print;
broadside
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.4406
- Title
- Object: The Scotch Victory
- Description
-
Broadside describing how William Allen was killed by soldiers on 10 May 1768 during the riots concerning John Wilkes imprisonment. An etching shows the scene in a barn where Allen is shot by a grenadier, an officer points to the young man with a sword and another soldier raises his gun; on the back wall of the barn are chalked a gallows with a hanging man and the number '45'. The image is treated as a picture supported by figures of Time, holding a scroll with the date, and Death wearing a Scotch bonnet; above the top of the picture a raised funereal veil reveals a skull; at lower right, is a coiled snake biting an apple (a reference to Eve's sin). The title is engraved above, and below a dedicaation to ""his Most Sacred Majesty George the Third the Father of his People". Letterpress below: inscriptions on four sides of Allen's tomb in the churchyard of St Mary, Newington, Surrey, and a further memorial to Allen's sister who died on 7 December 1768; an elegy in nineteen verses including one holding government ministers responsible for the death ("Twas G[rafto]n plann'd the horrors of that day;/'Twas W[eymout]h urg'd th'enforcing his commands; / Twas B[arringto]n that gave th'exciting pay, / The price of blood flow'd thro' his guilty hands."); a letter "To the Public" from William Allen, father of the dead youth, describing how his son had been a mere bystander at the riot, and "Observations" describing how the government had paid for the defence of a Scottish soldier (Maclane) accused of Allen's murder and how another soldier (Maclaughlin) confessed but then absconded. 1768/69
Etching and letterpress
- Production date
- 1768
- Dimensions
-
Height: 230 millimetres (etching)
-
Height: 530 millimetres (printed area)
-
Width: 354 millimetres (etching)
-
Width: 361 millimetres (printed area)
- Curator's comments
- The monument of William Allen was described in 1792 as following:
"The church-yard was enlarged by act of parliament 29 Geo. II. The most conspicuous monument there is that of William Allen, who was killed by the soldiers in St. George's Fields in the year 1768. The inscription asserts that he was "inhumanly murdered on the 10th of May by Scottish detachments from the army." There are also some verses and texts of scripture, which seem to be applied with a very unjustifiable spirit of rancour, as an excuse for which it must be admitted that the monument was erected during the height of party rage, and in the first transports of resentment by parents who had lost an only son. The account of the riots which took place in St. George's Fields in 1768, and the circumstances of this transaction are detailed in many of the publications of that time. It appears that Allen was illegally killed, whether he was concerned in the riots or not, as he was shot apart from the mob at a time when he might, if necessary, have been apprehended and brought to justice. The acquittal of the soldier who was tried for his murder, made a great clamour at the time, though it appears that the weight of evidence preponderated much in his favour, and proved to the satisfaction of the jury that he was not the person who fired the gun."
From: 'Newington Butts', The Environs of London: volume 1: County of Surrey (1792), pp. 389-398. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45386.
Date accessed: 17 January 2008.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.4406
