I am delighted to welcome back a regular guest, Elaine Thornton to All Things Georgian to tell us an interesting story I hadn't come across before: In the early afternoon of 1 December 1804 groups of excited people began to gather outside London’s Covent Garden theatre. When the doors finally opened, a huge crowd stampeded into the auditorium, fighting for seats. The scene quickly descended into chaos: several hundred spectators jumped down from the packed lower boxes into the pit, adding to the crush in front of the stage. The situation became so serious, with audience members in danger of injury or suffocation and unable to escape, that the military were called in to restore order before the play could begin.

To find out more, Simon’s full-length paper ‘From ‘People’s Champions’ to ‘Tribunes of the People’: popular politicians in Parliament, c. 1810 to 1867’ is