Posted: Tue 14 Aug, 2012 12:47 pm
The following Leeds related reports are from John Mayhall's 'Annals of Yorkshire':-August 14 1844. “The Leeds Town Council authorized the Scavenging Committee to contract with the patentees of the street-sweeping machine, for the supply of one cart, for sweeping the streets”.August 14 1870. “Two policemen were most brutally ill-treated by a mob this afternoon, whilst on duty in the district of the Bank, Leeds. The officers had repeatedly ordered some persons to keep the pavement clear, and these individuals thereupon joined in an attack upon the officers, assisted by many others. Jostled, beaten, and driven about, the policemen were eventually forced into a house in Wheeler Street, where they were kicked and belaboured with pokers most mercilessly. They were at length rescued by a detachment of police sent from Duke Street Station. Both were insensible when taken to the Infirmary. Whilst the disturbance was in progress some thousands of persons assembled in the adjoining streets, attracted by a strange rumour that Orange and Roman Catholic mobs had come to blows about the war between France and Prussia”.August 14 1873. “A fire was discovered shortly before seven o’clock this morning in the lamp room of the Leeds Borough Police Station, which was in a part of the basement of the Town Hall. The stock of lamps, and nearly the whole of the books in the police library, which consisted of about 600 volumes, were destroyed before the fire was extinguished”.Wheeler Street was on either side of Richmond Road near Mill Street off Marsh Lane. It was still named on a 1921 map I’ve seen in the Old-Maps UK website but is not on a 1964/68 map, but I don’t know when it was demolished. Shame about the fire, as we may never know what historical records were lost.