the American war, when the country, after numerous
defeats and counter-alliances, found itself virtually isolated. At their height, on the night of June 7 1780,
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London appeared to onlookers to be a sea of flames. ‘I remember’, wrote Horace Walpole on the 8 , ‘the
Excise and Gin Act and the rebels at Derby and Wilkes’ interlude and the French at Plymouth, or I should
have a very bad memory; but I never till last night saw London and Southwark in flames!’ Sebastian
Mercier, in his Tableau de Paris, wrote 9 years before the attack on the Bastille that such ‘terrors and
alarms’ as were spread by Lord George Gordon in London would be inconceivable in a city as well-policed
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as Paris.’ George Rude ‘The Gordon Riots’ 1955 Paris and London in the 18 Century
1688 After the Protestant Duke of Monmouth rebellion was crushed by Judge Jeffreys’ Bloody Assizes,
James II’s attempted Catholic revival resulted in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the Bill of Rights. In the
Interregnum between James running away and the arrival of William of Orange and Mary, London erupted
in ‘No Popery’ riots in which Catholic chapels were pulled down. 1710 During the reign of Queen Anne,
church and Tory mobs destroyed dissenting chapels. 1715 After the accession of George I, the arrest of
the Tory leader Robert Harley for Jacobite intriguing occasioned further anti-Whig rioting. At the time of
the Old Pretender Jacobite rebellion, with the Tories more in tune with popular culture, Robert Walpole’s
Whigs introduced the Riot Act; making it a capital offence for a mob of more than 12 not to disperse within
an hour of a magistrate reading the proclamation ‘in the king’s name’.
1733 In the reign of George II, Walpole’s excise and gin acts were accompanied by another series of riots.
The Excise Act was swiftly withdrawn after a siege of Parliament; then there were election and turnpike
riots (with some cross-dressing) around the country. 1736 As Lord Hervey put it, ‘the people showed a
licentious, riotous, seditious and almost ungovernable spirit.’ After west country food riots there were antiIrish cheap labour riots in London. Irish inns and houses were pulled down in Shoreditch, Spitalfields and
Whitechapel for ‘King George and No Popery’. Another factor was the passing of the Gin Act and Jacobite
agents were said to exploit the situation in the ‘mobbish part of town’. The Gin Act met some resistance
from ‘No Gin No King’ mobs and caused an increase in gin consumption. Edinburgh had the Porteous
riots over the hanging of a popular smuggler. Captain Porteous ordered his men to fire into the execution
crowd, killing several, for which he became subject to lynch mob justice.
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1751 Lord George Gordon was born in London on Upper Grosvenor Street, the 6 off-spring of Cosmo
George, the third Duke of Gordon. Clan Gordon were out in the 1745 Young Pretender Bonnie Prince
Charlie rebellion and were involved in various Scots plots and feuds down through the centuries, usually
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on the Catholic church and king side. In the 14 century Lord Adam Gordon took the Declaration of
Arbroath (‘It is not for glory, riches or honour that we fight, it is for liberty alone’) to Rome, to get the pope
to recognise Robert the Bruce.
1761 At the beginning of the reign of the mad king George III, the king’s friend John Stuart, Earl of Bute,
was at the helm as First Minister and Pitt the Elder was enthusiastically pursuing the 7 Years War with
France. When the French formed a pact with Spain, Pitt urged Parliament to declare war on them too but
was vetoed by Bute. ‘The first great commoner’ Pitt resigned to mob acclaim and Bute was pelted with
mud. In the City William Beckford (the slave trader father of the gothic novelist) called for a ‘more equal
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representation of the people in Parliament.’ Thus the Tories revived 17 century popular protest
movement ideas of ‘freeman’s suffrage’ and the ‘common rights of man’ first propagated by the Levellers,
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Diggers, Commonwealth and 5 Monarchy Men.
1763 The 7 Years War was brought to a close by the Treaty of Paris. Bute was forced to resign after being
burnt in effigy, to be replaced by George Grenville. Jack Wilkes accused Bute (effectively the king) of lying
that the peace was honourable and was duly sent to the Tower; then swiftly released because he was an
MP. Wilkes’s Pittite paper the North Briton number 45 was condemned as seditious libel, to be burnt by
the hangman in front of the Royal Exchange. Instead the ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ mob burnt a Bute boot effigy,
Wilkes won an action against the Secretary of State for unlawful arrest and did a bunk to France. In his
absence there was further agitation for freedom of the press, and from press-gangs and general warrants,
anti-Irish cheap labour riots in Covent Garden, Spitalfields weavers industrial disputes and nationwide
food riots. When the Stamp Act was dropped after riots in Boston, Grenville noted ‘it’s clear that both
England and America are governed by the mob.’
1768 On Jack Wilkes’s return from France, he controversially sent a letter to the king and stood for
election as Middlesex MP at Brentford Butts. His victory was celebrated by more extensive rioting; at the
height of which his blue cockade wearing supporters took control of London, chalking doors with ‘Number
45’, forcing houses to be illuminated and smashing the windows of the Mansion House. Then Wilkes
committed himself to King’s Bench prison. In May 1768 troops fired on the Wilkite mob outside King’s
Bench in the massacre of St George’s Fields. Wilkes duly replaced Pitt as the mob hero with pictures,
busts and riots round the country for ‘Wilkes and Liberty’. As a result of these City versus government
clashes, popular protest ideas spread out of the City to the ‘middling sort’ and the ‘inferior set of people.’
The ‘Junius’ letters attacked the king directly and hinted at revolution.
1771 Lord North’s new ministry suffered its first humiliating defeat over parliamentary report publishing, at
the hands of Wilkes, the City and the printers mob; after which Wilkes was elected Sheriff of London. Lord
George Gordon, as a midshipman, gained the contempt of other officers and the amused admiration of
ordinary sailors. He was as enraged by ‘the bloody treatment of negroes’ in Jamaica as he was impressed
by America. The Admiralty considered him a ‘damned nuisance wholly unsuitable for promotion’, so he
turned to politics. 1774 As the Catholic tolerating Quebec Act was passed, Wilkes became Lord Mayor
and Lord George Gordon acquired the seat of Ludgershall in Wiltshire. Lord George soon established
himself at Westminster dressing in Puritan black with tartan trousers and long lank hair. He supported
Edmund Burke against war with America (as did Pitt and Wilkes) but was too independent to be relied on
by the Whigs. He saw himself as neither Whig nor Tory but of ‘the party of the people’.
1778 As Britain was about to lose the American War of Independence moves were made towards relaxing
the 1699-1700 William III anti-Catholic act, in order to enlist Scottish Catholics into the army to fight in
America. May 17 The Catholic Relief Bill was introduced to Parliament and duly received royal assent for
its not very generous measures which only applied to Catholics taking the Oath of Allegiance. Catholics
remained outcasts until the 1829 Emancipation Act repealed the William III act. At first nothing much
happened but as the American war turned into world war, with France’s Catholic ally Spain coming in, they
were seen as part of an international conspiracy to do away with the Protestant religion and English
‘revolution principles’. Pamphlets were produced recalling the 1550s ‘Bloody Mary’ I persecution, 1572 St
Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France, 1588 Spanish Armada, 1605 Gunpowder plot, 1641 Irish
massacre, etc; reinforcing the myth of ‘the freeborn Englishman’ with his ‘birthright and traditional liberties’
not to have to put up with ‘popery and wooden shoes’ (absolute monarchy and arbitrary government).
1779 The first anti-Catholic Relief riots broke out in Edinburgh and Glasgow. After Scottish Catholics
begged Lord North not to grant them relief, the Ministry was forced to announce that the act would not
apply north of the border. Lord George Gordon was greeted as a returning local hero in Edinburgh and
became president of the London Protestant Association, trusting ‘the attention of Parliament to the
petitions of Englishmen… not to raise the apprehensions of the lower classes of people… The Roman
Catholics must know as well as we do that popery when encouraged by government has always been
dangerous to the liberties of the people.’ Lord George wasn’t the anti-Catholic fanatic Dickens portrays
him as in Barnaby Rudge, at worst he was an aristocratic political adventurer using the Protestant cause
for his own more libertarian goals. Meanwhile London had the Keppel riots in which Charles James Fox
led the mob in support of the persecuted Whig Admiral Keppel.
Lord George Gordon
1780 Lord George collected signatures for the ‘English appeal against the Popery Bill’ at 64 Welbeck
Street off Oxford Street. Mad Lord George’s audiences with the mad king George III concluded when he
reminded him that ‘the royal family of Stuart have been banished for not attending to the voice of the
people.’ After Lord George turned down various bribes to desist, press notices appeared announcing:
‘Whereas no hall in London can contain 40,000 men; resolved that this association do meet on Friday next
June 2 in St George’s Fields… to consider of the most prudent and respectful manner of attending their
petition, which will be presented the same day, to the House of Commons.’
Day 1 Friday June 2 10am A crowd began to gather at St George’s Fields (near the site of Waterloo
station), most were sober ‘better sort of tradespeople’ and ‘honest mechanicks. The protesters were
issued with blue cockade hat rosettes (of former Tory, Jacobite and Wilkite association) ‘to distinguish
themselves from the Papists’, some with ‘No Popery’ blue stitched white labels. 11am Lord George arrived
and made a short speech calling for ‘peaceable deportment and behaviour’, before proceeding to the
House of Commons. Then the Scottish division led the other divisions around St George’s Fields as a
warm up before the march began. The main route went through Borough, across London Bridge, down
Cornhill past the Bank into Poultry and Cheapside, round St Paul’s, on down Fleet Street and the Strand.
12am As the Protestant marchers cheered churches, the Admiralty and Wilkes’s house on Great George
Street, according to J Paul de Castro in The Gordon Riots, coming through the City the cause gained
‘undesirable recruits’ from below, ‘ill-conditioned ruffians drawn from its dark courts, blind alleys and
unsavoury night cellars.’ At the end of Whitehall in New Palace Yard, the City divisions rejoined the
division that came across Westminster Bridge to surround the Houses of Parliament (the old ones that
burnt down in 1834). Frederick Reynolds described the marchers at this stage as ‘persons decently
dressed, who appeared to be incited to extravagance by a species of fanatical phrenzy. They talked of
dying in the good cause, and manifested all the violence of the disposition imbibed under the banner of
Presbyterianism. They had long lank heads of hair, meagre countenances, fiery eyes.’
2pm In Christopher Hibbert’s King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the London Riots of 1780,
‘excited by the sight and sense of violence, the demonstrators with the fury of suppressed emotions
suddenly and thrillingly released, fell upon every carriage containing a peer whether he were a Catholic
sympathizer or not.’ Unpopular lords were forced to wear blue cockades and shout ‘No Popery’ before
being allowed through. Lord Bathurst was pulled from his carriage and pelted with mud. The Secretary of
State Lord Stormont’s carriage was demolished as he was subjected to ‘the most impudent liberties’. The
Archbishop of York was forced to escape by river like Dickens’ ‘Mr Haredale’ in Barnaby Rudge. The Duke
of Northumberland had his watch snatched, Lord Mansfield lost his hat and carriage windows, and Lord
North’s hat was seized when his carriage was forced to slow down. Most Commons members got away
with having ‘No Popery’ chalked on their carriages.
3pm Samuel Romilly made it into the House of Lords, to find ‘Lord Mansfield and 5 or 6 peers in great
consternation… several peers with their hair dishevelled, having lost their bags in the scuffle to get into the
House.’ The Duke of Richmond, one of the few respected by the crowd, made a ‘more equal
representation of the people in Parliament’ proposal: “It is well known that I am a friend of the people and
have often stood up in defence of their rights, but I am exceedingly sorry to see them so improperly
assembled and acting in so unwarrantable a manner. I the more lament it on the mistaken account upon
which they have been induced to behave so indefensibly, for the act which they have been misled about,
and taught to believe so encouraging popery, was merely an act for giving liberty of conscience and
allowing men of different religious sentiments from themselves to enjoy those sentiments at ease.”
After the petition (reputedly signed by 120,000) was delivered to the House of Commons, Lord George
Gordon reported to the crowd from the gallery: “Lord North calls you a mob… You are the best judges of
what you ought to do… The House are going to divide upon the question… There are for taking into
consideration now, myself and 6 or 7 others. If it is not taken into consideration now your petition may be
lost. Tomorrow the House does not meet; Monday is the king’s birthday, upon Tuesday the House may be
dissolved.” 9pm Horse Guards were allowed to ride into New Palace Yard and treated respectfully before
being pelted with stones and faggots. In the end Lord George’s prediction of the division outcome was
correct but the crowd dispersed without any trouble.
11pm As Lord George was dropped off at Welbeck Street, at the other end of Oxford Street a group of
‘resolute, half-drunk, venomous-looking men’ with blue cockades, ‘No Popery’ banners and torches,
marched down Great Queen Street towards Lincoln’s Inn Fields. On the group’s arrival at Duke Street
(Kingsway) outside the Sardinian ambassador’s Catholic chapel, they had a crowd of ‘street boys and
prostitutes, drunks, pickpockets and rowdies’ in tow out of the St Giles slum of Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’
notoriety. Henry Angelo counted 10 other fires, some featuring crosses of burning tar, along Great Queen
Street before reaching the main bonfire in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There he found ‘the rabble, the greater part
boys not above the age of 15, throwing hassocks, dead cats and other missiles at each other.’ As the
bonfire was pushed against the chapel, Guards arrived with drawn bayonets to arrest 13 men. Meanwhile
another mob in Soho gathered in Golden Square to attack the Bavarian embassy chapel.
Day 2 Saturday June 3 12pm Guards marched the Lincoln’s Inn Fields 13 from the Savoy to Sir John
Fielding’s police office on Bow Street through a jeering crowd along the Strand. 5pm The prisoners were
escorted to Newgate prison. 9pm Another anti-Catholic mob gathered in the Irish Moorfields area, making
threats against ‘dens of popery’ such as the house of the Irish silk merchant Malo. Day 3 Sunday June 4
The Moorfields mob reconstituted in Ropemaker’s Alley to demolish another chapel as Guards stood by.
Day 4 Monday June 5 The 13 prisoners from Lincoln’s Inn Fields were taken back to Sir John Fielding’s
to be re-examined and discharged; apart from 3 who were escorted back to Newgate to be hanged
Thursday. As mob attacks on the houses of Sir George Saville in Leicester Fields and Edmund Burke on
Charles II Street were repulsed by troops, the anti-Irish rioting continued virtually unhindered. The
Moorfields mob demolished a Catholic school and 3 houses. In Spitalfields houses of Catholic brokers and
manufacturers were attacked. Troops always arrived too late, often showing sympathy with the rioters,
and no magistrates would read the Riot Act. The Moorfields merchant Malo managed to escape with his
silk stock before his house was pulled down and another bonfire made with his ‘popish canaries’ on top.
Day 5 Tuesday June 6 Handbills were distributed from Fleet Street declaring ‘True Protestants No
Turncoats’ and ‘England in Blood’, the latter advertising The Thunderer paper which would illustrate ‘the
infernal designs of the Ministry to overturn the religious and civil liberties of this country in order to
introduce popery and slavery… the bloody tyrannies, persecutions, plots and inhuman butcheries
exercised on the protectors of the Protestant religion in England by the See of Rome… To which will be
added some reasons why the few misguided people now in confinement for destroying the Romish
chapels should not suffer, and the dreadful consequences of an attempt to bring them to punishment.’
2pm Crowds wearing the blue cockade ‘badge of insurrection’ gathered again outside Parliament after
parading the streets ‘with colours, music, cutlasses, poleaxes and bludgeons’. Troops were out in force
but only made the mob more insolent. At one point an assault on the Queen’s House (Buckingham
Palace) was repulsed by Guards. 3pm As Guards rescued Lord Sandwich, the first lord of the Admiralty,
from the mob on Whitehall, Frederick Reynolds reported: ‘The crowd were wedged into such firm and
compact masses that the cavalry were actually compelled to recede and return at a gallop, to give their
career sufficient course to penetrate them. The consequence was that after the cavalry had passed
through, the mob lay in the most ludicrous manner one over another like a pack of cards.’
5pm As the Commons decided to adjourn till Thursday, Justice Hyde read the Riot Act in Palace Yard and
then ordered the Horse Guards to charge. At this point a large red and black flag was hoisted by an
equally large ‘very desperate fellow’ on a carthorse. This was James Jackson, a watch-wheel cutter who
Charles Dickens incorporated into the ‘Maypole Hugh’ character in Barnaby Rudge. In a voice that
‘boomed like the crack of doom’, Jackson shouted: “To Hyde’s house a-hoy!” starting a mob surge down
Parliament Street towards Leicester Fields. Lord George made it out of the House to the Horn inn and
persuaded the landlord to lend him his coach. Once he was spotted, in Wilkite tradition the horses were
removed from the carriage which was pulled along Parliament Street, the Strand and Fleet Street, around
Newgate, to the Mansion House to cheer the apparently sympathetic Lord Mayor Brackley Kennett.
7pm As the riots developed a revolutionary dynamic independent of the Protestant cause, the mob
swarmed into Leicester Fields to empty Justice Hyde’s house and make bonfires of its contents. 30 Foot
Guards who appeared at the scene were greeted with ‘loud shouts and huzzas’ and promptly marched
away. Susan Burney recounted: ‘Such a scene I never before beheld! As it grew dusk, the wretches who
were involved with smoak and covered with dust, with the flames glaring upon them seemed like so many
infernals… At last the ringleaders gave the word and away they all ran past our windows to the bottom of
Leicester Fields with lighted firebrands in their hands like so many furies.’ At the end of St Martin’s Street,
satisfied that Hyde had received sufficient retribution, James Jackson had shouted “A-hoy for Newgate!”
Without Charles Dickens’ locksmith hero ‘Gabriel Varden’, but with the 23 year old William Blake who got
caught up in the mob and found himself at the forefront of the surge on the notorious prison on the site of
the Old Bailey. After demands to free the prisoners were shouted, ‘a mad Quaker’ youth in a white coat
began smashing the windows with a scaffolding pole. Before long the contents of the keeper’s house had
been thrown into the street and used to burn the gates of the prison. Upon the arrival of a column of
constables the crowd parted, on the advice of a soldier, then set upon them and used their staves as
firebrands to hurl on to the roof. However, fire engines were allowed to preserve adjoining houses. George
Crabbe saw Lord George in his mob-drawn carriage ‘bowing as he passed along. He is a lively-looking
young man in appearance and nothing more, though just now the reigning hero.’
Crabbe’s attention then returned to Newgate: ‘I went close to it, and never saw anything so dreadful. The
prison was a remarkably strong building, but, determined to force it, they broke the gates with crows and
other instruments, and climbed up outside the cell part, which joins the 2 great wings of the building where
the felons were confined; they broke the roof, tore away the rafters, and having got ladders, they
descended. Not Orpheus himself had more courage or better luck. Flames all around them, and a body of
soldiers expected, yet they defied and laughed at all opposition. The prisoners escaped. I stood and saw
about 12 women and 8 men ascend from their confinement to the open air, and they were conducted
through the streets in their chains. 3 of these were to be hanged on Friday.’ Within an hour 134 prisoners
were liberated by members of the mob who broke through the doors of the cell-block warren, ‘as if they
had all their lives been acquainted with the intricacies of the place.’
Frederick Reynolds wrote of ‘the wild gestures of the mob without, and the shrieks of the prisoners
within… the thundering descent of huge pieces of building, the deafening clangor of red hot iron bars
striking in terrible concussion the pavement below, and the loud triumphant yells and shouts of the
demoniac assailants on each new success, formed an awful and terrifying scene.’ 11pm George Crabbe
returned to Newgate, to observe ‘about 10 or 12 of the mob getting to the top of the debtors prison whilst it
was burning, to halloo, they appeared rolled in black smoke mixed with sudden bursts of fire like Milton’s
infernals, who were as familiar with flames as with each other.’
In Christopher Hibbert’s King Mob description: ‘Many of these figures could be seen standing perilously, in
postures of arrogant, abandoned recklessness, on ledges, the tops of walls and astride window-sills on
those parts of the building not yet too hot to touch. Now hidden by gusts of sulphurous smoke, now
brightly lit in a cascade of sparks, they shouted obscenities at each other and made vulgar gestures as
they urinated into the flames, seemingly unconscious of their danger or at least heedless of it. Below them
in the street their companions were dancing with delight as they brought up buckets full of gin and wine.’
Day 6 Black Wednesday June 7 12.30am A section of the Newgate mob arrived in Bloomsbury Square
tolling the Newgate bell. As 300 troops stood by, with no magistrate to be found, Lord Mansfield’s house
was emptied of its contents which were torched in the square. Sir John Fielding’s Bow Street police office
was duly demolished, the Clerkenwell Bridewell was stormed, and the gates of the New Prison were
opened by the jailers. By far the majority of the released prisoners were debtors, ‘beggars, vagrants and
idle persons.’ 1am As a mob assault on Downing Street was repulsed by Queen’s Light Dragoons, access
was swiftly gained to the Fleet prison by Fleet market (Ludgate Circus).
Lady Anne Erskine (a cousin of Lord George), at the possible target Northampton chapel Methodist
meeting house, wrote: “We were surrounded by flames! 6 different fires – with that of Newgate towering to
the clouds – being full in our view at once, and every hour we were in expectation of this house and
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chapel making the 7 … Our turn, we were told, was next, and by this time the scene was truly horrible, for
the flames all around had got to such a height that the sky was like blood with the reflection of them. The
mob so near we heard them knocking the irons off the prisoners, which together with the shouts of those
they had released, the huzzas of the rioters, and the universal confusion of the whole neighbourhood
make it beyond description. Every moment fresh reports were coming in of new fires breaking out – some
true, some false; some that the Parliament House was on fire, others the Palace at Lambeth.’
3.30am The first mob casualties were taken when a platoon of Foot Guards arrived in Bloomsbury Square
with a magistrate prepared to read the Riot Act. 4 men and a woman were killed and several more rioters
injured. The square cleared then the mob returned with tar-soaked rope to burn down Lord Mansfield’s
house. A fire engine that turned up was allowed to put out neighbouring fires on condition that the Guards
went away, which they did then the fire engine was tipped over. The Archbishop of York said he saw ‘a
well-dressed man’ encouraging the mob to move on to his house.
By all accounts this was Henry John Maskall, a pro-American radical apothecary described as a ‘rich and
dissolute young man’ set up by political rivals. A witness testified that men went up to him asking where to
go next and he said ‘The Duke’. Later on, a man approached him with a paper and asked ‘Why leave out
Peterborough and Bristol?’ To which Maskall was said to have replied, ‘They are not left out. I have not
scratched them out, but don’t stay too long in Devonshire but go to the Bank. There is a million of money
to pay you for your pains and at the excise office £400,000 not paid in.’ If the mob had attacked the Bank
on the Tuesday night they probably would have been successful.
6am As the Morning Chronicle reported ‘military pouring into town at every avenue’, Samuel Johnson
found Newgate ‘with the fires yet glowing. As I went by the Protestants were plundering the Sessionshouses of the Old Bailey. There were not I believe a hundred; but they did their work at leisure, in full
security, without sentinels, without trepidation, as men lawfully employed in full day.’ Rumours included
the king burned alive in Buckingham House, Lord North hanged in Downing Street, 30,000 marching on
London from Essex and Kent, thousands more on their way from the west country, and plans afoot to
release the lunatics from Bedlam and the lions from the Tower.
As the pro-Catholic Relief Edmund Burke attacked the government for “establishing a military on the ruins
of a civil government, Charles James Fox (whose statue would end up in Bloomsbury Square) said he
would “much sooner be governed by the mob than a standing army.” The king insisted on a new reading
of the law requiring ‘the military to act without waiting for direction from civil magistrates and to use force
for dispersing illegal and tumultuous assemblies of the people.’ 3pm Lord George Gordon appeared with
Alderman Pugh on Coleman Street, where a mob was engaged in pulling down the house of a Catholic
druggist called Robert Charlton. As troops arrived, Lord George made a futile attempt to pacify the mob
and then beat a hasty retreat.
4pm Horace Walpole returned to town, not to miss the riots and wrote of the mob in Saville Row; arming
themselves at the Artillery Ground; and marching on Lord Mansfield’s country house, Ken Wood at
Highgate. In the latter incident, adopted by Dickens, the mob was intercepted by troops and ended up in
the Spaniard’s Tavern. By then 15,000 troops were in London, about to be moved into position around the
City, the Museum and government offices were acting as barracks, and Hyde Park had been transformed
into a military encampment. Shops were shuttered up, ordained with ‘No Popery’ graffiti, blue ribbons and
Presbyterian flyers. The clown Grimaldi chalked ‘No Religion’ on his door, which met with mob approval.
Some groups did door to door collections for the ‘poor prisoners’ from Newgate and searches for ‘popish
books’. Vagrant symbols were left on doors to indicate if contributions had been given or if not that the
house should be pulled down. According to George Rude’s ‘study of the rioters and their victims’, mob
sub-groups acquired a ‘degree of cohesion through the emergence from their ranks of riot captains.’
7pm In the turning-point of the riots in favour of the government, the City split with popular radicalism
when the City Council met Colonel Twistleton at the Guildhall, to be informed that the military were taking
over. As London Military Association volunteers were issued with arms, side roads along Cornhill and
Threadneedle Street were roped off and canon set up in the Bank courtyard. Inside the Bank inkstands
were cast into bullets. At sunset the mob reassembled at the corner of Old Jewry and Poultry, to make the
first assault on the Bank. Robert Smith wrote of volunteers firing on ‘4 or 5 drunken fellows with blue
cockades in their hats, reeling down Cheapside, bawling out ‘No Popery’, just missing him but killing a
messenger. 2 other bystanders were shot in front of St Christopher’s church. 20 mob casualties were
taken at the bottom of Threadneedle Street and dragged off into St Mildred’s church and Scalding Lane.
Before dark 1,600 more prisoners had been freed from the King’s Bench and Fleet prisons. At King’s
Bench, by St George’s Fields, lookouts sat on the roof calmly drinking while the prison burned beneath
them. After warning the rest of the mob of approaching troops they jumped down into blankets. The
Borough Clink, in Deadman’s Place, the Marshalsea and the Surrey Bridewell were also emptied and
fired, the Clink never to be rebuilt. The New Gaol in Southwark survived for the time being due to the
keeper who stood in the gateway with a blunderbuss. At the Fleet the mob were attempting to push a fire
engine into the burning prison when troops arrived. 4 men on the roof of the Market House shouted insults
until the troops fired at them. Whereupon, one of the men returned fire with slates, before sliding down
and running away ‘with great celebrity. He was by the far the genteelest in appearance of the 4.’
According to Colonel Leake, the commander at the Fleet, up to 100 rioters were killed there that night.
9-10pm As the Fleet prison began to burn, the riots came to an orgiastic climax in Holborn at Langdale’s
gin distilleries by Fetter Lane. A Catholic chapel was said to be on the premises, along with 120,000
gallons of gin. When Langdale’s troop detachment was called off to the Bank the inevitable happened.
Bonfires were duly made of the contents of the distiller’s house and a fire engine was used to pump up gin
from the distillery cellars. People ran into the burning buildings to retrieve casks, bowls and troughs full of
gin until the stills burst and Gordon’s special dry London gin gushed into the street.
In the most notorious scenes of the Gordon riots, as described by de Castro, ‘there flowed down the
kennel of the street torrents of unrectified and flaming spirit gushing from the casks drawn in endless
succession from the vaults… Ardent spirits, now running to pools and wholly unfit for human consumption,
were swallowed by insatiate fiends, who with shrieking gibes and curses, reeled and perished in the
flames, whilst others, alight from head to foot, were dragged from burning cellars. On a sudden, in an
atmosphere hot to suffocation, flames leapt upwards from Langdale’s other houses, and columns of fire
became visible for 30 miles round London.’
Horace Walpole wrote, ‘as yet there are more persons killed from drinking than by ball or bayonet.’
Christopher Hibbert imagined ‘staring wide-eyed figures… on their backs in grotesque postures, their
faces blue, their swollen tongues still wet with the poisonous liquid… and in the warehouse, too drunk to
get out when the flames leapt in, other men and women could be heard screaming and shouting and
giggling, scarcely aware of what was happening to them or too drunk to care.’ A fire engine was
unwittingly used to pump gin into the flames, spreading the fire towards Fleet market. This was when it
looked like the whole of London was burning. Dr Burney reckoned the sight surpassed ‘the appearance of
Mount Vesuvius in all its fury.’
11-12pm The second most serious assault on the Bank was led by a brewery drayman (also incorporated
into Dickens’ ‘Maypole Hugh’ character), who rode a carthorse bedecked with Newgate chains along
Poultry and Threadneedle Street, waving handcuffs and fetters above his head, ‘unconcerned for his
danger and glorying in its conspicuousness.’ Jack Wilkes and Lord George Gordon were also there at the
Bank, on the other side of the barricades to their followers. Wilkes wrote: ‘Fired 6 or 7 times on the rioters
at the end of the Bank… killed 2 rioters directly opposite to the Great Gate of the Bank, several others in
Pig Street and Cheapside.’ Lord George pleaded from the steps of the Bank for people to go home but his
frantic behaviour only spurred his followers on. Several waves of rioters assaulted the Bank under fire
from the militia, each time leaving more dead in the street.
The militia commander Colonel Twistleton said the Bank mob was led by ‘a person in a navy uniform with
his sword drawn… many decently dressed people… till they were near the Guard… they then retired and
pretended to be spectators… a very well dressed man was killed whose face they took great pains to hide,
but after most of them dispersed a curious watchman looked at the body, expressed some surprise, and
said he knew the person. Upon which they seized the watchman and dragged him to Moorfields, where
they swore him in the most sacred way to secrecy.’ Well-dressed men were also reported at the storming
of Blackfriars Bridge; where the tollhouses became the next mob target after the Fleet. Many more were
massacred as the tollhouse fires provided illumination for the troops. Well dressed corpses were reputedly
pushed out into the Thames from Blackfriars Stairs to avoid detection.
Across town Catholic targets continued to be attacked, including a mass house in Bermondsey and Irish
inns in Golden Lane and Whitechapel; a convent in Hammersmith was spared when the mob were told
Elizabeth I was educated there. Horse Guards and volunteers were sent from the Bank to Broad Street,
where the house of a rich Irishman called Donovan was under attack. One of whom reported ‘an awful but
beautiful scene… the atmosphere red as blood with the ascending fires… a large mob ransacking a house
and burning furniture in the street… bid us fire and be damned. There was soon exhibited a scene of
killed, wounded and dying. We were very merciful to them by firing only one gun at once, instead of a
volley, thereby giving time to many to get off.’
Broad Street
Day 7 Thursday June 8 With King’s Bench, Fleet, New Prison, Broad Street, the Bank and Blackfriars
burning, as Wraxall reported London tonight ‘offered on every side the picture of a city sacked and
abandoned to a ferocious enemy.’ Walpole thought he saw ‘St Martin’s Lane in flames, but it is either the
Fleet prison or the distiller’s’, and found ‘Charing Cross, the Haymarket and Piccadilly illuminated from
fear… lines being drawn across the Strand and Holborn to prevent the mob coming westward.’
3.45am The third and final assault on the Bank began down Cheapside, with some rioters firing muskets
and pistols as they ran. Troops waited until the mob were on them before they opened fire, leaving
another 8 dead and many more wounded. The mob managed to hold off the Horse but constant fire from
the Foot forced them to retreat from the Royal Exchange, back down Fish Street Hill towards the river.
There they came under heavier Howitzer fire from troops positioned at the end of London Bridge in St
Magnus’s churchyard and Globe Alley (Billingsgate).
Commander in chief Amherst was acting on the advice of Colonels Stuart and Onslow ‘to secure the
Surrey ends of London and Blackfriars bridges directly, as Southwark is particularly threatened. Securing
these 2 passes would effectively prevent the junction of the mobs. If the mobs are possessed of the
artillery arms it will be necessary to have upon each bridge end 2 4-inch Howitzers with grape shot… 400
men would defend the 2 bridges.’ In Broad Street, as portrayed in Francis Wheatley’s apocalyptic painting
(which was burnt in 1789), Mrs Samuel Hoare recalled: ‘The Horse Guards, attended by a company of
volunteers, arrived. They halted exactly opposite our house. 3 times the commanding officer exhorted the
people to disperse, but they obstinately refused. Then, advancing but a few yards, they fired near a
hundred pieces, and left 4 unhappy men dead on the spot and 15 wounded.’
6am Henry Angelo went to the site of Langdale’s in Holborn where he saw piles of blackened bodies: ‘As I
walked on towards Snow Hill, I saw several bodies on each side of the road, whether dead or drunk, I did
not stop to inquire.’ Under Blackfriars bridge a boat full of bodies were collected by watermen and laid out
along Dung Wharf. As Parliament adjourned, another Privy Council meeting at St James’s fell just short of
declaring martial law. The troops’ authority to act on their own discretion amounted to much the same
thing, but mostly they just tore blue cockades from hats and pulled down blue silk flags.
3pm After an attempt to keep the riots going in the ruins of Fleet was put down by cavalry, leaving another
3 dead and more wounded, ‘5 of the most desperate levellers armed with shot guns climbed the building
of the Fleet market. One of them fired down upon the soldiers, whereupon a platoon returned fire and
brought 2 down dead at their feet.’ In Borough the New Gaol keeper released his prisoners as the Guards
arrived to save the building. 5pm The mob reassembled out of Fleet market on the Fleet bridge. 6pm
Horse Guards proceeding down Fleet Street to the Bank were set upon by the mob. In this encounter,
although the Guards didn’t have time to fire, 20 rioters were bayoneted to death and 35 more wounded.
Rioting continued in Borough, where ‘the chief employment of the mobility’ was burning sponging houses
and 2 inns to gain access to New Gaol, until there was another massacre. Other buildings threatened by
the ‘levelling idea’ included the East India Company offices, South Sea House, Customs House, the Navy
Pay Office and Greenwich Hospital. One of the best defended buildings was the house of the Catholic
Relief supporting, top Whig Lord Rockingham in Grosvenor Square (on the site of the 1968 demo target
US Embassy). The search for prisoners still at large/suspected rioters focused on the courts of alleys of
the Clerkenwell rookeries (of future ‘Fagin’s lair’ renown). Jonas Hanway reported in the Citizen’s Monitor:
‘These places constitute a separate town calculated for the reception of the darkest and most dangerous
enemies… with doors of communication in each and also with the adjacent houses… peace-officers and
the keepers of these houses appeared to be well-acquainted.’
Friday June 9 With reinforcements still coming into London, the Public Advertiser reported the return of
‘silence, decency and tranquillity’ to the streets. Coutts the banker recalled ‘soldiers instead of merchants
on the Royal Exchange; red coats instead of black in St Paul’s.’ The government denied reports of trials
by military judge advocates and of bodies hanging from lampposts in Cheapside and Southwark. As the
insurrectionary tide turned, Lord Amherst was inundated with applications to form militia groups. More
prisoners were taken when troops put down further rioting in Moorfields. Sheds had to be put up in the
ruins of King’s Bench prison and St Paul’s churchyard to accommodate the hundreds of rounded-up
prisoners. Colonel Stuart doubted they had captured any riot ringleaders as ‘they all appear too wretched
to have been the schemers of so deep and well conducted a project.’ Lord George Gordon himself was
taken to the Tower in a military convoy via Horse Guards where he was interrogated at the War Office.
As anti-Catholic rioting continued in Bath and Bristol, London returned pretty much to normal apart from
the ruins and the troops. Of the conspiracy theories one of the most plausible was the government allowed
the riots to progress in order to try out martial law. The riots split the opposition and gave Lord North
another 2 years in power, though he didn’t particularly want them. Horace Walpole summed up the state
of the Whigs as ‘a universal anarchy of opinion; no 3 men agree on any 3 propositions. Lord Shelburne
and Lord Rockingham are bitter enemies. Burke is mad for toleration. The Duke of Richmond and Charles
Fox agree with him on that point; while the Duke is as violent for annual parliaments as the Rockinghams
against them. Lord Shelburne and Lord Camden are as strongly anti-papistic.’
Colonel Stuart reported: ‘The fear that passes among the better sort of people in the City surpasses
description; they talk of whole streets where there are none but disaffected people. They mistrust one
another and those I have conversed with generally agree that many very principal men among them are
deeply concerned in the business; notwithstanding which we have not been able to make any discovery…
more and more are my apprehensions of the deep designs of artful people, but strange to tell the people
well affected are so alarmed that they will not give any information lest their houses and property should
suffer… The irregularity of this mob has plunged them into the depth of their scheme before the business
was ripe.’ Colonel Twistleton still considered Wilkes and other aldermen to be ‘republicans in principle.’
Not much evidence was to be found of French/American involvement or of the psychogeographical riot
plan imagined by Charles Dickens in Barnaby Rudge; though Dennis the hangman was involved. No lists
of target houses were found or list-maker ringleaders arrested. The consensus of opinion was that the
most active rioters were apprentices, street boys and ‘rowdy brothel maids’. The only evidence that mobs
were directed from above were the well-dressed men reports. According to the Archbishop of York; ‘No
mob acted without a number of well-dressed men to direct them. 2 were dug out of the ruins of a house
where they ran from the military although the house was burning. One had ruffles, with a large diamond at
his shirt breast, the other very well dressed with a plan of London in his pocket.’
Horace Walpole: ‘The Court at first had a mind to bestow the plot on France, Spain and the Americas…
Some Americans, perhaps, taught by the lessons we have given them of burning houses, joined
in…France solicited by American agents might, as she used to do when teased by the Jacobites,
contribute a little money or a few arms and some rogues, of whom she was willing to disburden herself,
but I do not imagine it was a branch of her political schemes to burn London. She would have had some
force ready to pour in or distract us in some other quarter, while the army should be all drawn to the
capital.’ Samuel Romily concluded: ‘The monstrous excesses appear to have been the accidental effects
of the ungovernable fury and licentiousness of a mob, who gathered courage from their numbers, and
having ventured on one daring act, found their only safety in universal havoc and destruction.’
A last gasp ‘No Popery Down with it’ flyer appeared declaring: ‘Dethrone him or else he will massacre you
all. If your king is not dethroned he will be your utter ruin for he is a true Roman Catholick and it is fit he
should lose his head… Lord George Gordon for ever though he is in the Tower he will make them rue for
a army of Scottish is coming 100,000 men in arms.’ From George III’s point of view as put to Parliament;
‘The outrages committed by bands of lawless and desperate men, in various parts of the metropolis, broke
forth with such violence into acts of felony and treason, and had so far overborne all civil authority, and
threatened so directly the immediate subversion of all legal power, the destruction of all property, and the
confusion of every order in the state that I found myself obliged by every tie of duty and affection to my
people to suppress, in every part, those rebellious insurrections, and to provide for the public safety by the
most effectual and immediate application of the force intrusted to me by Parliament.’
July 44 of the prisoners were sentenced to hang at the Old Bailey and another 24 got the death sentence
at the Southwark sessions, though only 25 were known to be executed. Of the 450 rioters arrested, 160
were brought to trial. Edward Dennis the hangman didn’t go for the drop in reality like he did in Barnaby
Rudge. After claiming he was forced to join in by the mob and begging for mercy, he was pardoned and
released to hang his fellow rioters. The radical apothecary Henry Maskall was also acquitted. Ned Dennis
went back to work hanging around 20 street youths at the scenes of their crimes/revolutionary acts. Those
‘turned off’ for being in the riots included gypsies, West Indians, a demented beggar, abscess-covered
climbing boys and a circus strongman.
According to the military the final death toll in the riots was 210; plus terminally wounded the total came to
300; Wraxall reckoned it was more like 700 and Hibbert’s calculation from the military reports was 850. No
deaths were accountable to the mob. A repentant informer said the mob consisted of ‘200 house-breakers
with tools, 550 pick-pockets, 6,000 allsorts and 50 men that gives them order what to be done – they only
come at night.’ Walpole thought they were ‘chiefly apprentices, convicts and all kinds of desperadoes… a
regiment of street walkers.’ Dorothy George called them ‘the inhabitants of the dangerous districts in
London who were always ready for pillage.’ However, unemployed lowest class don’t feature very highly in
George Rude’s arrested rioters breakdown of small employers – shopkeepers/craftsmen, soldiers, sailors,
journeymen apprentices, waiters, servants and labourers.
Although the uprising was a failure in any normal insurrectionary sense, according to de Castro, ‘from the
rabble’s standpoint the riots were an unqualified success. The outcasts, the unwanted, the insubordinate,
the brutal, had flouted the constitution. A constitution whose wheels, as they revolved in round-house,
bridewell, pillory or press-gang, grated on their ears, albeit ears untuned and unwashed. The rabble had
mocked, and exultingly mocked, the lawn-sleeved prelate; they had bearded the clean-shaven and
brocaded the peer; they had begrimed the flowered waistcoat and soiled the powdered curls of the man of
fashion. They had filled their pockets, they had gratified their bellies; they had exhorted artisans to
rebellion, and they had incited apprentices and servants to violence. They had set at defiance the military
authority, they had disabled the constabulary and had well-nigh wrecked the prison-system. They had
revelled in pillage, they had played with flame, they had sported with carnage; they had shown that war
can effectively be waged without preliminary hymns to the lord of hosts – they had fought their good fight.’
George Rude concluded that ‘behind the slogan of ‘No Popery’ and other outward forms of religious
fanaticism there lay a deeper social purpose: a groping desire to settle accounts with the rich, if only for a
day, and to achieve some rough kind of social justice.’ Christopher Hibbert summed up King Mob: ‘In later
centuries historians were able to detect in the riots a violent symptom of that quasi-revolutionary
movement which was to end the political system of George III. But the rioters themselves were, of course,
only indirectly concerned with this. They were interested in destruction, not reform… They rose up
incoherently in protest, unprepared and inarticulate, unsure even themselves of what they wanted or
hoped to attain. Encouraged by fanatics and criminals, reckless and drunken, they themselves became
criminals, and died to no purpose which they could name, rebels without a cause and without a leader.’
1781 After spending 6 months in the Tower, Lord George Gordon was tried for high treason; that ‘on the
second day of June with a great multitude of persons, armed and arrayed in a warlike manner with colours
flying and with clubs, bludgeons and staves and other warlike weapons did ordain, prepare and levy public
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war against the king. And between that day and the 10 of the same month did compass, imagine and
intend to raise and levy war, insurrection and rebellion against our said lord the king.’ At the time high
treason still technically carried the ‘godly butchery’ sentence and it was only necessary to prove that he
had levied war against the king by trying to ‘effect by force an alteration of the established law.’ And the
judge was Lord Mansfield, the most prominent victim of the Gordon riots. However, the charge didn’t stick,
Lord George was found not guilty and released.
1784 After US independence, at the time of Charles James Fox’s ’40 days riot, 40 days confusion’, Lord
George returned to politics as an election campaign speaker for the Whig ‘man of the people’. After the
king manipulated Pitt the Younger into power, he resumed his attacks against the Ministry opposing new
taxes and on behalf of Protestant volunteers applying to fight with the Dutch against the Catholic Austrian
empire. Later in the year, unemployed sailors marched to Welbeck Street with the intention of pulling Lord
George’s house down for betraying them. But, upon their arrival he came out to meet them creating a
profound silence and soon had the sailors shouting ‘Gordon and liberty!’ and asking if they should ‘pull
down Mr Pitt’s house’.
1786 Lord George became involved with Count de Cagliostro, on his banishment from France over the
Marie-Antoinette diamond necklace affair. The necklace meant for Marie-Antoinette was ripped off by the
bogus Count and Countess de la Motte de Valois, implicating Prince de Rohan who involved Cagliostro.
An article appeared in the Public Advertiser in which Lord George was representing Cagliostro against ‘the
intrigues of the queen’s faction’ and ‘the hateful revenge and perfidious cruelties of a tyrannical
government.’ This brought about a libel charge against him; and then another was added for a pamphlet
representing Newgate prisoners about to be transported to Botany Bay; ‘We have reason to cry aloud
from our dungeons and prison ships, in defence of our lives and liberties that the just punishment ordained
by god for our trespasses of thievery is profanely altered… and that the true record of the almighty is
falsified and erased by the lawyers and judges, who sit with their backs to the words of the living god and
the fear of men before their faces, till the streets of our city have run down with a stream of blood.’
1787 Lord George was duly found guilty of libelling Marie-Antoinette and ‘the judges and administration of
the laws of England’. The judge pronounced: ‘’One is sorry that you, descended of an illustrious line of
ancestors, should have so much dishonoured your family… that you should prefer the mean ambition of
being popular amongst thieves and pickpockets, and to stand as the champion of mischief, anarchy and
confusion… that you should insult her most Christian majesty.’ As the judge was about to pass sentence
he did a bunk to Holland, where he received a revolutionary welcome but after some French intervention
he was returned to England. For the rest of the year Lord George managed to go underground.
1788 A man dressed as an orthodox Jew called Israel bar Abraham George Gordon was apprehended in
the Froggery Jewish quarter of Birmingham. His Jewish street-hawker landlady gave the London
Chronicle ‘a most flattering character of this unaccountable man, saying he is endowed with the most
engaging manners and possessed of the greatest learning of anyone living.’ Lord George had genuinely
converted to Judaism and spent the rest of his days as a strictly devout Jew. Back in London, he went up
before Court of King’s Bench to be sentenced to 3 years for the Botany Bay libel and another 2 for the
Marie-Antoinette. Then he was taken to the newly refurbished Newgate, where he acquired a large cell
with maids to receive numerous visitors.
1789 After the fall of the Bastille, Lord George sent anti-slavery letters from Newgate to the House of
Commons, denouncing members for only ‘talking about regulating the slave trade instead of abolishing it
as the National Assembly had done.’ His revolutionary cell gatherings, featuring Lord George on bagpipes,
always ended with a rendition of the ‘Marseillaise’. He spent the rest of his time giving violin concerts,
playing ball games with common felons and arguing with the jailers on their behalf. As the French
Revolution began George III became increasingly agitated and suffered worse confinement than Lord
George or Louis XVI.
1792 As Lord George assumed his rightful position as king of the dispossessed people of Newgate, on the
outside Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man was published and the Scottish radical Thomas Hardy’s London
Corresponding Society formed influenced by the Gordon riots’ social bias. At the other end of the political
spectrum there was a church and king riot in Birmingham, in which the house of the Unitarian theologian
scientist Joseph Priestley was pulled down, and anti-French Revolution/Jacobin rioting in Nottingham and
Manchester. The right-wing has a claim to the Gordon riots as extreme church and state, in Richard
Brown’s Church and State in Modern Britain, or as an early form of anti-French Revolution in the Thatcher
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minister Ian Gilmour’s epic study of 18 century Riots, Risings and Revolutions.
1793 After Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were guillotined, at the time of the Terror, Lord George Gordon
died of gaol-fever (a form of typhoid that accounted for hundreds of Newgate prisoners each year). A
recreation of his last days, attended by his Jewish maid Polly Levi, friends and fellow prisoners, was
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preserved into the 20 century at Madame Tussaud’s. Out of Hibbert’s King Mob Lord George emerges as
‘a very different person from the sanctimonious, fanatical character in Barnaby Rudge. Ill-advised,
ambitious, vain, eccentric to the verge of madness, he was nevertheless a sincere humanitarian with ideas
far in advance of his time. Pacifist, democrat, penal reformer, revolutionary.’
1795 As George III went mad again when he had to give consent to Catholic emancipation, the radical
Doctor Watson published The Life of Lord George Gordon: with a philosophical review of his political
conduct including the following version of the 1780 events: ‘For many days a dreadful vengeance
threatened the guilty city, the magistrates, as is usual in times of danger, were feeble and inactive, and
everything was at the disposal of force; the great law lords, who had been long used to pronounce the
most cruel sentences on their unfortunate fellow creatures, were menaced with just retribution, and those
obnoxious to the people were obliged to consult their safety in flight, and a certain great personage is said
to have prepared for quitting England. All the prisons were pulled down and their inhabitants set at liberty,
Lord George was carried in triumph by the multitude, and nothing presented itself to the astonished
spectator but devouring flames. It is certain that he, who afterwards dragged a painful existence in a
loathsome gaol, might have then overturned a government, and founded a constitution agreeable to the
wishes and true interest of the people. 100,000 men were ready to execute his orders, and ministers
trembled for their personal safety.’
1838 The Times reported the inquest into the probable suicide of Dr Robert Watson at the Blue Anchor inn
on Thames Street. After the landlord said Watson told him he was Lord George’s secretary in the Gordon
riots, Charles Dickens portrayed him as the treacherous ‘Gashford’ due to his war wounds in Barnaby
Rudge. De Castro reckoned he wasn’t in London in 1780 but Watson was a real revolutionary who knew
Washington and Napoleon, ‘he spoke the language of every country fluently and his company was courted
by persons who visited the house.’
1839 At the time of the Chartist Monmouth uprising, Thomas Carlyle wrote: ‘Chartism means the bitter
discontent grown fierce and mad, the wrong condition therefore or the wrong disposition of the working
classes of England. It is a new name for a thing which has had many names, which will yet have many
more… Deep-hidden it lies, far down in the centre, like genial central fire, with stratum after stratum of
arrangement, traditionary method, composed productiveness, all built above it, vivified and rendered fertile
by it… Deep-hidden; but awakenable, but immeasurable; let no man awaken it.’
1842 Barnaby Rudge came out in 42 weekly numbers in the wake of Oliver Twist. In the end, after
exaggerating the mad Lord George myth, Dickens had to admit he was a genuine enough hero of the
people: ‘Many men with fewer sympathies for the distressed and needy, with less abilities and harder
hearts, have made a shining figure and left a brilliant fame. He had his mourners. The prisoners
bemoaned his loss, and missed him; for though his means were not large, his charity was great, and in
bestowing alms among them he considered the necessities of all alike, and knew no distinction of sect or
creed. There are wise men in the highways of the world who may learn something, even from this poor
crazy lord who died in Newgate.’
1848 At the time of revolutions around Europe, another petition was delivered to Parliament from across
the river by another charismatic rebel leader, the Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor; this one calling for
more radical parliamentary reform. But with 8,000 troops positioned at the bridges and in the City under
the command of the old Duke of Wellington, and 15,000 special constables appointed for the occasion,
there was to be no repeat of 1780. 1860 There was a religious/political echo of 1780 in the first Notting Hill
riot which broke out on Middle Row in Kensal New Town (on the site of the Job Centre) after Irish navvies
were asked, ‘Who are you for, the Pope or Garibaldi?’ This was at a time when English volunteers were
fighting for the 1848 Italian revolutionary.
1883 AJF Mill’s History of the Gordon Riots 1780 study came out. 1926 J Paul de Castro’s The Gordon
Riots, the first major study, was published. 1937 The Strange History of Lord George Gordon by Percy
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Colson appeared. 1955 George Rude’s Paris and London in the 18 Century Studies in Popular Protest
ground-breaking study of the 1780 rioters and their victims came out. 1958 King Mob, Christopher
Hibbert’s acclaimed Gordon riots book was published at the time of the Notting Hill race riots against West
Indian immigrants. 1968 Chris Gray of the English section of the Situationist International published the
King Mob Echo radical hippy underground paper, advocating the ‘revolution of everyday life’ from the
‘society of the spectacle’.
As explained by Dave Wise in The End of Music; ‘the name King Mob itself came from the Gordon riots in
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London in the late 18 century, when on the walls of the newly built gutted prison of Newgate the
signatories of the insurgents ‘His Majesty King Mob’ were written.’ Jon Savage, in his history of punk rock
England’s Dreaming, wrote: ‘King Mob took their name from Christopher Hibbert’s 1958 book, then the
only one available, on the Gordon riots of June 1780, which John Nicholson calls ‘the Great Liberty Riot’ –
the anarchic week that was akin to the French Revolution a few years later. In applauding this hidden
moment of British history, the group were attempting to reemphasize a disordered, anarchic Britain that
had previously been swept under the carpet. It was an attempt to give a specifically British context to the
rumblings of discontent that, even before the events (of May ’68), were growing louder.’
According to Fred Vermorel, ‘if the Sex Pistols stemmed from the Situationist International, their particular
twist of radical flash and burlesque rage was also mediated through a band of hooligan pedants based in
the Notting Hill Gate area of London. This was King Mob.’ The End of Music elaborated that ‘part of the
part of the genesis of punk rock goes back to the English section of the Situationists and the subsequent
King Mob – a loose affiliation (hardly a group) of disparate though confused revolutionary individuals in
England in 1968. King Mob lauded and practised active nihilism… Better to be horrible than a pleasant
altruistic hippy. As a kind of undialectical over-reaction to hippy, Chris Gray had the idea of creating a
totally unpleasant pop group – those first imaginings which were later to fuse in the Sex Pistols.’
Malcolm McLaren portrayed Chris Gary and co as the ‘well-dressed men’ of 1968: “They first came to my
attention when I was an art student. They used to hand out copies of the King Mob Echo at Vietnam
demonstrators, marches, where there used to be such a motley crew of students but there was always this
set that seemed to be so much better dressed than all the others and they became known as the English
Situationists and later King Mob. In demonstrations they definitely stood out as the dandies of the
revolution. I used to buy their pamphlets and copies of the Internationale Situationiste at Compendium
bookshop in Camden. They were often sold underneath the counter in brown paper bags in a very
clandestine manner. But what was even funnier was that as you got to know the people responsible for
King Mob, Chris Gray or the Wise brothers, you discovered that they were all art lecturers.”
1970 The History of Oxford Street film treatment by Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid featured the pop
Situationist Gordon riots synopsis: ‘The middle class started it against the Catholics. Then hundreds of
shopkeepers, carpenters, servants, soldiers and sailors rushed into the streets. There were only a few
Catholic houses to smash so they started to smash all the rich houses. The middle-classes did not want
anything to do with this. They burned down all 5 London prisons. They wanted to knock down everything
that stopped them having fun and made them unhappy. They wanted to set all the mad people free and
free the lions from the Tower.’
1977 The flyer for the last Sex Pistols gig in England featured a street urchin picture by Dickens’ illustrator
George Cruikshanks and the scrawled missive: ‘Anarchy in the UK Christmas Day Sex Pistols
Huddersfield. They are Dickensian-like urchins who with ragged clothes and pock marked faces roam the
streets of foggy gas-lit London pillaging, setting fire to buildings, beating up old people with gold chains,
fucking the rich up the arse, causing havoc wherever they go. Some of these ragamuffin gangs jump in
amidst the charred debris and with burning torches play rock’n’roll to the screaming delight of the frenzied
pogoing mob, shouting and spitting ‘anarchy’, one of these gangs call themselves the Sex Pistols. This
true and dirty tale has been continuing throughout 200 years of teenage anarchy and so in 1978 there still
remains the Sex Pistols. Their active extremism is all they care about because that’s what counts to jump
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right out of the 20 century as fast you possibly can in order to create an environment that you can
truthfully run wild in. Oliver Twist.’
At the time of the Queen’s silver jubilee, Malcolm McLaren as Lord George Gordon was arrested after the
Sex Pistols’ Thames boat trip alongside the Houses of Parliament. As the Queen and Elvis mob attacked
radical well dressed men in Viv Westwood clothes. Sid Vicious was the punk ‘Barnaby Rudge’ and Jah
Wobble the ‘Maypole Hugh’ character. If anything the militant reggae scene was even more influenced by
the Gordon riots than punk rock with Rastafarians echoing the ‘blood and fire’ Protestant preachers of the
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18 century more or less word for word. The reggae toaster Dillinger’s ‘Buckingham Palace’ track, the
reggae equivalent of the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ single, features the lyric: ‘Cramp and paralyze
them and those who worship Babylon and deal in iniquity… Chant down Babylon kingdom, Burn down
Vatican City, Yeah.’ Big Youth toasted; ‘Kill Pope Paul and Babylon will fall.’
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1980 On the 200 anniversary of the Gordon riots, The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle film by Julien Temple
featured a punk rock re-enactment with the Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren as Lord George again.
‘1780 The Gordon Riots – The London mob created Anarchy in the UK.’ As effigies of the Pistols, guitars
and paraphernalia were burnt by a new romantic nihilist mob, Malcolm McLaren in a red tartan bondage
suit destroyed evidence that he was behind it. The King Mob scenes disappointed the Pistols designer
Jamie Reid who said: “Those were rich ideas, ideas that Malcolm and I had laid down years before in the
Oxford Street film, about the Gordon riots, and they were just thrown away. Russ Meyer (who directed part
of the film) could have handled it funnily enough.”
The more traditional libertarian John Nicholson wrote The Great Liberty Riot of 1780, including a scathing
indictment of Dickens for rewriting radical history and the subsequent prison system. In his 1977 Free
England riot timeline John Nicholson has ‘King Mob of Georgian England’. According to his ‘Taking
Liberties’ theory, ‘if the dissenters had come to power in 1780 then even the Anglicans would have moved
to the fringes of power. The spectrum would have been between the different factions of nonconformist
Protestantism. The Reformers too would have thrown in their lot with the new order. The extremes would
have been inside this even narrower spectrum: from the authoritarian Wesyleyans and repressive
Reformers to the high-spiritedness of Lord George and apocalyptic hopes of James Jackson and
Swedenborg. As it is the alliance went the other way when the repression inherent in the Reformers joined
with the repression of the authorities. The best example of this would be the new prisons.’
1984 In the Stop the City demos of the 1980s, after clashes outside the Mansion House and the Stock
Exchange on Threadneedle Street, police chased anarcho-punk squatters around the City. Unlike the
Gordon riots, the Stop the City protests were anti-American and there were no well dressed men involved.
1985 As The Great Liberty Riot of 1780 was published, anti-Thatcher/police riots continued in Brixton and
around the country. 1991 Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid’s History of Oxford Street finally came out as
The Ghosts of Oxford Street Channel 4 Christmas musical, featuring the Happy Mondays as mob
members being hanged at Tyburn.
1999 The Reclaim the Streets/Stop the City riot, started in Broad Street, was reported in the Telegraph as
‘the worst trouble in the square mile since the Gordon riots of 1780.’ The police subsequently came up
with CCTV footage of ‘smartly dressed men’ co-ordinating City riot activity. The Standard had: ‘Dressed in
suits and ties and carrying briefcases and mobile phones, these men did not draw a second glance…
Police have identified around half a dozen smartly dressed men who orchestrated the trouble. Once the
violence began they donned carnival masks or scarves to disguise their faces.’
th
Leaving the 20 century, Chris Gray wrote regarding the King Mob Echo: English Section of the
Situationist International book and Gordon riots to punk rock Vague supplement: ‘I wonder whether it
wouldn’t be better just to forget about the past, and let a new generation find their own revolution, out of
their hearts and nerves and minds. And I pray they do man, for god knows this civilisation is an even
bigger and more sinister shitheap than it was when we were young… Lastly I didn’t quite understand what
it is you’ve sent me. Is this one book or two? Because, if it’s meant to be just one book, there seems to be
undue stress on the Gordon riots, whose link with the Situationists is tenuous to say the least of it.’
McLaren and Liberty No Labour No Tory No LibDem etc HM King Mob London Psychogeography 2010