At Home: A Short History of Private Life

by Bill Bryson

In London, matters came to a head in 1848 when the Chartists announced a mass rally on Kennington Common, south of the Thames. The fear was that they would work themselves into a froth of indignation, swarm over Westminster Bridge, and seize Parliament. Government buildings throughout the city were fortified in readiness. Lord Palmerston, the foreign secretary, blocked the windows of the Foreign Office with bound volumes of the Times. At the British Museum men were stationed on the roof with a supply of bricks to rain down on the heads of anyone who tried to take the building. Cannons were placed outside the Bank of England, and employees at a range of state institutions were issued with swords and ancient, doubtfully maintained muskets, many of them at least as dangerous to their users as to anyone bold enough to step in front of them. Standing by were 170,000 special constables—mostly rich men and their servants—under the command of the doddering Duke of Wellington, now seventy-nine years old and deaf to anything less noisy than an extremely robust shout.