Some 100,000 people were said to have watched Thistlewood, Brunt, Ings, Tidd, and Davidson die.Soldiers controlled them. It’s an open question which of the spectators were the more ‘barbaric’ – the plebeian crowd, the aristocrats attending the condemned with the sheriffs, or the gentlefolk who rented windows overlooking the scaffold. It was the plebeian crowd, not the polite, that shouted in protest as the five were hanged and decapitated. The men’s behaviour was closely watched and reported. The era’s alleged capacity for a refined sensibility was not widely evident among the polite people. Only radical London seethed with anger and resentment, until the Queen Caroline affair provided it with a new target.