The Epsom Riot of 1919

Last summer Epsom & Ewell Borough Council advertised an organised walk:

A walk about the 1919 Epsom riot, the attack on Epsom Police Station and the death of Sergeant Thomas Green. Discover what happened in Epsom during WW1 with its crowded Military Hospitals, camps and large numbers of Canadian soldiers left behind in Woodcote Camp waiting to go home. 

See how events boiled over out of hand during an incident in a local pub, which led to the infamous riot of 1919, the attack on Epsom Police Station and the death of Sergeant Thomas Green. 

The walk begins outside the Rifleman pub in East Street and ends in Ashley Road at the site of the police station.

Serious criminality and public disorder recycled as heritage. I had this in mind to share the story of the Epsom Riot on 1919 with you a while before the current unpleasantness broke out, and now I wonder if they will be organising riot walks around Hartlepool and Sunderland one day.

Wikipedia has a good article on the Epsom riot and a photo of Sergeant Green:

The Canadians were from the nearby Woodcote Park Convalescent Hospital, a former temporary military base that had been converted for use as a convalescent hospital. With the First World War over, discipline at the camp was relaxed. Delays in repatriating Canadian soldiers had resulted in thirteen riots by troops in British camps between November 1918 and June 1919. 

The riot began when two Canadian servicemen were arrested following a disturbance at a local public house. Their comrades marched on the town police station to demand their release. The soldiers ripped up the railings surrounding the station to use as projectiles and clubs. In the ensuing fighting, Private Allan McMaster, a former blacksmith, picked up a metal bar and struck Green on the head. The sergeant died the following day, having never regained consciousness.

Seven men appeared at the Surrey Assizes in July 1919. They were found guilty of rioting, but were acquitted of manslaughter. They were sentenced to one year in prison, but were released after only a few months. Ten years after returning to Canada, McMaster, one of those imprisoned, confessed to the killing. As he had already been found not guilty of manslaughter, he was not returned to the UK.

Those sentences look lenient to modern eyes, but then, despite what we are always told by right-wingers, sentences have been getting longer for decades.