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A Storm in the Night horse reared-up, throwing its rider, the police commander of the advance guard fell under a shower of missiles and a strike-breaker went down, clutching his bloodied scalp.The police lines shuddered as the dark outlines of hundreds of strikers, their families and their neighbours, scrambled over the sides of the embankment and crashed into their lines. Batons were swung and sabres drawn; the two black hansom cabs containing the mayor and aldermen jolted to a sudden halt; top-hatted and bewhiskered faces pushed through windows, hot and confused, barking out orders to the riding and running officers who were now heedless of their entreaties and struggling to face-down the panic that was beginning to spread through the men. By this time, the strikers and their supporters had also gained vantage points on top of the houses on either side of the road and, having “provided themselves with similar ammunition” wrought a terrible toll upon the fraying column.The guards and the guarded, wrote the leader of the strike, were now “completely at the mercy of the crowd and many casualties took place amongst them”. Falling under “so dangerous a shower”, soldiers, constables and “knobsticks” – as the strike-breakers were called – “were felled to the ground, [as] hats and broken helmets were sent flying in all directions”1. High atop the scrubbing tower of the New Wortley gasworks, a reporter from The Leeds Mercury had been watching the situation unfold. He had been transfixed by the sight of the red coats of the Carabineers, their white horses pushing through the gloom and by the gleam and sparkle of their burnished helmets, as they were caught by the last rays of the sun. Indeed, so intent was his gaze that he did not notice the outbreak of the fight at all, only jolting his binoculars away when the sound of shouting and the breaking of glass, from the street below, reached his ears. He watched in disbelief as the column was enveloped, staggered and broke; with a jumble of strike-breakers and police abandoning their positions and running in headlong, heedless flight, like so many startled hares, towards the gates of the works.
When the strike was over, the Leeds Times published a special “Battle on the Bridge”, edition, published 19 July 1890.
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