Leicester balloon riot

The event caused considerable expense to Coxwell, who had to build a replacement balloon, and it set back progress in scientific high-altitude flights.

[1] Setting off from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands in a balloon filled with coal gas they reached a record altitude of 37,000 ft (11,000 m).

With low oxygen levels and temperatures below −20 °C (−4 °F) the pair almost died before Coxwell managed to release gas from a valve with his teeth (his hands being unusable) to lose height.

[3] Coxwell planned a further flight on 11 July 1864 from the racecourse at Victoria Park, Leicester during a fete organised by the Foresters Friendly Society.

[4] Early in the afternoon there was a disturbance when a gentleman, claiming to be an aeronaut, announced that Britannia was not Coxwell's newest and biggest balloon but an older model.

[6] Britannia was destroyed and the balloon car, used for all of Coxwell's earlier ascents (including his famous high altitude trip with Glaisher) was burnt.

[9] Coxwell laid the blame for the riot with the Leicester City Police, who he said had failed to provide a sufficient number of officers.

[6] The London Review of Politics, Society, Literature, Art and Science described the crowd as "a horde of savages as fierce and untamed as South Sea Islanders and differing very little from them except in their habitat, which was at Leicester" and the local residents were for some time known as "Balloonatics" due to their association with the riot.

[1] The riot served as a demonstration of the ad hoc nature of early ballooning events and the lack of control aeronauts had over them.

[10] Glaisher noted that he "deeply regretted that a wanton mob destroyed [Coxwell's] property and that events should have followed leading me to stop the experiments in which I was engaged".

[12] The Mayor of Leicester, keen to restore the city's standing, led a campaign for public subscriptions to cover the costs.