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The
New Gaol was attacked by rioters who breached its iron gates
after battering them with sledge hammers and crowbars for
three-quarters of an hour, allowing a small boy to get inside
and draw back its bolts.
"The force of the mob was every moment fearfully increasing,
a dense mass had collected, and on the other side of the river,
wherever the eye could range. Thousands were in motion," wrote
the Revd John Eagles.
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The
mob attack the new gaol gates. |
Around
170 prisoners were freed and joined the mob, the gaol's treadmill
and gallows were set upon and were thrown into the adjacent
New Cut.
The prison was then set on fire by the mob, the flames could
be seen as far away as Wales.
Order
was eventually restored to the city by troops from Gloucester
who opened fire on the mob, killing around 130 of them.
In the following days those arrested for their part in the
riots were tried before the Bristol Court.
Five
received the death penalty. Christopher Davies, John Kayes,
Richard Vines, Thomas Gregory and William Clarke were all
sentenced to be hanged over the entrance of the New Gaol On
Friday 27th January 1832, four of the condemned men were led
out to the top of the gatehouse where the open-air scaffold
had been erected.
Despite
a petition to King William IV signed by 10,000 Bristolians,
"including several merchants of the greatest respectability,"
there was to be no reprieve.
However,
the day before his execution, Richard Vines was declared to
be an idiot.
His
sentence was changed to transportation to Australia.
The
assembled crowd were sympathetic to the plight of the condemned
men and many of the special constables reportedly wept alongside
large sections of the crowd.
The
account of the hangings paints a pathetic picture of the City's
retribution.
The
executioner was described as a "poor, dirty, ragged and wretched
person" who had only taken on the role to scratch a living.
He was so overcome by the occasion that as he tightened the
prisoners' nooses, he shook uncontrollably.
He
was only stopped from falling from the gallows by scrabbling
at the prisoners' shoulders and being grabbed and supported
by one of the jailers.
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The
plaque on the door of the gaol. |
After
that shaky start the sentence was carried out. On a pull of
a lever all four were hanged in front of the spectators gathered
across the opposite side of the New Cut.
On
Sunday 27th May 2000, a plaque was placed on the door of the
gaol to commemorate the rioters who had been hanged above
its gateway, imprisoned or transported.
It remains to this day as the only acknowledgment on the site
of its part in Bristol's turbulent past.
The
gaol was repaired and continued with its role of holding prisoners
and staging public executions.
Conditions
inside were very good for a brief period and a new directive
keeping prisoners in virtual solitary confinement improved
their rehabilitation, as a report of 1841 claimed:
"We know of one-hundred-and-one prisoners tried and convicted
since this new system was enforced, who now honestly earn
their bread by the sweat of their brow, and appear to be thoroughly
reformed characters," it said.
>>>
Find out how the riot was virtually recreated
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