London, July 2. Yesterday there was a repeat of the demonstra- 
tion against the Sunday Bill in Hyde Park,* but this time on a 
larger scale, under more ominous auspices and with more serious 
consequences. The general mood of gloomy agitation in London 
today is witness to that. 

The posters which called on people to hold a second meeting 
also invited them to assemble in front of the house of the pious 
Lord Grosvenor on Sunday at 10 a.m., and to accompany him on 
his way to church. But the pious gentleman had already left 
London on Saturday in a private carriage—in order to travel 
incognito. That he is more inclined by nature to make martyrs of 
other people rather than become a martyr himself has already 
been proved by his circular letter which appeared in all the 
London newspapers, in which on the one hand he sticks to his bill 
whilst on the other hand he is at pains to show that it is 
meaningless, pointless and insignificant.” His house was occupied 
all Sunday, not by psalm-singers but by constables, 200 in number. 
Also the house of his brother, the Marquis of Westminster, 
famous for his wealth. 

On Saturday Sir Richard Mayne, chief of the London police, 
had pasted notices on the walls of London not only “forbidding” a 
meeting in Hyde Park but also “forbidding”? people to assemble 
there in “large numbers” and to exhibit any signs of approval or 

Times, No. 22093, June 28, 1855.— Ed. 

disapproval. The result of these ukases was, even according to the 
report in the police circular, that as early as 2.30 p.m. 150,000 
people from all classes and of all ages, were surging to and fro, 
and that gradually the crowd in the park swelled to dimensions 
which were immensely large and astonishing even by London 
standards. Not only did London appear en masse; people again 
lined both sides of the road along the Serpentine, only this time 
the crowds were more closely packed and deeper than on the 
previous Sunday. The people who did not, however, appear were 
the upper crust. All in all perhaps 20 carriages appeared, the 
majority of which were small gigs and phaetons which were 
allowed to pass unmolested, whereas their more portly, larger 
bellied, and taller brothers, trimmed with more braid, were 
greeted with the same calls as previously and with the same babel 
of sounds, the waves of which made the air vibrate for about a 
mile around. The police ukases were rebutted by the mass meeting 
and the exercising of thousands of pairs of lungs. The upper crust 
had avoided the scene of action and by its absence recognised the 
sovereignty of the vox popult. 

It was 4 o’clock and the demonstration seemed to be fizzling out 
into a harmless Sunday diversion from lack of anything to keep it 
going. But that did not suit the police. Were they to retire a 
general laughing-stock, casting melancholy parting glances at their 
own notices, which people could read at the main gate of the park 
in huge letters? What is more, their high dignitaries were present, 
Sir Richard Mayne and superintendents Gibbs and Walker on 
horseback, and inspectors Banks, Darkin and Brennan on foot. 
Eight hundred constables were strategically positioned, mainly 
hidden in buildings and ambuscades. Stronger detachments had 
been positioned at intervals nearby as reinforcements. The home 
of the chief park attendant, the powder magazine and_ the 
premises of the rescue services, all situated at a point where the 
road along the Serpentine turns into a path leading to Kensington 
Gardens, had been converted into improvised block houses 
manned by large forces of police and prepared for the accommo- 
dation of prisoners and casualties. Hackney cabs were put in 
position outside Vine Street police station at Piccadilly ready to go 
to the scene of action and to escort the vanquished safely back. 
In short, the police had planned a far more “vigorous” 
campaign, as The Times puts it, “than any of which we have yet 
had notice in the Crimea”.* The police needed bloody heads 

The Times, No. 22095, July 2, 1855.— Ed. 

and arrests so as not to go plunging directly from the sublime 
to the ridiculous. As soon as the two lines of people had begun 
to thin out more and the crowds had dispersed in various 
groups over the huge area of the park further away from the 
road, the police chiefs took up positions in the middle of the road 
between the two lines of people, and from their horses began 
issuing pompous-sounding orders right and left. Supposedly for 
the protection of passing carriages and riders. As, however, 
neither carriages nor riders appeared and there was thus nothing 
for them to protect, they began to pick individuals out of the 
crowd “under false pretences” and to have them arrested, the 
pretext being that they were pickpockets.* = When these experiments 
became more numerous and the pretext no longer held good, a 
single cry ran through the crowds, and the hidden corps of 
constables rushed out of their ambuscades, quickly drew their 
truncheons, rained blows upon people’s heads until they bled, 
here and there pulled an individual out of the crowd (a total of 
104 people were arrested in this manner), and dragged them off 
to the improvised block houses. The left-hand side of the road is 
only separated from the water of the Serpentine by a narrow strip 
of land. By a manoeuvre a police officer and his troop managed to 
drive the onlookers up to the very edge of the liquid element and 
were threatening to give them a cold bath. In an attempt to escape 
the police truncheons, one individual swam across the Serpentine 
to the opposite bank; however, a policeman set off after him in a 
boat, caught him and brought him back in triumph. 

How greatly had the character of the scene changed since last 
Sunday! Instead of the state carriages, dirty hackney cabs which 
drove to and fro from the police station at Vine Street to the 
improvised prisons in Hyde Park and from there to the police 
station. Instead of footmen up on the box a constable seated next 
to the drunken cab-driver. Instead of the elegant ladies and 
gentlemen inside the coaches there were prisoners with bloody 
heads, tousled hair, hatless, their clothes torn, guarded by 
shifty-looking characters recruited from among the Irish lumpen- 
proletariat and pressed into the London police. Instead of the 
swishing of fans the whizzing of the constables’ leather trun- 
cheons.” Last Sunday the ruling classes had shown their fashiona- 
ble physiognomy, now they showed their political physiognomy. 

Behind the kindly grinning old gentlemen, the fashionable 
dandies, the genteel and frail widows, the fragrant beauties in 
cashmere and ostrich feathers, adorned with garlands of diamonds 
and flowers—was the constable with his water-proof coat, greasy 
oilskin hat and truncheon. It was the reverse side of the coin. Last 
Sunday the crowd was confronted with the ruling class in its 
individual form. This. time it appeared as political power, the law, 
the truncheon. This time to resist was to commit insurrection, and 
the English have to be heated up slowly and for a long time before 
they are prepared for insurrection. Thus the counter-demonstra- 
tion was on the whole limited to cat-calling and hooting and 
whistling at the police vehicles, to isolated and weak attempts at 
freeing the prisoners, and above all to passive resistance and a 
phlegmatic determination to remain at the scene of action. 

Characteristic was the role played in this drama by the 
soldiers—partly from the Guards and partly from the 66th 
Regiment. They were present in large numbers. Twelve of them, 
Guards, some decorated with medals from the Crimea, were in the 
middle of a group of men, women and children who were the 
targets for police truncheons. One old man fell to the ground 
after receiving a blow. “The London stiffstaffs*” (name of abuse 
for the police) “are worse than the Russians were at Inkerman,” ””? 
cried one of the heroes from the Crimea. The police grabbed him. 
He was immediately released to loud shouts from the crowd of 
“Three cheers” for the army!” The police considered it advisable 
to retire. In the meantime a number of grenadiers had joined the 
crowd, the soldiers formed a troop and, surrounded by the crowd 
and accompanied by the cry of “Long live the army, down with 
the police, down with the Sunday Bill!”, they strutted up and 
down the park. The police were standing there not knowing quite 
what to do, when a sergeant from the guards appeared who loudly 
took them to task for their brutality, attempted to calm the 
soldiers and persuaded some of them to follow him to their 
barracks so as to avoid more serious collisions. The majority of the 
soldiers, however, stayed behind and, amongst the crowd, gave 
vent to their indignation against the police in impassioned terms. 
The antagonism between the police and the army in England goes 
back a long way. The present moment, when the army is the pet 
child of the masses, is certainly not suited to diminish that in any 
way. 

An old man by the name of Russell is reported to have died 
today as a result of the injuries he received; half a dozen injured 
people are in St. George’s Hospital. During the demonstration 
various attempts were again made to hold separate meetings. At 
one such meeting, at Albert Gate, outside that part of the park 
originally occupied by the police, one anonymous speaker ha- 
rangued his public in roughly the following manner: 

“Men of Old England! Awake, rise from your slumbers, or be for ever fallen! 
Oppose the Government, the ‘send-us-to-Church’ Bill, every succeeding Sunday, as 
you have done today. [...] Don’t fear to demand your just rights [...] but throw off the 
shackles of oligarchical oppression and misrule. If you do not [...] you will be 
irretrievably oppressed and ruined. Is it not a pity that the inhabitants of this great 
metropolis— the greatest in the civilised world—should have their liberties placed in 
the hands of my Lord Robert Grosvenor or such a man as Lord Ebrington? His 
Lordship wants to drive us to church and make us religious by act of Parliament; but it 
won't do [...]. What are we, and what are they! Look at the present war; is it not carried 
on at the expense and the sacrifice of blood of the productive classes?’ And what are 
the unproductive classes doing? They are bungling it.”* 

The speaker and the meeting were of course interrupted by the 
police. 

At Greenwich, near the observatory, Londoners held a similar 
meeting attended by 10,000-15,000 people. It was also cut short by 
the police: