On 10 May 1768, a crowd of about 15,000 people gathered on St George's Fields in Southwark, south London. The focus of their protest was the adjacent King's Bench Prison, where their champion, the radical MP John Wilkes, had recently been incarcerated for seditious libel.
As tensions escalated, magistrates appealed for armed support. Before long, word of a man's murder by soldiers inflamed the febrile situation. When the Riot Act was read out, projectiles rained down on the troops, prompting them to fire at the crowd. Panic surged
