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Illustrated Episode · Volume III, chapter 40 · 10 May 1768

Fired on for crying Liberty

Before a high brick prison wall, a double rank of redcoated soldiers fires in thick white smoke while a magistrate in a wig flings out an arm, and a packed crowd in the foreground recoils with raised hands and hats.
St. George's Fields, London, 10 May 1768. After Justice Samuel Gillam reads the Riot Act, soldiers fire into a crowd of twenty thousand or more that is crying "Wilkes and Liberty" outside John Wilkes's prison, and five or six people die. Rothbard calls the fire an act of brutality and the massacre a goad and an inspiration to the liberal movement in America. Chapter 40 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

John Wilkes came home from exile in early 1768, won the Middlesex election under the cry of "Wilkes and Liberty," and was jailed in the King's Bench Prison by Lord Mansfield. The London crowd rioted outside it for two weeks. On 10 May, the day Parliament opened, a huge crowd of twenty to forty thousand gathered in St. George's Fields in front of the prison. Wilkes's old enemy Robert Wood had persuaded the secretary of state to put a troop of infantry and cavalry in the Fields. When a poem against venal judges was pasted on the prison wall and torn down, the crowd grew angrier. Justice Samuel Gillam read the Riot Act, and the crowd answered with a volley of stones, one of which hit him. The soldiers killed William Allen, an innocent bystander, and were then ordered to fire into the crowd, killing five or six and wounding fifteen. A policeman wrote that they "seemed to enjoy their fire." Grand juries tried to indict the soldiers and did indict Gillam for wilful murder, but all were acquitted. Rothbard's point is the link: Boston's Sons of Liberty wrote to Wilkes that June, and the martyrs of St. George's Fields became a goad to liberty in America (CiL, p. 943).

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. III, ch. 40, 'Wilkes and Liberty: The Massacre of St. George's Fields', pp. 941-944. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. Past Tense, 'Today in London riotous history, 1768: the Massacre of St George's Fields' (10 May 2019; accessed 2026-09-30): about 11 a.m. magistrates learn of the unrest; Gillam and three justices; the Riot Act read twice; the stone; the order to fire; the constable's remark. Secondary source
  3. Wikipedia, 'Massacre of St George's Fields' (accessed 2026-09-30): the Horse Grenadier Guards and the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards; William Allen shot in a barn; about 15,000 gathered; six or seven dead, as many as eleven in contemporary sources, at least fifteen wounded. Secondary source
  4. Wikipedia, 'King's Bench Prison' (accessed 2026-09-30): the prison moved in 1758 to a four-acre site near St George's Fields; Wilkes imprisoned there in 1768. Secondary source
  5. Era registry entry england-1763-1768 (data/cil/registry/eras/), dress, arms and architecture for the Devon and London Episodes; its own sources are listed in its notes. Secondary source