Riot Act felt uncertain of their power to take action to stop the riots without a reading of the Riot Act. After the riots, Lord Mansfield observed that the Riot Act did not take away the pre-existing power of the authorities to use force to stop a violent riot; it only created the additional offence of failing to disperse after a reading of the Riot Act. The Riot Act was read prior to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, as well as prior to the Bristol Riots at Queen's Square in 1831. Both are held to be related to the Unreformed House of
Rainiai massacre the perpetrators. Similar atrocities were committed in other places, like the Tartu massacre, in which almost two hundred and fifty people were murdered. A decision had been made to carry out the massacre after the June Revolt had taken place, during which the Lithuanian Activist Front had deposed the Soviet government in Lithuania, and Nazi Germany had invaded the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities were unable to evacuate the inmates (political prisoners) of the Telšiai prison, but they did not want to abandon them, as the inmates would then have been freed by the local population or by the Germans.