Conspiracy on Cato Street : a tale of liberty and revolution in Regency London

On the night of 23 February 1820, twenty-five impoverished craftsmen assembled in an obscure stable in Cato Street, London, with a plan to massacre the whole British cabinet at its monthly dinner. The Cato Street Conspiracy was the most sensational of all plots aimed at the British state since Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It ended in betrayal, arrest, and trial, and with five conspirators publicly hanged and decapitated for treason. Their failure proved the state's physical strength, and ended hopes of revolution for a century. Vic Gatrell explores this dramatic yet neglected event in unprecedented detail through spy reports, trial interrogations, letters, speeches, songs, maps, and images. Attending to the 'real lives' and habitats of the men, women, and children involved, he throws fresh light on the troubled and tragic world of Regency Britain, and on one of the most compelling and poignant episodes in British history. Cover Half-title page Title page Copyright page Epigraph Contents List of Illustrations and Maps Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Timeline A Note on the Text Part One The Simple Tale 1 The Cato Street Conspiracy: What Happened 2 Arrests and Reactions Part Two Taking Its Measure 3 Interpreting the Conspiracy 4 What They Were Up Against 5 What They Believed 6 Fantasy, Myth, and Song 7 Rebellion’s Habitats Part Three Thistlewood: His Story 8 A Terrorist in the Making: 1774–1816 9 The Spa Fields Insurrection: 1816–17 10 Thistlewood Unhinged: 1818–19 11 Peterloo in London: 1819–20 12 Edwards the Spy: 1819–20 Part Four Ordinary Britons 13 Conspirators and Others 14 Wives, Marriages, Children 15 Men of Colour: Wedderburn and Davidson Part Five The Executions 16 Trials and Verdicts 17 May Day at Newgate 18 Epilogue: Géricault Goes to Cato Street The People Listed Historiographical Note Trial Reports Notes Bibliography Index "Well over a century ago Joseph Conrad gave the most modest of subtitles to The Secret Agent, his novel about London's late-Victorian anarchists. A Simple Tale of the Nineteenth Century, he called it. On the face of it, the story told in this book about an earlier, non-fictional group of terrorists in regency London is a simple tale too. It takes us up-close-and-personal to the conspirators who on the night of 23 February 1820 assembled in an obscure stable on the western edge of London in order to massacre the whole British government as it sat down to dinner in a Grosvenor Square mansion. This was the most sensational of all plots aimed at the state between the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the Irish Republican Army's Brighton bomb attack on Thatcher and her party in 1984. Had it succeeded it would have changed our world utterly"-- Provided by publisher The Cato Street Conspiracy was the most sensational of all plots aimed at the British state since the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. This book tells this dramatic but neglected story with cinematic vividness, episodic range, and a tragic denouement that undermines our romantic fantasies about Regency England