The general turbulence often broke out into open disturbance. The Riot Act, which was a product of these times, was not passed before it was needed. Riots were frequent in town and country. The mob was easily roused, as when it broke open the house of the Provost Marshal Tooley in Holborn, to whom they owed a grudge for impressing men to sell as recruits to Flanders. They burned his furniture in the street, and many persons were killed and wounded in the affray. Now political parties, inflamed with rancorous spirit, created uproars in the "mug houses;" now mutinous soldiers violently protested against the coarse linen of their "Hanover" shirts; again the idle flunkies at a London theatre rose in revolt against new rules introduced by the management and produced a serious riot. In the country gangs of ruffians disguised in female attire, the forerunners of Rebecca and her daughter, ran amuck against turnpike gates, demolishing all they found. There were smuggling riots, when armed crowds overpowered the customs officers and broke into warehouses sealed by the Crown; corn riots at periods of scarcity, when private granaries were forced and pillaged. A still worse crime prevailed—that of arson. I find in "Hardwicke's Life," reference to a proclamation offering a reward for the detection of those who sent threatening letters "to diverse persons in the citys of London, Westminster, Bristol, and Exeter, requiring them to deposit certain sums of money in particular places, and threatening to set fire to their houses, and to burn and destroy them and their families in case of refusal, some of which threats have accordingly been carried into execution." Other threats were to murder unless a good sum was at once paid down. Thus Jepthah Big was tried in 1729 for writing two letters, demanding in one eighty-five guineas, in the other one hundred guineas from Nathaniel Newnham, "a fearful old man," and threatening to murder both himself and wife unless he got the money. Jepthah Big was found guilty and sentenced to death.