When the first outcry was raised by sepoys in the Sudder Bazar, and these began to rush back to their lines, the bazar within itself was and still remained quiet, but the sepoys making for the lines gathered in their trail a crowd of the lower and more disorderly castes. This was the crowd which blocked the end of the road to the bazar at the rear of the 20th N.I. lines and which could not be dispersed though forced to yield a few yards by the Christian drummers. When the 20th N.I. passed out of control, somewhere about 5.45 p.m., this mob seems to have scattered instantly, with the disorderly sepoys, through the bungalow area to the east of the native lines and to have begun to plunder the bungalows, to set them on fire and to murder Europeans and Eurasians. Of such a mob frenzy quickly takes hold and, if plunder is their first and dominant appetite, arson and murder also break out at once. Sepoys or sowars led or incited these mobs in some episodes but in the main the mobs were formed of the badmashes from the bazars and these were often the murderers and incendiaries.

They were certainly the criminals in the notorious murders of Mrs Chambers, Mrs Macdonald, and Veterinary-Surgeon Dawson (attached to the Artillery) and his wife.