The Reform Bill was an attempt to address this system and when the first Reform Bill and subsequent second Reform Bill both failed to become law, the powder keg exploded with civil disturbances in many areas and all-out riots in Derby, Nottingham and Bristol.

​

In Derby on the evening of Saturday October 8, 1831, a crowd gathered in the Market Place eager to hear whether the second Reform Bill had been successful. At around 7pm news filtered thorough to the crowds that it had been defeated in the House of Lords.

​

As the numbers in the crowd slowly but substantially increased, one individual proposed that a mourning peal – traditionally sounded in the event of a death or funeral – should be rung with the bells of All Saints’ Church – now the Derby Cathedral. Unable to gain admittance to the church itself, the crowd advanced to the house of the Rev. C. S. Hope and demanded the keys which were duly delivered to them. Shortly after the bells of not just All Saints’, but also St. Alkmund’s and St. Peter’s, commenced ringing mourning peals.

​

By around 10pm the number of people in the Market Place had risen alarmingly and their anger began to focus on the Market Place house and shop of William Bemrose, founder of Bemrose and Sons Ltd. William had been against the Reform Bill and had gone so far as to have a petition on display at his premises and so it was that the crowd – in the words of the Derby Mercury ‘commenced an attack on the house and shop’. Missiles were thrown until every window at the front of his house had been destroyed and a Mr. Lakin – one of the constables on duty at the time – suffered a severe head injury in the melee.

​

With anger now at a fever pitch, various locations both in the town centre and further afield, found themselves under attack. The Rev. C. S. Hope’s house in St. Alkmund’s Churchyard was one of the objects of the crowd vengeance where, ‘not only the windows, but the doors, shutters and palisades were also entirely demolished’ with Markeaton Hall and Chaddesden Hall also attacked.

​

Overnight the crowd slowly dispersed, possibly to avoid detection as the dawn arose, but if the authorities thought that the worst of the protests were over, they were very much mistaken.

​

The Derby Mercury reported that by Sunday morning ‘groups of persons were to be seen in every part of the town consulting upon the probability of further outrage, or witnessing the extensive injuries already sustained’. A meeting was convened at the Town Hall for 9am where the Mayor, Magistrates and ‘respectable Inhabitants’ met to discuss plans to restore order to the town. With the general populace then admitted, demands were made to the Mayor to release three prisoners who had been arrested the previous night during the protests. When their demands were refused, they vowed to free the prisoners themselves.

​

Marching from the Town Hall en masse, the protesters then walked along Friar Gate to what was now Derby’s Borough Gaol – it had previously been the County Gaol but this was now located around the corner at the end of Vernon Street. Using a cast-iron lamppost as a battering ram, they broke open the door and liberated not just the three prisoners in question but a further twenty prisoners on top of that.

​

Emboldened by their success, the protestors then stated their intent to pull down the nearby County Gaol. The governor of the gaol was aware of what had happened around the corner and had positioned several armed men on the parapet walls in readiness for a potential attack. As the crowd of around 1,500 people advanced towards the gaol, they were warned that continuing on this course of action would result in them being fired upon, but the warnings went unheeded. Stones began to be thrown at the armed men on the parapets, and with the crowd loudly proclaiming their desire to tear the gaol down, the order was given to fire shots into the crowd. With several people also suffering from minor injuries from the volley of shots, the protest suffered its first fatality when 17-year-old John Garner was fatally wounded and died that evening of his injuries.

​

Though the town became ‘comparatively tranquil’ after this for a short period, by the time the evening came around a crowd once again started to gather in the Market Place and when the throng had again reached around 1,500 people, it moved towards the County Gaol.

​

By this point in the proceedings, part of a Troop of the 15th Hussars which had been stationed at Nottingham, had been summoned by the authorities and ‘doubtless an influence on them’, the crowd swung around suddenly to the right where they headed to Little Chester. On their arrival they unleashed their fury on the villa of a Mr. John Harrison and reduced it to a ‘mass of ruins’.

​

Up until this point, the crowds had largely confined their rage to the property of people they believed to be inimical to the reform bill, their behaviour now became indiscriminate and few houses at the top of Iron Gate, Queen Street and King Street escaped their rage. A large number of palisades were uprooted from the outside of All Saints’ Church to be used as weapons of destruction, resulting in the Hussars patrolling the streets during the night in an attempt to prevent further disorder. During one confrontation between the rioters and the soldiers, a trooper who had been struck on the chest by a stone, discharged his rifle after pursuing the man who had thrown the missile and shot his target in the thigh.

​

By the time Monday came around, the authorities had hoped that the levels of anger would have died down, but this was not the case as large numbers of people began to assemble once more.

​

The Mayor - in a conciliatory attempt to placate the crowd – distributed handbills proposing that an address should be sent to the King and set up stalls in the Market Place for people to sign it. However the crowd was unimpressed by what was considered to be such a mild response and the stalls were soon smashed to pieces.

​

With the Mayor fearful of another outbreak, the Riot Act was read and the calvary charged the crowd. At this point a carbine was discharged fatally wounding John Hicking – a resident of the town.

​

Once the crowd had been dispersed, strong measures were taken to ensure there would be no further outbreaks of violence. Special Constables patrolled the town and at midnight on Tuesday two troops of Yeomanry arrived from Leicestershire and the danger of further outbreaks disappeared.

​

The following March, a number of people were tried at the Assizes for their part in the riot. Eleven of them, including one woman, were charged with breaking into the Borough Gaol. Most of them were found not guilty although two of them were sentenced to seven years' transportation for housebreaking and robbery – one of them was only 17 years old.

The Reform Bill Riots in Derby are commemorated on Friar Gate near the site of the old Borough Gaol with a series of sculpted heads. The heads represent prisoners emerging from underground cells into the light.

​

After a period of severe social and political unrest in May 1832 – known as the Days of May - the Third Reform Bill received Royal Assent on June 7, 1832, thereby becoming law. It is thought by many that this period was one of the closest times that the United Kingdom has come to a revolution.