The Riot at Stockport: The Cottages, Rock-Row, Carr-green

The Cottages, Rock-Row, Carr-green. Source: The Illustrated London News (1852) [Click on image to enlarge it.]

Section of article accompanying the illustration

This brings us to The Cottages, Rock-Row, Carr-green, the scene of the first of the three chief outrages on property. Carr-green ia a narrow, steep street, which extends from near the railway viaduct, under Wellington Bridge, and ascending to St. Peter’s-square; Chestergate being to the left, on a lower level, and there being between them a communication by means of a flight of steps. Rock-row is the name given to the higher part of Carr-green, and tbe great majority of the inhabitants are Irish catholics, who work as general labourers, stone-breakers, or at present in harvesting operations. Commencing at the top of Rock-row (on the left side descending the hill), the windows of the first boose were smashed by volleys of stones; subsequently tbe door was broken in, and every article of furniture was taken into the road and demolished. In the next house Michael Moran, the man who died at tbe station-house, and who had been previously knocked down and severely wounded on the head, was taking shelter on a bed in an upper room, when the mob rushed in and smashed the furniture, &tc., and the interior of the house is a wreck. The adjoining bouse was entered through the lower window, the frame of which was entirely smashed; the door resisted all the attempts to break it open; but it is almost covered with deep indentations, caused by a hammers head, or some other iron instrument.

All the furniture was taken out of the next house and destroyed. Michael Tally. a widower, with two sons and two daughters, were in an adjoining house with some of their neighbours. After the windows and doors had been smashed, Tally was seized and dragged into the street; he escaped severe injory, as did also his children, but his furniture was utterly destroyed. Opposite is a small hovel, of two rooms, in which were a woman and her four children, with two or three neighbours. After the windows had been smashed, some of the mob scrambled upon the roof, which they very nearly stripped off—the furniture they took out and broke — and some man made an unsuccessful attempt to set fire to the wood-work in the lower storey. The inmates escaped uninjured.

In Jacob’s Ladder-yard, at the back of the houses facing Carr-green, bricks ware taken out of the walls to enable the rioters to get into the houses, but others, more eager for destruction, climbed the roof, which they smashed in, as alao the ceiling underneath. In one house, a man and his wife, with their infant child, were in bed, and were covered by the rubbish and slates which fell; but as noon as the mob succeeded in getting into the room, the man jumped out of the window, with his child in his arms, and then getting through the lower window, be contrived to get to the basement storey fronting Carr-green. All the furniture throughout the building was destroyed. After the mob had retired. the wife was got ont of the wreck of the upper rooms, nearly dead with fright and suffocation.

Bibliography

The Riot at Stockport” The Illustrated London News 21 (10 July 1852): 2922-30. Hathi Trust Digital Library version of a copy in the University of Michigan Library. Web. 17 December 2015. The text above to which paragraph has been added for ease of reading was created from the web version with ABBYY FineReader. — George P. Landow

Illustrated
London News

Last modified 17 December 2015