re he made his way with the current
of destruction towards Newgate, and witnessed the astonishing capture
of a massive prison by a body of men, unarmed save with such rude
weapons of attack as could be hurriedly caught up. The prison was so
strong that, had a dozen men resisted, it would have been almost
impossible to take it without artillery. But there was nobody to
resist. Mr. Akerman, the keeper, acted with great courage, and did his
duty loyally, but he could not hold the place alone. Crowbars,
pickaxes, and fire forced an entrance into the prison. "Not Orpheus
himself," wrote Crabbe, "had more courage or better luck" than the
desperate assailants of the prison. They broke into the blazing
prison, they rescued their comrades, they set all the other prisoners
free. Into the street, where the summer evening was as bright as
noonday with the blazing building, the prisoners were borne in triumph.
Some of them had been condemned to death, and never were men more
bewildered than by this strange reprieve. The next day Dr. Johnson
walked, in company with Dr. Scott, to look at the place, and found the
prison in ruins, with the fire yet glowing. The stout-hearted Doctor
was loud in his scorn of "the cowardice of a commercial place," where
such deeds could be done without hinderance.

While one desperate gang was busy with the destruction of Newgate,
other gangs, no less desperate, were busy with destructive work
elsewhere. The new prison in Clerkenwell was broken open by one crowd,
and its prisoners set free. Another assailed Sir John Fielding's
house, and burned its furniture in the streets. A third attacked the
house of Lord Mansfield in Bloomsbury Square. This last enterprise was
one of the most remarkable and infamous of the bad business. Lord
Mansfield and his wife had barely time to escape from the house by a
back way before the mob were upon it. The now familiar scenes of
savage violence followed. The doors were broken open, the {204} throng
poured in, and in a comparatively short time the stately mansion was a
ruin. Lord Mansfield's law library, one of the finest in the kingdom,
and all the judicial manuscripts made by him during his long career,
were destroyed. A small detachment of soldiers came upon the scene too
late to prevent the destruction of the house or to intimidate the mob;
although, according to one account, the Riot Act was read and a couple
of volleys fired, with the result that sever