William Davidson (1781 – May 1, 1820) was a

British African-Caribbean British African-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom. They are British citizens whose ancestry originates from the Caribbean or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afro-C ...

radical executed for his role in the

Cato Street Conspiracy 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 ...

against

Lord Liverpool Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, (7 June 1770 – 4 December 1828) was a British Tory statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1812 to 1827. He held many important cabinet offices such as Foreign Secret ...

's government in 1820.

Early years

Davidson was the illegitimate son of Robert Sewell (1751 – 30 April 1828), the Attorney General of Jamaica, and a local black woman. At the age of 14, Davidson travelled to

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

to study law. In

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

he became involved in the movement for parliamentary reform. He was apprenticed to a

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

lawyer, but ran away to sea. Later, he was press-ganged into the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

. After his discharge, he returned to Scotland. His father arranged for him to study mathematics in

Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...

. Davidson withdrew from study, moved to

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

, and started a cabinet-making business. He courted the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Her father suspected that Davidson was after her £7,000 dowry, and arranged for Davidson to be arrested on a false charge. When Davidson discovered she had married someone else he attempted suicide by taking poison. Davidson's cabinet-making business failed, and he moved to London. He married Sarah Lane, a working-class widow with four children. They had two more children. Davidson became a

Wesleyan Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan– Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity based upon the ministry of the 18th-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charles W ...

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

, and taught at the

Sunday School A Sunday school is an educational institution, usually (but not always) Christian in character. Other religions including Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism have also organised Sunday schools in their temples and mosques, particularly in the West. Su ...

. However, he left after he was accused of attempting to seduce a female student.

Political activism

Following the

Peterloo Massacre The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Fifteen people died when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliament ...

, William Davidson became involved in radical politics again. In October 1819

Richard Carlile Richard Carlile (8 December 1790 – 10 February 1843) was an important agitator for the establishment of universal suffrage and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom. Early life Born in Ashburton, Devon, he was the son of a shoemaker wh ...

was found guilty of blasphemy and

seditious libel Sedition and seditious libel were criminal offences under English common law, and are still criminal offences in Canada. Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection a ...

, and sentenced to three years imprisonment. Davidson said that this had caused him to lose his belief in God. He joined the Marylebone Union Reading Society, a club that offered a reading room of radical newspapers such as ''The Republican'' and the ''

Manchester Observer The ''Manchester Observer'' was a short-lived non-conformist Liberal newspaper based in Manchester, England. Its radical agenda led to an invitation to Henry "Orator" Hunt to speak at a public meeting in Manchester, which subsequently led to th ...

'' for a subscription of twopence a week. He also read the works of

Tom Paine Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...

. Davidson met John Harrison at the Marylebone Union. Harrison was a member of the Spencean Philanthropists in London. Davidson soon became a Spencean. He met

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 ...

, and after a few months he became one of the Committee of Thirteen that ran the organisation. In February 1820, George Edwards, a government provocateur, drew Davidson and Thistlewood and 27 other Spenceans into a plot to kill government cabinet officers as they dined at the

Earl of 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 Foreign Secretary, Dudley Ryder, 2nd Baron Harrowby. He was made Viscount Sandon, of S ...

's house at 39,

Grosvenor Square Grosvenor Square is a large garden square in the Mayfair district of London. It is the centrepiece of the Mayfair property of the Duke of Westminster, and takes its name from the duke's surname "Grosvenor". It was developed for fashionable re ...

on 23 February. Thistlewood selected Davidson as one of an Executive of Five to organise the assassinations. (The dinner was a fictitious construction.) Davidson had worked for Lord Harrowby in the past, and knew some of his staff at Grosvenor Square. His job was to find out more details about the cabinet meeting. One of the servants told him that the Earl of Harrowby was not in London. Davidson relayed this information to Arthur Thistlewood, who believed that the servant was lying, and ordered the conspirators to proceed with the plot. On 23 February, the

met in a hayloft on Cato Street, near Grosvenor Square. However, there was no cabinet meeting: the Spenceans had been set up by an undercover police agent, George Edwards. George Ruthven led 13 police officers to storm the hayloft. Several revolutionaries refused to surrender their weapons. Thistlewood killed police officer Richard Smithers with a single sword-thrust. When the co-conspirators tried to escape, Benjamin Gill hit Davidson on the wrist with his truncheon, and he dropped his

blunderbuss The blunderbuss is a firearm with a short, large caliber barrel which is flared at the muzzle and frequently throughout the entire bore, and used with shot and other projectiles of relevant quantity or caliber. The blunderbuss is commonly consid ...

. Four conspirators, Thistlewood, John Brunt, Robert Adams and John Harrison escaped through a window. However, their identities were given to the police by Edwards and they were quickly arrested. Eleven men were charged with involvement in the Cato Street Conspiracy. Robert Adams testified against the other men, and charges against him were dropped. Davidson pleaded innocence and claimed the court was prejudiced against

black people Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in s ...

. However, his presence at the scene with a blunderbuss led to his conviction. On 28 April 1820, William Davidson, James Ings, Richard Tidd,

, and John Brunt were found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to death. John Harrison, James Wilson, Richard Bradburn, John Strange and Charles Copper were also found guilty. However their death sentences were subsequently commuted to transportation for life. William Davidson, with his four fellow conspirators, was publicly hanged and decapitated outside

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 1 May 1820.

Representation in media

William Davidson is featured in the short animation Cato Street to Newgate, written and directed by Jason Young. It was screened as part of Southwark Black History Month in 2020.

References

External links

William Davidson
on Spartacus {{DEFAULTSORT:Davidson, William 19th-century executions by England and Wales 1781 births 1820 deaths Black British history Executed Jamaican people Executed people from London Jamaican activists Migrants from British Jamaica to the United Kingdom Jamaican people of British descent People executed for treason against the United Kingdom Royal Navy sailors Scottish people of Jamaican descent