It's an absolute fabrication to say that the whole crowd of rioters, or at least half of them, were punished.

It is a nonsensical story, too, that a poor but respectable lady was caught as she passed by and promptly thrashed; yet I read myself an account of this incident afterwards among the provincial items of a Petersburg newspaper.

Many people in the town talked of an old woman called Avdotya Petrovna Tarapygin who lived in the almshouse by the cemetery.

She was said, on her way home from visiting a friend, to have forced her way into the crowd of spectators through natural curiosity.

Seeing what was going on, she cried out, "What a shame!" and spat on the ground.