The Dumpling by Coulson Kernahan

Until three o'clock on Monday afternoon there was no new disturbance, no reassembling of the rioters; but soon after that hour it was clear that something was astir. This time there was no marching in companies, but the vast crowds that were quietly but systematically pouring cityward from every quarter were clearly acting under instructions, and according to some method of organisation. So far as I could see, it was towards the open space in front of the Royal Exchange that the crowd was converging, and thither I allowed myself to be carried with the stream.

On this occasion it was quite clear that the mob was neither sanguine nor confident, and for this there were reasons. The first was the absence of the Dumpling. That he was to have met his lieutenants at a certain hour, and at a certain place, that morning, but for some unaccountable cause had failed to keep the appointment, was already common knowledge. When he was present, that heterogeneous gathering seemed organic. It acted not as a mob, but as one man; and one man, in a sense, it was, since each contingent -- come as it might from Bermondsey, from Poplar, or from Canning Town -- seemed like one of the limbs of a human body, of which this man, the Dumpling, was the controlling brain.