Report of Nash Grose on a collective petition (12 trial jurors) on behalf of John...

Report of Nash Grose on a collective petition (12 trial jurors) on behalf of John Hartland and James Maxey convicted at the Surrey Lent Assizes in 1796, for rioting at the Obelisk, St. George's Fields, Southwark, and demolishing the tavern house, property of Thomas Lowthorpe, keeper of the Royal George Tavern, on 14 July 1795 [1796?]. The Light Horse Guards had been called in to quell the riot. Evidences supplied by Thomas Williamson, of 'Johnsons Buildingsg near the Obelisk'; George Ware Thomas Lowthorpe, Rachel Solomon, George Edwards, keeper of the Circus Coffee House; Richard Smith, shopman to Mr Nickless a pastry cook; John Curtis, tailor; Duncan Campbell, painter; Richard Humphreys, son of Mrs Humphreys of the Circus Tap; George Wye, waiter; Abraham Frith, constable; Charles Craig, Surveyor to the Board of Works; William Bacon, 'Patroll' from Bow Street; Joseph Forrest, carpenter; Joseph Wright, nephew to Lowthorpe and William Ball, blacksmith and extra constable. Other rioters charged were Thomas Williams, aged 16, and William Webb, aged 14; both found not guilty. Rioters gathered all day outside Lowthorpe's house throwing stones and breaking the door down with a tree, burning the contents of the bar and pulling down walls and breaking windows. Lowthorpe was in hiding in Rachel Soloman's house opposite; a report having been issued accusing him of keeping people chained in the house. Grounds for clemency: that Hartland wore different clothes to the man identified as tearing down the tree, that he was in the Circus Tap all evening and was so amazingly drunk that he was incapable of being involved in the riot, that their role in the riot was as a result of too much drink not disaffection to the Crown and the constitution, that they are not members of 'certain Societies' [radical societies]. Initial sentence: death. Recommendation: hesitates to recommend mercy [really addresses the case of Maxey in his recommendation]. Folios 159-167.