TALES FROM THE ILLUSTRATED POLICE NEWS
No 55. The Lincolnshire Yeomanry Outrage
The Queen’s Own Royal Staffordshire Yeomanry was one of several volunteer regiments raised in 1794 to repel foreign invasion. As we know, Napoleon never carried out a full-scale invasion of Britain, but the Staffordshire Yeomanry remained for many decades to come: a volunteer cavalry regiment run according to archaic and feudal standards by the local nobility and gentry.
In June 1884, the Staffordshire Yeomanry went to Lichfield for its summer meeting, led by their Colonel, the wealthy magnate William Bromley-Davenport, MP. He was 63 years old and had never seen active military service in his life, but was still popular and respected, and known as the ‘Father of the Regiment’ for his long service. The Marquis of Anglesey was the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Staffordshire Yeomanry, and the Marquis of Stafford, Sir CM Wolseley, and other members of the aristocracy and gentry served as officers. The problem was that these officers had little authority over the men, some of whom were irresponsible youngsters of a giddy and mischief-loving disposition.
There was instant dislike between the Lichfield townsmen and the Yeomanry. The soldiers were rude and insulting, and the local police had no authority over them. Discipline was non-existent, and the troops were up to all kinds of mischief in town. When a party of officers attended a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Queen Ida by Mr d’Oiley Carte’s theatrical ensemble, they behaved very obnoxiously, shouting and yahooing, and ‘improving’ the play with various coarse jokes. When the theatrical manager objected to this outrage, two of the officers frog-marched him to an upstairs room and locked him in. The officers then charged the stage, putting ‘Queen Ida’ and her fellow thespians to
JAN BONDESON presents more sensational stories and startling Victorian images from the "worst newspaper in England "– the Illustrated Police News.
headlong flight.
In the meantime, troops of soldiers from the Staffordshire Yeomanry made their presence felt in Lichfield, drinking and carousing. Several public houses had extended their opening hours to accommodate the soldiery, and the unwisdom of this soon became apparent. Fights broke out, and one soldier leapt onto a cart, pulled the driver’s hat down over his eyes, and shoved him off the box. The soldiers then cut one of the horses loose, and one of them rode off on it. Another soldier, who had been knocked down by one of the enraged locals, was arrested by a party of police constables, but the other troopers charged the police and liberated their comrade in arms. Several constables were knocked down, and had their trousers pulled off. The young officers who had just put an end to the performance of Queen Ida had an even better idea, however: would it not be capital fun to deface the statue of Lichfield’s most famous son, Dr
Samuel Johnson?
The statue of the great lexicographer at Market Square in Lichfield had been erected in 1838, on a tall plinth with railings to protect it from vandals. But the officers got hold of a long ladder and a large bottle of ‘Nubian Black’, which they made use of to blacken Dr Johnson’s face. Major Graves had alerted Colonel Bromley-Davenport to his officers and soldiers running riot in town, and the elderly officer came up to plead with the soldiers to return to their makeshift barracks. They did not obey him, however, and the major shortly after saw the hapless colonel lurch off towards Yeomanry House; on his way there, he dropped dead in the street.
There was consternation among both the military and civilian inhabitants of Lichfield at Colonel Bromley-Davenport’s unexpected demise. At first, it was thought that one of the enraged locals had murdered him, but Major Graves had seen no other person nearby, and the colonel had been unwell with heart disease for some time. At the inquest, a verdict of death from natural causes was returned. The verdict of the press on the Lichfield Yeomanry Outrages was a more severe one, however. In spite of acrid soaps and bristly brushes being applied to Dr Johnson’s face, the application of ‘Nubian Black’ was still obvious. One of the police constables had himself had his face daubed with blacking, and several others had been assaulted and debagged. Windows had been broken, and innocent townsmen beaten up. What kind of soldiers were these coarse brutes, and what about the officers who had actually led the assault on Dr Johnson? They ought to be drummed out of the regiment! Other newspaper editors called for the entire regiment to be disbanded, and claimed that the Marquess of Anglesey, who had taken command after the untimely death of his superior officer, had deliberately misled the journalists about the extent of the rioting.
But in the end, the officers and men of the Staffordshire Yeomanry appear to have got off more or less scot-free. This lenience did not have the desired effect: when the regiment met in Lichfield in June 1885, there were again fights with the police: windows were broken, and Dr Johnson’s face daubed with blacking a second time! But just as the great man’s face was eventually cleaned up by the locals, the equally black stain on the reputation of the Staffordshire Yeomanry was removed by the regiment’s valiant wartime conduct. The Staffordshire Yeomanry did well in both World Wars, equipped with horses in the first and tanks in the second. The regiment was amalgamated with another yeomanry unit in 1992, and no longer exists. In contrast, Dr Johnson’s statue still stands in Lichfield, proving that in the end, the pen is mightier than the sword.