As the crowd started to depart various fights began and the police were suddenly very busy indeed.  Part of the crowd headed for St Austin's school and began pelting the windows with stones, much to the surprise of the Sisters of Mercy whose convent was attached to the building at the time.  Hearing the alarm bell, Father deWatteville rushed to their assistance, sustaining a few blows himself in the process.  Before long a group of parishioners had arrived to form a protective shield around the convent and school.
 

Their fun over, the crowd left the school but then headed for the church itself and broke every single window on the Wentworth Terrace side of the church, amounting to twenty five panes of glass, not to mention the presbytery windows which were also badly broken.  A Belgian oil painting of Our Saviour on canvas was torn to peices in the riot.

When the Baron spoke the following evening, the Irish crowds stayed away.  Despite appeals for the law to be upheld, trouble broke out again.  Joseph Taylor, a Catholic of some prominence, was seen flourishing a Shillelah, and was set upon by a mob who pursued him around town for some time.

After this, however, the situation quietened.  Both Catholics and non-Catholics seem to have seen the errors of their ways.  The guard placed on the convent and school stayed there a whole week but was not required.  The Irish seem to have taken some of the blame for starting the violence and much of the reaction seems to have been more in support of the Baron's right to "free speech" than evidence of strong anti-Catholic feeling in the town.

Although the Baron returned to Wakefield again there was no more trouble.  Both Catholics and non-Catholics stayed well away from the speaker, having learned a valuable lesson from the disturbances of 1862.