When darkness broke away and morning began to dawn, the town wore astrange aspect indeed.
Sleep had hardly been thought of all night. The general alarm wasso apparent in the faces of the inhabitants, and its expression wasso aggravated by want of rest (few persons, with any property tolose, having dared go to bed since Monday), that a stranger cominginto the streets would have supposed some mortal pest or plague tohave been raging. In place of the usual cheerfulness and animationof morning, everything was dead and silent. The shops remainedclosed, offices and warehouses were shut, the coach and chairstands were deserted, no carts or waggons rumbled through theslowly waking streets, the early cries were all hushed; a universalgloom prevailed. Great numbers of people were out, even atdaybreak, but they flitted to and fro as though they shrank from the sound of their own footsteps; the public ways were hauntedrather than frequented; and round the smoking ruins people stoodapart from one another and in silence, not venturing to condemnthe rioters, or to be supposed to do so, even in whispers.
At the Lord President"s in Piccadilly, at Lambeth Palace, at theLord Chancellor"s in Great Ormond Street, in the Royal Exchange,the Bank, the Guildhall, the Inns of Court, the Courts of Law, andevery chamber fronting the streets near Westminster Hall and theHouses of Parliament, parties of soldiers were posted beforedaylight. A body of Horse Guards paraded Palace Yard; anencampment was formed in the Park, where fifteen hundred men andfive battalions of Militia were under arms; the Tower wasfortified, the drawbridges were raised, the cannon loaded andpointed, and two regiments of artillery busied in strengthening thefortress and preparing it for defence. A numerous detachment ofsoldiers were stationed to keep guard at the New River Head, whichthe people had threatened to attack, and where, it was said, theymeant to cut off the main-pipes, so that there might be no waterfor the extinction of the flames. In the Poultry, and on Cornhill,and at several other leading points, iron chains were drawn acrossthe street; parties of soldiers were distributed in some of the oldcity churches while it was yet dark; and in several private houses (among them, Lord Rockingham"s in Grosvenor Square); which wereblockaded as though to sustain a siege, and had guns pointed fromthe windows. When the sun rose, it shone into handsome apartmentsfilled with armed men; the furniture hastily heaped away incorners, and made of little or no account, in the terror of thetime--on arms glittering in city chambers, among desks and stools,and dusty books--into little smoky churchyards in odd lanes and byways,with soldiers lying down among the tombs, or lounging underthe shade of the one old tree, and their pile of muskets sparklingin the light--on solitary sentries pacing up and down incourtyards, silent now, but yesterday resounding with the din andhum of business--everywhere on guard-rooms, garrisons, andthreatening preparations.
As the day crept on, still more unusual sights were witnessed inthe streets. The gates of the King"s Bench and Fleet Prisonsbeing opened at the usual hour, were found to have notices affixedto them, announcing that the rioters would come that night to burnthem down. The wardens, too well knowing the likelihood there wasof this promise being fulfilled, were fain to set their prisonersat liberty, and give them leave to move their goods; so, all day,such of them as had any furniture were occupied in conveying it,some to this place, some to that, and not a few to the brokers"
shops, where they gladly sold it, for any wretched price thosegentry chose to give. There were some broken men among thesedebtors who had been in jail so long, and were so miserable anddestitute of friends, so dead to the world, and utterly forgottenand uncared for, that they implored their jailers not to set themfree, and to send them, if need were, to some other place ofcustody. But they, refusing to comply, lest they should incur theanger of the mob, turned them into the streets, where they wanderedup and down hardly remembering the ways untrodden by their feet solong, and crying--such abject things those rotten-hearted jails hadmade them--as they slunk off in their rags, and dragged theirslipshod feet along the pavement.
Even of the three hundred prisoners who had escaped from Newgate,there were some--a few, but there were some--who sought theirjailers out and delivered themselves up: preferring imprisonmentand punishment to the horrors of such another night as the last.
Many of the convicts, drawn back to their old place of captivity bysome indescribable attraction, or by a desire to exult over it inits downfall and glut their revenge by seeing it in ashes, actuallywent back in broad noon, and loitered about the cells. Fifty wereretaken at one time on this next day, within the prison walls; buttheir fate did not deter others, for there they went in spite of everything, and there they were taken in twos and threes, twice orthrice a day, all through the week. Of the fifty just mentioned,some were occupied in endeavouring to rekindle the fire; but ingeneral they seemed to have no object in view but to prowl andlounge about the old place: being often found asleep in the ruins,or sitting talking there, or even eating and drinking, as in achoice retreat.
