Enemies of the State (23 page)
The plan of the hay-loft in Cato St marking the spot where Smithers, the Bow St Runner, died.
The old Session House and Newgate Gaol: the Cato Street conspirators were executed on the flat roof.
NOTES
Chapter 2
 1
. Literally, âshit!'. Cambronne had been called on to surrender by the pursuing British and this was his reply. The more polite version is âLa Garde meurt, elle ne se rend pas' (the Guard dies, but does not surrender). Perhaps he said both.
 2
. The first news in England of the victory had actually been received at Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square.
 3
. See below.
 4
. George Wilkinson,
An Authentic History of the Cato Street Conspiracy
(London, Thomas Kelly, 1820), p. 192.
 5
. It is noticeable that even in an historic edition of
The Times
, such as that which featured Wellington's Waterloo dispatch, the first page was always given over to advertisements â For Sale and Wanted.
 6
.
The Wealth of Nations
(1776).
 7
. In fact, it was well into the twentieth century that such systems became a de rigueur part of domestic arrangements.
 8
. The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act which affected pauper children only and was widely ignored by industrialists.
 9
. The conversion of money is complicated. Some economic historians assume a multiplying factor of 40. On that basis, however, we run into difficulties. A better yardstick is in comparison with the poorest working wage â that of a farm labourer at 7 or 8 shillings a week.
11
. This finally came to an end in 2006.
12
. Hector Morrison's testimony from the
Trial of James Ings
â Wilkinson,
Cato Street
, p. 264.
13
. Wilkinson,
Cato Street
, p. 183.
15
. Thomas Malthus, an Anglican vicar, wrote
An Essay on Population
in 1798. Nauseatingly moral, he was over-pessimistic for his time, predicting that population would soon completely outstrip food supply and the result would be disaster of biblical proportions.
16.
For the importance of radical literature, see below.
Chapter 3
 1
. Almost certainly the metabolic illness porphyria.
 2
. Edmund Burke,
Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790).
 3
. Quoted in Lord John Russell,
The Life and Times of Charles James Fox
(1859), vol. 2, p. 361.
 4
. Wordsworth,
The Prelude
, bk 2.
 5
. Customs officer.
 6
. Paine,
The Rights of Man
(1791), p. 260.
 7
. Ibid.
 8
. Paine is a more visionary version of Cobbett in some ways. In the end he managed to alienate almost everybody, falling out with the French and the Americans.
 9
. Ironically, the Revolution's ideology did not take this up. De Gouges herself was guillotined in Nov. 1793 and French women did not get the vote for another 143 years!
10
. Astonishingly, he was rescued on the way by a French ship and went to live in France.
11
. The
Chronique de Paris
for 26 April said âYesterday, at half past three, there was . . . used for the first time a machine destined to cut off the heads of criminals condemned to death. This machine was rightfully preferred to other forms of execution. It in no way soils the hands of the man who murders his fellow man and the promptness with which it strikes . . . is more in the print of the law, which may often be stern, but must never be cruel.'
12
. Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville wrote âEach soldier will say to his enemy: brother, I am not going to cut your throat, I am going to free you from the yoke which burdens you; I am going to show you the road to happiness. Like you, I was once a slave; I took up arms and the tyrant vanished.'
13
. Although Fox famously lost his, twice, on the turn of a card!
14
.
The Trial of Joseph Gerrald
(Edinburgh, 1794), pp. 197â9.
15
. Edmund Burke,
Two Letters addressed to a Member of the Present Parliament
(1796).
16
. The importance of informers, spies and
agents provocateurs
will be dealt with elsewhere.
17
. We do not have Ings's age. He had four children by 1820 and I have made the assumption he was born about 1780.
18
. Quoted in Graham Wallas,
Francis Place
(1895).
19
. No relation to the shoemaker Jacobin.
20
. âThe Wearing of the Green' was a folk ballad from the time. The Green referred to the shamrock, the visible symbol of the rebels.
21
. Quoted in G Manning and B Dobré,
The Floating Republic
(London), p. 200.
22
. At one point, Bonaparte actually referred to the long-dead Louis XVI as âmy poor uncle'.
Chapter 4
 1
. The McNaghten Rules, named after Daniel McNaghten who tried to assassinate the Prime Minister, Robert Peel, in 1843.
 2
. Southey and Coleridge,
The Devil's Thoughts
, 1829.
 3
. Quoted in Christopher Hibbert,
Nelson: A Personal History
(London, Viking, 1994), p. 316.
 4
. All quotations from the Despard trial from
The Newgate Calendar
, vol. 3.
 5
. As part of the Act of Union with Ireland in 1801, Pitt proposed that Irish Catholics be given equality with Protestants. As head of the Church of England, George III could not accept that and the Prime Minister was forced to resign.
 6
.
Observer
(Feb. 1803).
 7
. Charles Dickens watched Mr and Mrs Manning hanged here in 1849, for their part in the Bermondsey Horror.
 8
. The Bow Street Horse Patrol, which might otherwise have carried out this duty, was not formed for another two years.
 9
. The actual whereabouts of Despard's grave are shrouded in mystery. One account says that he was buried in the medieval church of St Faith's, long demolished, which stood within the precincts of St Paul's.
10
. Condemned to death by his own system, Robespierre tried to commit suicide the night before his execution but he was interrupted by guards and only succeeded in shooting himself in the jaw.
11
. Ironically of course, the Revolutionary exhibits are among the most popular in the Chamber of Horrors today. It would be fascinating to see Despard and even more Arthur Thistlewood in wax.
12
.
The Newgate Calendar
(1802), vol. 3.
13
. The Foot Guards, like their mounted counterpart the Life Guards and Royals, were raised in 1660 as a personal bodyguard for the king.
Chapter 5
 1
. Waiting in the wings was James Catnatch, the doyen of the dying speech. Operating his own printing press in London, Catnatch made a fortune in the 1820s with blood and guts confessions (totally spurious). He sold 500,000 copies of the trial of William Thurtell in 1823 and 1,166,000 of the confession and execution of William Corder in the Red Barn Murder of 1828.
 2
. Quoted in E P Thompson,
The Making of the English Working Class
(London, Penguin, 1991), p. 792.
 3
.
Works of John Keats
, vol. 5 (1901), p. 108.
 4
. Quoted in Thompson,
English Working Class
, p. 803.
 5
.
Shorter Oxford Dictionary
(1993), p. 2522.
 6
. G M Thomson,
The Prime Ministers
(London, Secker & Warburg, 1980), p. 77. As Thomson points out, he was beaten on all three counts and in that order by Lord John Russell, the Duke of Grafton and Robert Peel!
 7
. Quoted ibid., p. 76.
 8
. Quoted in Carl Sifakis,
The Encyclopedia of Assassinations
(London, Headline, 1993), p. 337.
 9
. Quoted in Thompson,
English Working Class
, p. 623.
10
. Quoted in Brian Bailey,
Hangmen of England
(London, W H Allen, 1989), p. 44.
11
. So-called because safe seats like Cashel were under the total control (in the pocket) of certain families.
12
. Quoted in Thomson,
Prime Ministers
, p. 71.
13
. Not everyone believed that. Some over-eager tourists, believing the war was permanently over, went over to France and found themselves in prison there when it was renewed. Some of them were not released until 1814!
14
. Quoted in Geoffrey Treasure,
Who's Who in Late Hanoverian Britain
(London, Shepheard-Walyn, 1997), p. 289.
15
. A quirk in the constitution meant that Irish peers could sit in the Commons.
16
. Thomson,
Prime Ministers
, p. 92.
17
. Ibid.
18
. Henry Legge, MP.
Chapter 6
 1
. Quoted in Geoffrey Treasure,
Who's Who in Late Hanoverian Britain
(London, Shepheard-Walyn, 1997), p. 351.
 2
. No one at that early stage in education considered the possible indoctrination of children; that Thomas Spence was busily turning Newcastle into a Communist state!
 3
. He even wrote an account of his 1801 trial in this form.
 4
. He spoke French tolerably well.
 5
. Grinning matches were usually played by toothless old men contorting their mouths. The most hideous was the winner.
 6
. Quoted in Clive Bloom,
Violent London
(London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 2003), p. 189.
 7
. For a brilliant discussion of the complexity (and ineptitude) of pre-Peelite policemen see T A Critchley and P D James,
The Maul and the Pear Tree
(London, Sphere, 1971).
 8
. Paraphrased from
The Examiner
(16 Nov. 1816).
Chapter 7
 1
. Richard Belfield,
Assassination: The Killers and their Paymasters Revealed
(London, Magpie (Constable), 2005).
 2
. The parallels with Cato Street can only go so far. The king's power was still paramount in the reign of James I whereas by 1820, George IV was almost an irrelevance. Half-baked though the Gunpowder Plot may have been, the idea was almost certainly to replace James with a Catholic alternative. In both assassination attempts, the conspirators expected the country to rise to back them.
 3
. Quoted in E P Thompson
The Making of the English Working Class
(London, Penguin, 1991), p. 530.
 4
. Treasury Solicitor's Papers, 6 March 1817, 11.351
 5
. Moscow had been burnt almost to the ground by the Russians in 1812 in an attempt to drive the invading French army under Napoleon out.
 6
.
The Trial of Jeremiah Brandreth
, Oct. 1817.
Chapter 8
 1
. Quoted in Joyce Marlow,
The Peterloo Massacre
(London, Readers' Union, 1970), p. 50.
 2
. This is a very odd reference and presumably refers to the Pendle witch trials of 1612. Were the witches seen as earlier examples of poor, oppressed people suffering under the tyranny of arbitrary law?
 3
. Pikes are referred to consistently in this period. They were homemade and the authorities seem to regard them as almost the weapon of choice, the symbol of insurrection.
 4
. In fact the wording contained the equivalent of a double negative. It said that the Magistrates âdo hereby caution all Persons to abstain at their peril from attending . . .'
 5
. Henry Hunt,
An Address to the Reformers of Manchester and its Neighbourhood
, 11 Aug. 1819.
 6
. No relation to the lady on the hustings with Hunt.
 7
. One of those swords, supposedly from Peterloo, was the inspiration for Howard Spring's
Fame is the Spur
.
 8
. Samuel Bamford,
Passages in the Life of a Radical
(1967 edn; originally published London, T F Unwin, 1893).
 9
. Ibid.
Chapter 9
 1
.
Works of John Keats
, p. 108.
 2
. Wilkinson,
An Authentic History of the Cato Street Conspiracy
(London, Thomas Kelly, 1820), pp. 56â7.
 3
. Ibid., p. 398.
 4
. The pre-1832 voting system was highly complicated. A tiny handful of the working class
could
actually vote depending on the property in which they lived.
 5
. âTrial of Richard Tidd', p 326.
 6
. Bradburn (also spelt Blackburn), Gilchrist, Cooper and Monument are not listed on the original document.
Chapter 10
 1
. Percy Bysshe Shelley,
England in 1819
, 1839.
 2
. âThe Trial of James Brunt'.
 3
. âThe Trial of James Ings'.
 4
. In fact, the likeness of Thistlewood, judging from the drawing made at the trial, is quite accurate.
 5
. Technically, a carbine is a short musket used by the cavalry and capable of being fired in one hand. A blunderbuss is an early shotgun, scattering pellets in a wide arc. This would have been more useful at Grosvenor Square.
 6
. There is some confusion over the man's rank. He was presumably promoted by the time of the Cato Street trials, but there âLieutenant' and âCaptain' are used interchangeably.
 7
. So either Thistlewood fired three guns or somebody else was shooting too.
 8
. The engraver of the Cato Street building, A Wivell, actually shows this in his work.