The Cato Street Conspiracy was a plot to murder all the British cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool in 1820. The name comes from the meeting place near Edgware Road in London. The police had an informer; the plotters fell into a police trap. Thirteen were arrested, while one policeman, Richard Smithers, was killed. Five conspirators were executed, and five others were

transported to Australia Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia. The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 18th century. When ...

. How widespread the Cato Street conspiracy was is uncertain. It was a time of unrest; rumours abounded.

Malcolm Chase Malcolm Sherwin Chase (3 February 1957 – 29 February 2020) was a social historian noted especially for his work on Chartism. Early life and education Chase was born in Grays to the carpenter (later building surveyor) Sherwin Chase and bank c ...

noted that "the London-Irish community and a number of trade societies, notably shoemakers, were prepared to lend support, while unrest and awareness of a planned rising were widespread in the industrial north and on Clydeside."

Origins

Cato Street Conspiracy - 1a Cato Street Marylebone London W1H 5HG

The conspirators were called the Spencean Philanthropists, a group taking their name from the British radical speaker Thomas Spence. The group was known for being a revolutionary organisation, involved in unrest and propaganda and plotting the overthrow of the government. Some of them, particularly

Arthur Thistlewood Arthur Thistlewood (1774–1 May 1820) was an English radical activist and conspirator in the Cato Street Conspiracy. He planned to murder the cabinet, but there was a spy and he was apprehended with 12 other conspirators. He killed a policem ...

, had been involved with the Spa Fields riots in 1816. Thistlewood came to dominate the group with George Edwards as his second in command. Edwards was a police spy. Most of the members were angered by the Six Acts and the Peterloo Massacre, as well as with the economic depression and political repression of the time. The conspirators planned to assassinate the cabinet which was supposed to be together at a dinner. They would then seize key buildings, overthrow the government and establish a "Committee of Public Safety" to oversee a radical revolution. According to the prosecution at their trial, they had intended to form a provisional government headquartered in the Mansion House.

Governmental crisis

Hard economic times encouraged social unrest. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 further worsened the economy and saw the return of job-seeking veterans. King George III's death on 29 January 1820 created a new governmental crisis. In a meeting held on 22 February, George Edwards suggested that the group could exploit the political situation and kill all the cabinet ministers after invading a fabricated cabinet dinner at the home of

Lord Harrowby Earl of Harrowby, in the County of Lincoln, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1809 for the prominent politician and former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Foreign Secretary, Dudley Ryder, ...

Lord President of the Council The lord president of the Council is the presiding officer of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom and the fourth of the Great Officers of State (United Kingdom), Great Officers of State, ranking below the Lord High Treasurer but above the ...

, armed with pistols and grenades. Edwards even provided funds to help arm the conspirators. Thistlewood thought the act would trigger a massive uprising against the government. James Ings, a coffeeshop keeper and former butcher, later announced that he would have decapitated all the cabinet members and taken two heads to exhibit on Westminster Bridge. Thistlewood spent the next hours trying to recruit more men for the attack. Twenty-seven men joined the effort.

Discovery

When Jamaican-born William Davidson, who had worked for Lord Harrowby, went to find more details about the cabinet dinner, a servant in Lord Harrowby's house told him that his master was not at home. When Davidson told this to Thistlewood, he refused to believe it and demanded that the operation commence at once. John Harrison rented a small house in Cato Street as the base of operations. Edwards kept the police fully informed. Some of the other members had suspected Edwards, but Thistlewood had made him his top aide. Edwards had presented the idea with the full knowledge of the Home Office, which had also put the advertisement about the supposed dinner in ''The New Times''. When he reported that his would-be-comrades would be ready to follow his suggestion, the Home Office decided to act.

Arrest

On 23 February, Richard Birnie, Bow Street magistrate, and George Ruthven, another police spy, went to wait at a public house on the other side of the street of the Cato Street building with twelve officers of the Bow Street Runners. Birnie and Ruthven waited for the afternoon because they had been promised reinforcements from the Coldstream Guards, under the command of Captain FitzClarence, an illegitimate son of the Duke of Clarence (later William IV). Thistlewood's group arrived during that time. At 7:30 pm, the Bow Street Runners decided to apprehend the conspirators themselves. In the resulting brawl, Thistlewood killed Bow Street Runner Richard Smithers with a sword. Some conspirators surrendered peacefully, while others resisted forcefully. William Davidson was captured; Thistlewood, Robert Adams, John Brunt and John Harrison slipped out through the back window, but were arrested a few days later.

Charges

''"1. Conspiring to devise plans to subvert the Constitution. 2. Conspiring to levy war, and subvert the Constitution. 3. Conspiring to murder divers of the Privy Council. 4. Providing arms to murder divers of the Privy Council. 5. Providing arms and ammunition to levy war and subvert the Constitution. 6. Conspiring to seize cannon, arms and ammunition to arm themselves, and to levy war and subvert the Constitution. 7. Conspiring to burn houses and barracks, and to provide combustibles for that purpose. 8. Preparing addresses, &c. containing incitements to the King's subjects to assist in levying war and subverting the Constitution. 9. Preparing an address to the King's subjects, containing therein that their tyrants were destroyed, &c., to incite them to assist in levying war, and in subverting the Constitution. 10. Assembling themselves with arms, with intent to murder divers of the Privy Council, and to levy war, and subvert the Constitution. 11. Levying war."''

Trial and executions

During the trial, the defence argued that the statement of Edwards, a government spy, was unreliable and he was therefore never called to testify. Police persuaded two of the men, Robert Adams and John Monument, to testify against other conspirators in exchange for dropped charges. On 28 April most of the accused were sentenced to be

hanged, drawn and quartered To be hanged, drawn and quartered became a statutory penalty for men convicted of high treason in the Kingdom of England from 1352 under Edward III of England, King Edward III (1327–1377), although similar rituals are recorded during the rei ...

for high treason. All sentences were later commuted, at least in respect of this medieval form of execution, to hanging and beheading. The death sentences of Charles Cooper, Richard Bradburn, John Harrison, James Wilson and John Strange were commuted to transportation for life. Arthur Thistlewood, Richard Tidd, James Ings, William Davidson and John Brunt were hanged at

Newgate Prison Newgate Prison was a prison at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey Street just inside the City of London, England, originally at the site of Newgate, a gate in the Roman London Wall. Built in the 12th century and demolished in 1904, t ...

on the morning of 1 May 1820 in front of a crowd of many thousands, some having paid as much as three guineas for a good vantage point from the windows of houses overlooking the scaffold. Infantry were stationed nearby, out of sight of the crowd, two troops of Life Guards were present, and eight artillery pieces were deployed commanding the road at Blackfriars Bridge. Large banners had been prepared with a painted order to disperse. These were to be displayed to the crowd if trouble caused the authorities to invoke the

Riot Act The Riot Act (1 Geo.1 St.2 c.5), sometimes called the Riot Act 1714 or the Riot Act 1715, was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain which authorised local authorities to declare any group of 12 or more people to be unlawfully assembled and o ...

. However, the behaviour of the multitude was "peaceable in the extreme"."Execution of Thistlewood, &c", '' The Times'', 2 May 1820, p. 3. Accessed at The Times Digital Archive. The hangman was

John Foxton ''There are obvious inconsistencies between this article and James Botting, see talk page'' John Foxton (also John or James Foxen or Foxon) (c. 1769 – 14 February 1829) was an English hangman during the early 19th century. In 1818, at th ...

. After the bodies had hung for half an hour, they were lowered one at a time and an unidentified individual in a black mask decapitated them against an angled block with a small knife. Each beheading was accompanied by shouts, booing and hissing from the crowd and each head was displayed to the assembled spectators, declaring it to be the head of a traitor, before placing it in the coffin with the remainder of the body.

Legacy

The British government used the incident to justify the Six Acts that had been passed two months before. However, in the House of Commons Matthew Wood MP accused the government of purposeful entrapment of the conspirators to smear the campaign for parliamentary reform. Although there is evidence that Edwards did incite certain actions of the conspirators, the idea is not supported by modern historians. However, the otherwise pro-government newspaper '' The Observer'' ignored the order of the Lord Chief Justice Sir Charles Abbott not to report the trial before the sentencing. The treasonous plot is the subject of many books, as well as a play, '' Cato Street'', written by the actor and author Robert Shaw, and a 2019 Edinburgh Fringe show, ''Cato Street 1820'', written and performed by David Benson. The conspiracy was also the basis for a 1976 BBC Radio 4 drama 'Thistlewood' by

Stewart Conn Stewart Conn (born 1936) is a Scottish poet and playwright, born in Hillhead, Glasgow.''Galaxy 2'' Maryhill Writers Group (2004) His father was a minister at Kelvinside Church but the family moved to Kilmarnock, Ayrshire in 1941 when he was five. ...

and 2001 radio drama, ''Betrayal: The Trial of William Davidson'', by

Tanika Gupta Tanika Gupta (born 1 December 1963) is a British playwright. Apart from her work for the theatre, she has also written scripts for television, film and radio plays. Early life Tanika Gupta was born in London to immigrant parents from Kolkata, ...

. 1A Cato Street was listed in 1974 for its association with the conspiracy. The

Greater London Council The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...

unveiled a

blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...

on the building in 1977.

References

External links and other sources

Original Documents from the Cato Street Conspiracy at the National ArchivesThe text of the court decision
*Wilkinson, George Theodore
An authentic history of the Cato-Street Conspiracy
'. Thomas Kelly, London, c.1820 * Griffiths, Arthur
The Chronicles of Newgate
'. Chapman and Hall, London 1884, Vol. II, pp. 278 et seq.
Cato Street 1820
Stage production written and performed by David Benson {{Authority control 1820 in the United Kingdom Conspiracies Failed assassination attempts in the United Kingdom 1820 in politics 1820 crimes in the United Kingdom Revolutions during the 1820s