QSR1828/400-401

Examination of Charles Austin of Luton, gentleman, regarding the riot on 5th November.

1828

From: 1828 To: 1828

Was writing in the back office on the ground floor of his house when he heard ‘a tremendous uproar and firing of guns in the street. Almost immediately after I heard cries in the front sitting room upstairs – I ran up immediately and found great alarm and the children crying and was informed that the mob had attacked the windows with squibs etc.’ He looked out and saw that the mob was proceeding towards Mr Jones’s house. It was too dark to see what was happening but ‘I could hear a great uproar.’ When they [the mob] went Austin went back to his office, where he remained until 8 p.m. ‘when Mrs Austin called to me in great haste and alarm to come up … When I reached the window I was certainly much alarmed – I saw an immense mob with a large lighted tar barrel in front of my house blazing out many feet at each end and leaving the road as if it were on fire in its track. The noise from the guns, fireworks and yelling of the mob was tremendous – they very shortly rolled it [the barrel] on towards Mr Jones’s and I distinctly saw the blazing barrel rolled up to the boards which enclose the scaffolding at the new part of Mr Jones’s house – and observing they held it there (apparently with their bludgeons). I was satisfied they were determined to burn his house down and get him out and I attempted to go out and assist in protecting him but Mrs Austin anticipated me and prevented it. I then heard the nurse exclaim ‘they have got the barrel away from the building.’ I saw them roll the barrel to the fence opposite … but it did not ignite and they rolled it down towards a cottage … (one of a cluster of ten or eleven belonging to Mr Jones) and endeavoured to get it against the wooden shutter of the cellar window, but the cottage standing on a bank they appeared to me to be unable to accomplish it and very shortly after rolled it down the road again nearly opposite to my house where they stopped, apparently deliberating on something. In a few minutes they set off … again … as before … and the same scene again occurred – the barrel was … rolled back again passed my house but they very shortly returned … as before. It was then rolled back again and up the town and I saw no more of it. As they passed my house … the last time I heard some stones hit the front of the house close to the side of the window where Mrs Austin stood with the blind down and a little aside to look out, and [I] called her to come away and at the moment she turned her head to ask what I said the stone now produced came through the pane where her head had been and from the force with which the stone came into the room I verily believe she would have been killed if she had not providentially turned her head away at that very moment. I had been told before the day that the rabble had used threats that if they could catch Mr Jones or myself out of our houses that night we should not go in again alive; Mr Jones more particularly so. I anxiously endeavoured to discover by the light of the barrel some of the ring leaders but they were most of them so disguised by blackened and painted faces – round frocks, wagoner’s hats and in other ways that although I believed I knew many of them well I could only positively identify James Waller, a bricklayer who was very actively engaged in rolling the barrel.’ Additional evidence that is crossed through states that having sent his servant out into the town about 10 p.m. and hearing that the mob were determined to get Mr Jones out of his house by the morning, he sent his servant and his nephew to Mr Jones’s house to ‘sit up and protect him.’

item

Jones,
Waller, James,
Austin, Charles

LUTON, rioting, guns