NOTES.
RIOTS OF LONDON.
Seventy years having passed away since the riots of London, there cannot be many living who remember them, and still fewer who were personally in contact with the tumultuous throng. Under such circumstances, I venture to offer for introduction into your useful and entertaining miscellany some incidents connected with that event in which I was either personally an actor or spectator—things not in themselves important, yet which may be to some of your readers acceptable and interesting as records of bygone days.
The events of 1780, in themselves so terrific, were well adapted to be written indelibly on the memory of a young, and ardent boy. At any age they would have been engraved as with an iron pen; but their occurrence at the first age of my early boyhood, when no previous event had claimed particular attention, fixed them as a lasting memorial.
The awful conflagrations had not taken place when I arrived in London from a large school in one of the midland counties in England, for the Midsummer vacation. So many of my school-fellows resided in the metropolis, or in a part of the country requiring a passage through London, that three or four closely-packed post-chaises were necessary; and to accomplish the journey in good time for the youngsters to be met by their friends, the journey was begun as near to four o'clock A.M. as was possible.
The chaises, well crowned with boxes, and filled with joyous youth, were received at the Castle and Falcon, then kept by a Mr. Dupont, a celebrated wine merchant, and the friend of our estimable tutor. The whole of my schoolmates had been met by their respective friends, and my brother and I alone remained at the inn, when at length my mother arrived in a hackney-coach to fetch us, and from her we learned that the streets were so crowded that she could hardly make her way to us. No time was lost, and we were soon on our way homewards. We passed through Newgate Street and the Old Bailey without interruption or delay; but when we came into Ludgate Hill the case was far different; the street was full and the people noisy, permitting no carriage to pass unless the coachman took off his hat and acknowledged his respect for them and the object for which they had congregated. "Hat off, coachee!" was their cry. Our coachman would not obey their noisy calls, and there we were fixed. Long might we have remained in that unpleasant predicament had not my foreseeing parent sagaciously provided herself with a piece of ribbon of the popular colour, which she used to good effect by making it up into a bow with a long, streamer and pinning it to a white handkerchief, which she courageously flourished out of the window of the hackney-coach. Huzzas and "Go on, coachee!" were shouted from the crowd and with no other obstruction than the full streets presented, we reached Beaufort Buildings, in the Strand, the street in which we resided.
There a new scene presented itself, which was very impressive to our young minds. The street was full of soldiers, and the coachman said to my mother, "I cannot go down." A soldier addressed my mother: "No one, ma'am, can go down this street:" to whom my mother replied, "I live here, and am going to my own home." An officer then gave permission for us, and the coachman with our box, to proceed, and we were soon at our own door. The coachman, ignorant of the passport which the handkerchief and ribbon had proved, said, on setting the box down, "You see, ma'am, we got on without my taking off my hat: for who would take off his hat to such a set of fellows? I would rather have sat there all the day long."
The assembling of the military in this street was to defend the dwellings of Mr. Kitchener and Mr. Heron, both these gentlemen being Roman Catholics. Mr. Kitchener (who was the father of Dr. Kitchener, the author of the Cook's Oracle) was an eminent coal merchant, whose wharf was by the river-side southward, behind Beaufort Buildings, then called Worcester Grounds[1], as the lane leading to it was called Worcester Lane: but Mr. Kitchener, or his successor Mr. Cox, endeavoured to change it by having "Beaufort Wharf" painted on their wagons. Thus the name "Worcester Grounds" got lost; but the lane which bore the same name got no advantage by the change, for it received the appropriate title of "Dirty Lane," used only for carts and horses, foot passengers reaching the wharf by the steps at the bottom of Fountain Court and Beaufort Buildings.
But to return to my narrative. My parents soon removed us out of this scene of public confusion, to the house of a relative residing at St. Pancras: and well do I remember the painful interest with which, as soon as it got dark, the whole family of my uncle used to go on the roof of the house and count the number of fires, guessing the place of each. The alarm was so great, though at a distance, that it was always late before the family retired to rest. I remained at St. Pancras until the riots had been subdued and peace restored; and now, though very many matters crowd my mind, as report after report then reached us, I will leave them to record only what I personally saw and heard.