ABSTRACT
In 1789, the Continent showed the early signs of upheaval. An alarm had been sounded. But, in England, Rev. Samuel Parr wrote of the mayhem at the hands of the “bunting, beggarly, brass-making, brazen-faced, brazenhearted, blackguard, booby Birmingham mob” that could easily arise. Such was then an expectation of workers quick to riot. His comment was only published much later, but written with a common sense of the mob, after much opportunity to reflect on what could too easily be induced by a pamphlet or sermon. Privately, in Birmingham, the industrialists Boulton and Watt also remarked that “Any appeal to the labouring part of the people is always to be dreaded.”1 The flames of the summer of 1791 consumed the library, the laboratory, and the notes of the many experimental trials of the celebrated natural philosopher, chemist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley. Over several days, the rampage engulfed the homes, the businesses and chapels of those presumed hostile to Church and King.2 In an age where riot could break an engine or shake a throne, plenty still had cause for worry. Yet, the Priestley riot was not so unusual, except for its illustrious target. As in many towns throughout the entire century, mobs emerged when the atmosphere was already combustible from a mix of economic, political, and religious tensions. In addition to Edmund Burke a year before, others had seen it coming. In the 1790s, it took little to light British tinder. For those who viewed Birmingham from a distance, who once inclined to hope in the fall of the Bastille exactly two years earlier, there was a frightening parallel to be drawn with French mobs let loose across the Channel. Since 1789 not a few had hailed a rising republicanism, or even before in an earlier adventure in America, ever since acclaimed by some and reviled by others.3
