The Army and the Crowd in Mid-Georgian England

"Mob violence and crime were recurring features of eighteenth-century English life. Food prices, turnpikes, elections, gin, Jews, Methodists, executions, fairs, poor theatrical performances--all were capable of producing riots which astonished foreigners and seriously alarmed the authorities. Social historians two generations ago included the phenomenon in their works without much analysis, as part of the rich variety of Georgian life. In more recent times valuable work has been done on the composition of mobs and the causes of disorder. This book is concerned with the task of suppression rather than with the causes of riots, a task which, in an age of only rudimentary policing, had to fall largely on the army"--Jacket, p. [2].