At 5.40am on the morning of Saturday 14th December, Superintendent Lionel Stanhope was awoken by a persistent banging at the front door of his home in Wells Park Road, Sydenham. Hurrying down in his night shirt he was greeted by the sight of a panic stricken Constable, who told him that an angry mob had taken to the streets in nearby Forest Hill and were running amok. Stanhope had feared this would happen, following Lady Bloomberg’s offer in the papers the previous day. He ordered the Constable to contact police stations in Dulwich, Norwood and Crystal Palace and order them to send reinforcements to assist in SE23. With the Constable gone, Stanhope rushed up stairs to get dressed, when his wife enquired what had happened he famously replied ‘Lady bloody Bloomberg and her bloody bloodmoney’.

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Even with twenty years of policing under his belt, nothing could have prepared Stanhope for the sight that met him as he rode down Dartmouth Road towards Forest Hill. Plumes of smoke  rose stark against the early morning sky, and the shouts and jeers of drunken men were clearly heard even from a distance. Several police officers were grappling with a group of men who were trying to break into a florists. Stanhope approached and demanded to know what was happening. Apparently the rooms above the florists were rented by a young man attending Goldsmiths University, and a rumor had circulated that he might have been one of the Perverts being sought. As Stanhope demanded the men to stop resisting his officers, a window was flung open and the student in question stuck his head out to see what was happening; almost immediately a barrage of rotten eggs were hurled up at the poor man, hitting him and showering down on the officers below, creating a most malodorous pong. Stanhope, his whiskers splattered with foul smelling egg mess, ordered his officers to quell the crowd using ‘any force they should deem necessary’ and hurried off to see what the situation was like elsewhere.

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Local historians studying the Forest Hill Riots have come to the conclusion that , rather than being the work of one group of vigilantes, there were actually several groups all causing mayhem independently of each other. This, suggests psychologist Dr Valya Tadic, is evidence that the group were acting out of self-interest rather than a desire to seek justice. “These people were galvanised by something far broader than a sense of indigence or disgust at the events in the museum; I believe they were acting out of greed. To be more precise they wanted to be the first to claim the Bloomberg ‘bloodmoney’”.

Tadic’s theory seems to be borne out by one particular incident which several witnesses claimed to have seen at Peak Hill. A young man approached a young woman who was seated on a bench, when the man sat down next to her, several ruffians jumped out from a nearby bush. As the young man tried to flee, the ‘woman’ next to him suddenly revealed herself to be Gregory Thwaite, a local butcher, who wrestled the man to the ground where he was surrounded by the mob and threatened with violence unless he confessed to be one of the ‘dirty skirt fiddlers’. If not for the intervention of several dog walkers, who knows what fate would have befallen the poor man.

The rioting continued throughout the day and well into the night. Gradually though, the police, buoyed by the extra forces drafted in, and guided by Stanhope’s excellent knowledge of the area, managed to isolate the rioters and bring them under control. As the sun rose on Sunday, a sort of calm had been restored to Forest Hill, and local residents began to count the cost of the ugly violence played out on their streets; over 75 people were in custody, 30 people had been hospitalised, 18 properties had been destroyed by fire, countless more had been broken into and looted, a staggering 958 windows had been smashed and on a more serious note, a dog had been thrown into the Quaggy.

In the days that followed the cleaning up of Forest Hill, many questions would need answering; How had this been allowed to happen? How much blame lay with Lady Bloomberg and her well meant offer? and how would things ever be the same again in Forest Hill?

But of all these questions, perhaps the one that truly needed answering most urgently was this - where were the two men who  had started this terrible chain of events in the first place? Where were ‘Mr Jolly’ and his unknown ‘accomplice’?