to assemble for deliberation in Witton Road (just outside the Park), after which ‘let all who can get admittance attend the Tory meetings, wear the Gladstone badge, and show you are not ashamed of your colours.’ In order that nothing should interfere with the discharge of these civic duties, Tangye’s and other large works in the city closed for the afternoon. The day arrived. The weather was suitable to outdoor political debate. The holders of tickets--forged or genuine--assembled by road and rail from all parts of the Midlands. The Aston grounds were soon crowded with demonstrators. Outside, the counter-demonstration, made up of three large processions, estimated at 15,000 strong, converged upon a waste plot of land hard by the Park wall. Individuals began to climb over but were stopped by broken glass. Earnest hands seized the ladders which stood there by chance and the broken glass was demolished. A waggon which had served as the platform was dragged towards the wall; and by this, by the ladders, and also, it appears, by a convenient tree, many persons swarmed over. Inside they found a single policeman, who could do nothing to gainsay them, and a tool-house containing a number of planks. By using the planks as battering-rams a breach was made in the wall and thousands of excited people poured through it into the Park to join by force their friends who had entered by fraud. The open-air meetings were broken up by riot. Stones, potatoes, and even chairs were flung at the members of Parliament who attempted to address the crowd. The platform of the great hall was stormed. Sir Stafford Northcote, who showed much pluck throughout these turbulent experiences which his physical condition ill fitted him to endure, and Lord Randolph Churchill were overwhelmed by furious clamour and finally driven from the hall in the midst of a battle royal of sticks and chair-legs. Lord Randolph, not following promptly enough, was picked up and carried away bodily by a burly admirer from Wolverhampton. The crowd at first followed at a walk and afterwards at a run, and so menacing and dangerous was their temper that Sir Stafford Northcote was dragged along by his guards at full speed and even so narrowly avoided capture. Other members of Parliament had rougher experiences and Mr. Darling[26] was lucky to make an escape from a window before the door of the room in which he had taken refuge was battered down. The platform of the Skating Rink collapsed while a free-fight was raging upon it. The fireworks perished ignominiously in broad daylight; the set-piece of Sir Stafford Northcote being received with storms of groans and fired off, by a refinement of cruelty, _upside down_. Such were the Aston riots. No persons were actually killed in them, but not a few were seriously injured, and hundreds carried away scars and bruises from the fray.