One summer evening in 1808, while on a stroll through London with his wife and sister-in-law, sailor Thomas Urquhart was accosted by a stranger who wanted to know his name. As the outraged Urquhart demanded to know by what right the man questioned him, three or four men seized him, smacked him on the head, and dragged him along the street. They ‘tore my coat from my back, and afterwards [pulled] me by the neck for fifty yards, until life was nearly exhausted,’ wrote Urquhart in a letter that described the assault.
展开▼
