Popular detestation of English prisons came to its climax in 1780, one of the last times when they were the direct targets of mob attack. This was during the course of the anti-Catholic Gordon riots, which took place between two Fridays, the 2nd and 9th of June, and caused more damage to London in those few days than was done to Paris in the whole course of the French Revolution.

These citadels of justice – or of oppressive state power – were not alone in coming under attack, and Catholics were not the only objects of ire. There were other grievances mingling with prejudice, as well as soft and lucrative targets aplenty. Foreign embassies and their ‘papist’ chapels suffered, as did the Irish community whose chapels, schools and houses were all vulnerable. The Bank of England, the embodiment of capital, was another potential victim. The Old Bailey was badly damaged and plans were afoot to destroy the Inns of Court. Specific agents of the law were subjected to rough justice. The house of Sir John Fielding, the magistrate who examined the first rioters arrested and whose brother, Henry, had founded the Bow Street Runners, was besieged, as was that of the Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, whose singular lack of anti-Catholic bigotry made him the most prominent victim of the mob. The latter's property, undefended by the troops nearby, was completely destroyed and with it his vast and irreplaceable legal library. It was ‘a martyrdom’.

Prisons proved an irresistible magnet, incarnating popular disquiet. Newgate, the Fleet, Marshalsea, both compters, the King's Bench prison, New Prison, the Clink and the Tothill Fields bridewell in Westminster were all ‘liberated’ and several were destroyed. Such were the fruits of popular detestation. Newgate was top of the list, the most hated of all, the elaborate ornamentation of its facade mocking the squalor within, the use of leg-irons as a decorative motif on the windows being an abiding provocation.