The populace had not indulged in their favourite excesses for several years; but, an opportunity occurring in September 1729, they seized it with avidity. The King had been to Hanover, and, returning in safety, a party from Whitechapel chose to express their loyalty by breaking many hundreds of windows on each side of the way between that place and Charing-cross, under a pretence that the inhabitants should have illuminated them. The damage done by these desperadoes is said to have amounted to more than 1000l.; and it is remarkable that the King rode through the same street within an hour after the havock had been committed; no doubt, infinitely vexed that he was the innocent cause of so much injury to his peaceable subjects.
The public mind was greatly agitated in 1733 by the introduction of an Excise bill into the House of Commons, which experienced great
opposition, and was deferred till June in that year. The populace, highly elated, made effigies of the Minister, burnt them in various places, and demonstrated their joy by breaking numbers of windows. This excess was repeated on the anniversary of the above event with increased violence, when, in addition to breaking the Lord Mayor's windows, they broke his officers' heads; but several of the ringleaders were apprehended, and sent to different prisons.
On the 30th of March, 1734, a disgraceful tumult occurred in Suffolk-street, Charing-cross, occasioned by several young men whose situation in life ought to have produced far different conduct. They met at a house in the above street under the denomination of the Calves-head club, prepared a fire before the door, and after several indecent orgies appeared at the first-floor windows with wine and a calf's head dressed in a napkin cap, which they threw into the flames with loud huzzas. As the populace assembled round the fire were entertained with plenty of beer, they shouted at many of the toasts drank by the Club ; but, some being proposed that interfered with the Majesty of the People, they were considered as the signal for attack, which immediately commenced with so much impetuosity as to render it necessary for the founders of the feast to fly for their lives. The mob broke all the windows of the house, forcibly entered it, and demolished
every article in their way, to the amount of several hundred pounds. The royal guards put an end to the tumult. I have a print, published immediately after the transaction, which faithfully represents the wickedness and folly of it.
"The Hyp Doctor" observed on this occasion: "It is an honour to the Dissenters, that we do not hear of one of their body who belonged to this ingenious and refined cabal. It must not be overlooked, that if the report be right, the Calves-heads were bought in St. James's-market; the double entendre was intended to have wit prepense ; but methinks the emblem was wrong-headed ; for how can a Calf , which is a tame gentle creature , and incapable of sin , represent a supposed Tyrant, or a bad Monarch? Some of the parties concerned were, as the chronicles of Suffolk-street record it, sons of nobles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, besides Commoners; but the transaction was carried on , like Io in the farce , by a Bull rather than a Calf (by which it might appear to be more Irish than English), if you examine the criticism of the Shew . It was a sequel to Punch at the masquerade, putting his Opera bills into the hands of some too great for a familiar mention; but neither the Haymarket Punch, nor the Suffolk-street Puppet-shew took : one was acted but once, the other was not acted thoroughly the first time: the people were the criticks , the connoisseurs,
and corrected the play. We are now assured it had no plot ; the head had no brains , like Æsop's masks: this may be true, but no credit to a tragi-comedy: it only proved they were no Poets , and but indifferent actors . Was there none who bore a Calf's-head couped , as the Heralds speak, in his coat of Arms? The device of the escutcheon might be more significant than that of the Club . Such a proceeding might have been proper in a slaughter-house ; but, perhaps, they were replenished with the wisdom of the Egyptians, who worshiped Osiris in the form of a Calf : was it an Essex or a Middlesex Calf?—Baa be the motto of this speculation. The Gens Vitellia, the Vitellian family at Rome, were denominated from the like. This adds light from the Roman history."
The next disturbance of the public peace proceeded from the dregs of the people, who were exasperated beyond measure at the laudable attempts of their superiors to suppress the excessive use of Gin ; and their resentment became so very turbulent in September 1736, that they even presumed to exclaim in the streets, "No Gin no King :" in consequence, double guards were posted at Kensington, St. James's, Somerset-house, and the Rolls. Besides these precautions, 500 of the Grenadier-guards, and the Westminster troop of Horse-militia, were distributed as patroles, and in Hyde and St. James's Parks, Covent-garden, &c.
Many satirical and pleasant attacks upon that pernicious liquor appeared in the diurnal publications; two of which are worth preserving:
"To the dear and regretted memory of the best and most potent of cheap liquors, Geneva; the solace of the hen-pecked husband, the kind companion of the neglected wife, the infuser of courage in the tame and standing army, the source of the thief's resolution, the support of pawnbrokers, tally-men, receivers of stolen goods, and a long et cetera of other honest fraternities, alike useful and glorious to the Commonwealth. A Victor , fuller of fire than Bajazet, and who destroyed more men than Tamerlane in his numerous conquests. The bane of chastity, the foe of honesty, the friend of infidelity, the very spirit of sedition , through the inhuman malice of —— and ——, by the edge of an Act of Parliament, cut off in her prime September 19, 1736, anno regni Georgii secundi decimo. Her constant votary Nicholas No-shoes , in testimony of a friendship subsisting after death, erects this monument.