Gordon Riots

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The Gordon Riots , a painting by John Seymour Lucas (1849–1923) from 1879 (on permanent loan from the Art Gallery of New South Wales to the Supreme Court of New South Wales )

The Gordon Riots (Eng. "Gordon riots"), named after Lord George Gordon , were a Protestant uprising in London in June 1780 against a Catholic emancipation law .

Background and process

1778 was the "Roman Catholic Relief Act" under the government of George III. adopted. This law allowed the English Catholics , their civil rights in the Kingdom of Great Britain had hitherto been very limited, owning UK land to inherit and join the army unless they take an oath against the throne claims of the (Catholic) Stuarts and the civil jurisdiction of the pope rendered . This emancipation law came about against the background of the American War of Independence, which was unfavorable for England .

Lord George Gordon , who from 1774 was a member of parliament for the rotten borough "Ludgershall" , emerged from 1779 as the leader of radical Protestant associations. They wanted to achieve a withdrawal of the "Papists Act 1778" , the first of the "Catholic Relief Acts" .

On June 2, 1780, Lord George Gordon led a mob estimated at 40,000 to 60,000 people to the Houses of Parliament to petition the law. The demonstration quickly turned into a violent uprising. Catholic churches and households were devastated, including the chapels of some embassies, such as B. the chapel of the Bavarian Legation on Warwick Street . Catholics were ambushed on the street. The Bank of England was attacked as well as Newgate Prison , Fleet Prison and the toll booths on Blackfriars Bridge .

On June 8, 1780 the eyewitness Susan Burney (* 1755; † 1800), a younger sister of the writer Frances (Fanny) Burney , noted in her diary:

"(...) we heard violent shouts & huzza's from Leicester Fields - & William who went to see what was the matter return'd to tell us the populace had broke in to Sir Geo: Saville's House were then emptying it of its furniture which having piled up in the midst of the square, they forced Sir George's servant to bring them a candle to set fire to it - They would doubtless have set the House itself on fire had not the Horse & Foot Guards prevented them (... ) "
Translated: “(...) we heard boisterous screams & heissas from Leicester Fields - & William, who had found out what was going on, returned and told us that the mob had broken into Sir Geo: Saville's house emptying it of its furniture, which was piled up in the middle of the square, whereupon Sir George's servant was compelled to bring them a candle to light the pile - they would undoubtedly have set fire to the house themselves had it not been for the guard cavalry and prevented the guard infantry from doing so (...) ” .

The army did not intervene until June 7, 1780 . About 12,000 soldiers were deployed. It took 10 days for public order to be restored. 285 people were killed and 173 seriously injured. Property damage was estimated at approximately £ 180,000. About 100 houses, including The Clink Prison, were looted or burned down.

Lord Gordon was arrested on charges of high treason as the leader of the violent riot , but was later acquitted on the grounds that he had no treason. His followers were less fortunate. 52 ringleaders were sentenced, 25 of them to death . The Mayor of London, the wine merchant Brackley Kennett (* approx. 1713; † 1782), was fined 1,000 pounds for neglecting his duties.

Charles Dickens processed the "Gordon Riots" in his historical novel "Barnaby Rudge" from 1841.

literature

Historiography

  • Anthony Babington: Military intervention in Britain. From the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar incident . Routledge, London 1990, ISBN 0-415-04374-3 .
  • John P. De Castro: The Gordon riots . Milford Books, London 1926.
  • Ian Haywood, John Seed (Eds.): The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012, ISBN 978-0-521-19542-3 .
  • Christopher Hibbert: King mob. The story of Lord George Gordon and the riots of 1780 (Sutton history classics). Sutton Books, Stroud 2004, ISBN 0-7509-3726-2 (reprinted from London 1958 edition).
  • Alexius J. Mills: The History of Riots in London in ... 1780, commonly called the Gordon Riots . Lane Press, London 1883.
  • George Rudé: The Gordon Riots. A Study of the Rioters and Their Victims . In: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Fifth Series, Vol. 6 (1956), pp. 93-114. Reprinted in: Ders: Paris and London in the eighteenth century. Studies in popular protest . Collins, London 1970, pp. 268-292.

Fiction

  • Charles Dickens : Barnaby Rudge or The War of Faith of London ("Barnaby Rudge. A tale of the riots of 'eighty"). Bastei-Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1997, ISBN 3-404-13841-4 (translated by Paul Heichen; edited and by Anke Schäfer and Edgar Bracht; with an afterword by Stefan Bauer).
  • Thomas Holcroft : A plain and succinct narrative of the late riots and disturbances in the cities of London and Westminster and borough of Southwark ... With an account of the commitment of Lord George Gordon to the Tower, and anecdotes of his life; to which is prefixed an abstract of the act lately passed in favor of the Roman Catholics ... Fielding and Walker, London 1780.
  • Dorothea Moore: Pamela's Hero. A tale of the Gordon Riots ... Blackie, London 1908.

See also

In Jamaica, the Morant Bay uprising of 1865 is also known as the "Gordon Riot", as George William Gordon was considered by many whites to be the intellectual originator of the uprising because of his fight for humane living conditions for blacks and his criticism of British colonial policy.

Web links

Commons : Gordon Riots  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reginald Fuller: A short history of Warwick Street Church, formerly the Royal Bavarian Chapel , Kath. Pfarramt Warwick Street Church, London 1973, pp. 20-28
  2. ↑ Susan Burney's eye-witness account of the Gordon Riots, June 1780 ; University of Nottingham , Humanities Research Center: The Susan Burney Letters Project
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Binder: "From someone who pretended to get to know the Caribbean and tried to save the Empire." Imperial mechanisms of justification in James Anthony Froude's "The English in the West Indies" (1888) . In: Walther Bernecker, Gertrut Krömer (ed.): The rediscovery of Latin America. The experience of the subcontinent in travelogues of the 19th century . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1997. 3-89354-738-XS 291-307, here p. 293.