On April 10 a great crowd assembled on the open space of rough grass then known as Kennington Common. No attempt was made to stop the bands of Chartist processionists who marched from all parts of London to the rendezvous. Soon the Chartists were there in force, and with them were many adventurous spirits, attracted by curiosity or love of excitement. But the alarm as to what might happen was so real and widespread that the assembly was far smaller than the organisers of the demonstration expected. While O'Connor boasted of a gathering of half a million, more impartial observers estimated the crowd as something in the neighbourhood of 20,000. O'Connor drove up in a cab, and was ordered by the chief commissioner of police, Mr. Richard Mayne, to come and speak to him. He looked pale and frightened, and was profuse in thanks and apologies when Mayne told him that the meeting would not be stopped but that no procession would be allowed to cross the bridges over the Thames. He then harangued the assembly, advising it to disperse. The leader was followed by Jones, Harney, and other popular orators. Small as the mob was, it consisted of spectators quite as much as sympathisers. It listened good-humouredly to the speeches and scattered quietly after they were over.[1] The processionists, however, were no longer allowed to cross the bridges in force, and a few heads were broken before they accepted the inevitable and made their way home in small detached groups. Meanwhile O'Connor had driven to the Home Office, where he reported to the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, that the danger was over, and repeated the thanks and assurances that he had already made to the commissioner. The Petition duly reached Parliament in three cabs, and the day of terror ended in the shouts of laughter that greeted its arrival in the House of Commons. Meanwhile similar precautions had been attended with similar results in the other great centres where Chartist violence had been expected. When April 10 dawned in Manchester, cannon were found planted in the streets, and dragoons patrolled the chief thoroughfares with drawn swords. Thousands of miners and factory hands marched out from Oldham, Ashton, and the other manufacturing towns to the east, and many of them bore pikes and other implements of war. As they approached
- ↑ A letter of Lord John Russell to the Queen, dated 2 p.m., giving a useful summary of the events of the morning, is in Letters of Queen Victoria, ii. 168-9. There is a coloured but very accurate account in Annual Register, xc. ii. 50-54 (1848).
