Sanguinary New Year disorder occurred on the night of 31 December 1811 and the early morning of 1 January 1812.
According to W.M. Gilbert (1901: 55), Edinburgh 'was disgraced by a series of riots, outrages, and robberies hitherto without example. After eleven o'clock at night the principal streets were taken possession of by bands of rough young men and boys from the lower parts of the town, armed with bludgeons, who assaulted, and for the time overcame the police, and knocked down and robbed of their money, watches, and hats many respectable inhabitants. Dugald Campbell, a policeman, and James Campbell, a clerk, died of the wounds received on the occasion, and two rewards of one hundred guineas each were offered for the discovery of the murderers. A number of youths were arrested, and three tried at the the High Court on the 20th March, viz Hugh M'Donald, Hugh M'Intosh, and Neil Sutherland were convicted for being art and part in the murders and of robbery, and were executed on the 22nd April on a gibbet and scaffold erected opposite the Stamp Office Close, High Street, where the policeman had been killed. The three youths were all under eighteen years of age. The execution, which created a tremendous sensation in the city, having been intended as a dreadful example to the disorderly apprentices and boys of the city for years to come, everything about it, including a procession from the Tolbooth to the scaffold, was studiously contrived to impart solemnity to the scene. Such a concourse of people as witnessed this execution had never, it is said, been seen before in the streets of Edinburgh.'
How successfully this message was imparted may be judged by the fact that three years later, on 5 June 1815, another riot occurred on the High Street. Police were pelted with stones and driven into the police office. Sergeant George Hone later died of his injuries.
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'Bickers' was the name given mostly to Town v. Gown riots centred around Old College. Often starting as good-natured snowball fights, they regularly turned ugly with apprentices stoning students, students stoning teachers, and teachers and students stoning appentices. A university education was hardly considered complete unless one had been bloodied in one of these confrontations. The disorder of 1838 was particularly serious, with several young gentlemen afterwards standing trial for destruction of property. A street song of the time ran:
Hurrah for the College
That old seat of knowledge
Where science and frolic agree,
With kicks and with stones
We may break a few bones,
But we'll mend them all after the spree.
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1848 was the year of revolutions in Europe, with governments and monarchies toppling left, right and centre. In Britain, Chartist agitators were demanding universal suffrage, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, payment of MPs, abolition of the property qualification for voting, and equal electoral districts.
With the genial dismissiveness of an old-fashioned Conservative, James Bland Sutherland later recalled that 'The time, however, was scarcely ripe for the introduction of all these measures at once, and the leaders of the agitation, with that impatience which characterises even honest effort at reform, and often fails to take account of conditions which the statesmen cannot with their responsibilities disregard, demanded immediate changes which the general mass were not yet in a fit condition wisely to enjoy' (1903: 131–2).
Frustration led to rioting in the Spring. Serious disorder occurred on 7 and 8 March, and on 3 April the forces of order were so stretched that special constables were sworn in. The 16-year-old Sutherland – wearing a top hat to make himself look older – was one of their number and found himself standing with infantry militia at the foot of Hanover Street. A 'terrible mob' which had formed in the High Street was being driven by cavalry down the Mound, smashing street lamps and breaking windows in Princes Street when they arrived. Their fury was vented in particular upon the North Britiish Insurance Office at No. 64.
Armed with long batons, the special constables strove to split the crowd in two, east and west, keeping it from entering the New Town and dividing its strength. They were successful, although City Fathers were not confident about the success of future suppression and ordered setts from Princes Street to Heriot Row to be covered over in order to deny the mobs handy ammunition.
Further riots followed on 3 July in connection with a sale of poinded goods to pay for Annuity Tax arrears, and another large Chartist demonstration was held on Calton Hill at the end of July (reported in the Scotsman on 2 August). AM
W.M. Gilbert (1901) Edinburgh in the Nineteenth Century. (Edinburgh: J. & R. Allan Ltd)
J.B. Sutherland (1903) Random Recollections of an Old Edinburgh Citizen. (Edinburgh: James Skinner & Co.)
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See also David Ritchie's scholarly account of the anti-Catholic riot in Morningside, 1935: http://edinburgh.academia.edu/