ANNIVERSARIES
A reactionary mob vents its anger at the home of a natural philosopher
On11 July 1791, an advert appeared in a Birmingham newspaper. The second anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was fast approaching and local radicals were keen to celebrate. So in three days’ time there would be a public banquet “to commemorate the auspicious day which witnessed the emancipation of 26 millions of people from the yoke of despotism, and restored the blessings of equal government to a truly great and enlightened nation”.
But when, on the afternoon of 14 July, local dissenters began arriving at the Royal Hotel for the dinner, they found an angry crowd waiting for them. Fears of unrest were running high, and among Birmingham’s artisan classes there were plenty of people who viewed support for the French Revolution as dangerously seditious.
By the evening, the atmosphere had taken a turn for the worse and the guests made their getaway. Protesters attacked the hotel and then, their passions raised, moved on to burn local nonconformist meeting houses. The evening’s entertainment ended with an attack on the home of the natural philosopher, chemist and free-thinker, Joseph Priestley.
Although Priestley and his wife managed to get away, they “distinctly heard all that passed at the house, every shout of the mob, and almost every stroke of the instruments they had provided for breaking the doors and the furniture”. Priestley’s library was destroyed, his manuscripts were burned and even his scientific equipment fell victim to the mob. What, he wrote afterwards, were “the horrors of the late demolished Bastille, compared to this?”