But a ‘popular cry’ is not a riot, it’s just a fancy way of saying people were pissed off and having a bit of a grumble about change (in Britain? Surely not?) Roy Porter, in English Society in the Eighteenth Century, says people might have quite reasonably feared a loss of wages, but...
...where Gerald Whitrow, author of Time in History, got this from is anybody’s guess. Moaning about Catholics, yes; actual riots and deaths? Complete balls
In the words of historian Robert Poole, there is, in theory, “no better illustration of the collective idiocy of the crowd”, but unfortunately, “The riots, like the Snark, are universally known but defy detection”
It’s fun to imagine people so stupid they’d riot over that, and, yes: some people are indeed stupid, and will commit acts of civil disobedience over things they don’t understand [gestures at modern Britain], but this story? Nope. Sorry
If you’re interested in Hogarth, by the way, here’s a curator at the Soane Museum taking you through one of the paintings in the series
If you’re not, how about a delve into the life of a geezer so fucking enormous he won’t fit into the preview image? Peter Freuchen, anthropologist, arctic explorer, WWII resistance fighter, quiz show contestant, friend of Mae West, and maker of tools from frozen excrement, died #OTD in 1957
Footnote!
Another footnote (a rare work by Thomas Hardy in which no unfortunate young women are ruined and no one dies horribly)