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Authors: Stephen Halliday
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former ally the Earl of Sandwich that he would die of the pox or on the gallows, he replied, ‘That, my lord, will depend upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.’
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RETRIBUTION
Considering the scale of the riots, the worst ever seen in London, the retribution exacted by the authorities was relatively mild. Twenty-one were hanged for offences arising from the riots, including three of those who had mounted the attack on Newgate. The executed did not include Lord George Gordon who was very ably defended against a charge of ‘levying war on the king’ (high treason) by Thomas Erskine (1750–1823), a future Lord Chancellor who successfully argued that his client had only peaceful intentions and could neither foresee nor control the actions of his unruly supporters.
Gordon’s connections with Newgate were not yet at an end. In 1788 he was convicted of libelling the British government and Marie Antoinette, who at that date was still Queen of France, and was sent to Newgate where he spent the remaining five years of his life. Eccentric as ever in his religious views, he converted to Judaism and corresponded from Newgate with Baron Alvensleben, the ambassador from Hanover, to whom he complained that the Hanoverian George III had ‘incorporated the system of tolerating Popery into the statute book’ and that ‘the Prince of Wales (if married to a Roman Catholic) might even succeed to the throne.’ 4 By the time that this letter was written the Prince of Wales, later George IV, had for some years been married to the Catholic Maria Fitzherbert, albeit without the knowledge of his father King George III. Despite his imprisonment, and his conversion to the Jewish faith, Lord George continued to draw supporters to his lost cause. Upon his death a printer named Robert Hawes wrote a lament which he entitled, confusingly, 5 ‘An Acrostical Tribute to the Memory of Lord George Gordon who Died in Newgate’, in which he declared, in capitals throughout:
THAT THE TIME IS AT HAND FOR THE COMING OF GOD’S ANCIENT PEOPLE THE JEWS, TO THE BELIEF AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE TRUE MESSIAH, I AM CLEARLY SATISFIED.
Hawes ended with a long, lugubrious poem concluding:
To Lord George Gordon’s memory this verse
Hawes writes who almost envieth his hearse
A greater writer than Robert Hawes drew attention to the fact that the so-called religious motivation of the rioters was soon lost in the looting and mayhem that the Gordon Riots soon became. In his preface to Barnaby Rudge, A Tale of the Riots of Eighty Charles Dickens wrote that ‘what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion’. The Gordon Riots were the worst anti-Catholic riots that England ever saw, though they were not the last. When Cardinal Wiseman re-established the Roman Catholic hierarchy as Archbishop of Westminster in 1850 there were disturbances on the streets of London and rumours that the cellars that John Henry Newman was building for his oratory in Birmingham were for murders. 6 In the meantime, despite Lord George Gordon, the Catholic Relief Act remained on the statute book, but Newgate lay in ruins.
THE NEW NEWGATE
The prison wrecked by the rioters was in the process of being rebuilt. For many years the condition of the gaol had been a matter of concern to the City authorities, especially to those who had to sit at the Old Bailey next door. As observed in Chapter Two, 7 an outbreak of gaol fever (typhus) at Newgate in 1750 had killed forty-three officials at the Old Bailey. In 1767 a former Lord Mayor, Sir Stephen Janssen, wrote a pamphlet campaigning for the immediate rebuilding of the prison. 8 He reminded his readers that in 1750, the year of the disaster, he had been a Sheriff and therefore required to attend the court in that capacity ‘when the Newgate contagion made such dreadful Havock in the Old Bailey Sessions House’, killing the Lord Mayor and two judges as well as others
----
RETRIBUTION
Considering the scale of the riots, the worst ever seen in London, the retribution exacted by the authorities was relatively mild. Twenty-one were hanged for offences arising from the riots, including three of those who had mounted the attack on Newgate. The executed did not include Lord George Gordon who was very ably defended against a charge of ‘levying war on the king’ (high treason) by Thomas Erskine (1750–1823), a future Lord Chancellor who successfully argued that his client had only peaceful intentions and could neither foresee nor control the actions of his unruly supporters.
Gordon’s connections with Newgate were not yet at an end. In 1788 he was convicted of libelling the British government and Marie Antoinette, who at that date was still Queen of France, and was sent to Newgate where he spent the remaining five years of his life. Eccentric as ever in his religious views, he converted to Judaism and corresponded from Newgate with Baron Alvensleben, the ambassador from Hanover, to whom he complained that the Hanoverian George III had ‘incorporated the system of tolerating Popery into the statute book’ and that ‘the Prince of Wales (if married to a Roman Catholic) might even succeed to the throne.’ 4 By the time that this letter was written the Prince of Wales, later George IV, had for some years been married to the Catholic Maria Fitzherbert, albeit without the knowledge of his father King George III. Despite his imprisonment, and his conversion to the Jewish faith, Lord George continued to draw supporters to his lost cause. Upon his death a printer named Robert Hawes wrote a lament which he entitled, confusingly, 5 ‘An Acrostical Tribute to the Memory of Lord George Gordon who Died in Newgate’, in which he declared, in capitals throughout:
THAT THE TIME IS AT HAND FOR THE COMING OF GOD’S ANCIENT PEOPLE THE JEWS, TO THE BELIEF AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE TRUE MESSIAH, I AM CLEARLY SATISFIED.
Hawes ended with a long, lugubrious poem concluding:
To Lord George Gordon’s memory this verse
Hawes writes who almost envieth his hearse
A greater writer than Robert Hawes drew attention to the fact that the so-called religious motivation of the rioters was soon lost in the looting and mayhem that the Gordon Riots soon became. In his preface to Barnaby Rudge, A Tale of the Riots of Eighty Charles Dickens wrote that ‘what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion’. The Gordon Riots were the worst anti-Catholic riots that England ever saw, though they were not the last. When Cardinal Wiseman re-established the Roman Catholic hierarchy as Archbishop of Westminster in 1850 there were disturbances on the streets of London and rumours that the cellars that John Henry Newman was building for his oratory in Birmingham were for murders. 6 In the meantime, despite Lord George Gordon, the Catholic Relief Act remained on the statute book, but Newgate lay in ruins.
THE NEW NEWGATE
The prison wrecked by the rioters was in the process of being rebuilt. For many years the condition of the gaol had been a matter of concern to the City authorities, especially to those who had to sit at the Old Bailey next door. As observed in Chapter Two, 7 an outbreak of gaol fever (typhus) at Newgate in 1750 had killed forty-three officials at the Old Bailey. In 1767 a former Lord Mayor, Sir Stephen Janssen, wrote a pamphlet campaigning for the immediate rebuilding of the prison. 8 He reminded his readers that in 1750, the year of the disaster, he had been a Sheriff and therefore required to attend the court in that capacity ‘when the Newgate contagion made such dreadful Havock in the Old Bailey Sessions House’, killing the Lord Mayor and two judges as well as others
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