Note 340 — Chapter XX · Prosperity of Soho—Young Boulton and Watt—The Riots—William Murdock.

“At midnight,” says Hutton, “I could see from my house the flames of Bordesley Hall rise with dreadful aspect. I learned that after I quitted Birmingham the mob attacked my house there three times. My son bought them off repeatedly; but in the fourth, which began about nine at night, they laboured till eight the next morning, when they had so completely ravaged my dwelling that I write this narrative in a house without furniture, without roof, door, chimneypiece, window, or window-frame.”—‘The Life of William Hutton,’ written by himself. London, 1816.