3-021-661 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Riot at Mold, Flintshire: attack on the soldiers at the railway station, 1869. 'A mob of rioters, excited by the dispute between the proprietors of the Leeswood Coal Company and the colliers in their employment, beset the County Hall...the magistrates had sent for military aid...the police brought their two prisoners out of the County Hall, but were pelted with stones... From both sides stones were thrown in volleys by the mob, which numbered not fewer than 2000 men, women, and boys. The women picked up large pebbles in their aprons...Inspector Hughes had fallen bleeding to the ground...The rioters then assailed the [telegraph-office] with stones, to the imminent danger of the soldiers and police inside...The Riot Act had not been read, and the rioters seemed to be proceeding with impunity...the soldiers [commenced]...firing over the people's heads...but as this did not stop the throwing of stones, the soldiers had to use their Sniders in terrible earnest, and four or five of the rioters were killed, two of them being women...[An inquest found] that the rioters Younghusband, Bellis, and Hannaby "met with their deaths through justifiable homicide, caused by the crowd making a reckless and outrageous attack upon her Majesty's soldiers...".' From "Illustrated London News", 1869.