| 166 | 167 | 168 | 169 | 170 |
| 1 | 90 | 179 | 269 | 358 |
|
characteristic local fauna and flora....
We know now that every one of these centres corresponded to one of the
patients of Doctor Winkles, but that was by no means apparent at the
time. Doctor Winkles was the last person to incur any odium in the
matter. There was a panic quite naturally, a passionate indignation, but
it was indignation not against Doctor Winkles but against the Food, and
not so much against the Food as against the unfortunate Bensington, whom
from the very first the popular imagination had insisted upon regarding
as the sole and only person responsible for this new thing.
The attempt to lynch him that followed is just one of those explosive
events that bulk largely in history and are in reality the least
significant of occurrences.
The history of the outbreak is a mystery. The nucleus of the crowd
certainly came from an Anti-Boomfood meeting in Hyde Park organised by
extremists of the Caterham party, but there seems no one in the world
who actually first proposed, no one who ever first hinted a suggestion
of the outrage at which so many people assisted. It is a problem for M.
Gustave le Bon--a mystery in the psychology of crowds. The fact emerges
that about three o'clock on Sunday afternoon a remarkably big and ugly
London crowd, entirely out of hand, came rolling down Thursday Street
intent on Bensington's exemplary death as a warning to all scientific
investigators, and that it came nearer accomplishing its object than any
London crowd has ever come since the Hyde Park railings came down in
168
Page
Quick Jump
|