Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky listener discretion advised. On a
Speaker 1: cold February night in eighteen twenty, a group of men
Speaker 1: gathered together in a dilapidated hayloft in London, just off
Speaker 1: Edgeware Road. The men were as broken down as the
Speaker 1: building they were gathered in, but all of that was
Speaker 1: about to change. They had a plan that would upend
Speaker 1: the face of Great Britain, if not the world. The
Speaker 1: men readied their weapons, pistols, muskets, knives, grenades, anything they
Speaker 1: could get their hands on. As they cleaned firearms and
Speaker 1: sharpened blades, they talked through last minute details of their plan.
Speaker 1: Most of the men were adrenalized with the idea of
Speaker 1: changing the course of history and creating a better future
Speaker 1: for everyone. But there were others among them who were
Speaker 1: having cold feet and struggling to hold it together, trying
Speaker 1: not to let it show. After all, this was no
Speaker 1: simple intimidation mission, and from this point on there would
Speaker 1: be no turning back. They were about to ambush a
Speaker 1: nearby dinner hosted by Lord harrowby the President of the
Speaker 1: Privy Council. It would be attended by all the British
Speaker 1: Cabinet members, as well as by the Prime Minister himself.
Speaker 1: Once in, the men's plan was simple, kill everyone. These
Speaker 1: men would not stop until every government official had been assassinated.
Speaker 1: As they were preparing to leave, they heard a noise
Speaker 1: in the stable below them, footsteps, a shout. It was
Speaker 1: the police, and they were followed by soldiers. The men
Speaker 1: were found out, They looked at one another wondering who
Speaker 1: among them had been the mole. I'm Danish Schwartz, and
Speaker 1: this is noble blood. When the world is going through
Speaker 1: what we sometimes say are unprecedented times, it's tempting to
Speaker 1: think that this is the most crazy things in history
Speaker 1: have ever been. It makes sense. Perhaps things truly are
Speaker 1: the most unstable or uncertain that they've felt in our lifetimes.
Speaker 1: But when we look back through history, we see story
Speaker 1: after story of wild events, both at home and abroad,
Speaker 1: that would rival the goings on of our day or
Speaker 1: any day to day. Stasis is a story we like
Speaker 1: to tell ourselves, but by and large, true progress has
Speaker 1: been made by way of unpleasant, radical disruption and periods
Speaker 1: of uncertainty and chaos, sometimes as in the case of
Speaker 1: the Cato Street conspiracy, disruption doesn't pan out the way
Speaker 1: it was planned, or really pan out at all. Their
Speaker 1: plan had been radical, to wipe out the entirety of
Speaker 1: the British cabinet and build a new government from the
Speaker 1: ground up. You might be wondering, how did things get
Speaker 1: to such an extreme place where anyone would have that plan. Well,
Speaker 1: let's do a quick rundown of the vibes in regency
Speaker 1: era England at this time. By the second decade of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, England found itself in a particularly turbulent period.
Speaker 1: The French Revolution had shown all of Europe just how
Speaker 1: flimsy gilded walls could be, Governments could be toppled, kings
Speaker 1: could lose their heads, and the whole social order could
Speaker 1: be turned up so down. Then came Napoleon, stomping around
Speaker 1: the continent for over a decade, nobody from nowhere, who
Speaker 1: remade Europe in his image and declared himself an emperor.
Speaker 1: Back in England, King George the Third was sliding into
Speaker 1: a mental decline from which he would never recover. The
Speaker 1: Regency Act of eighteen eleven removed the king's power and
Speaker 1: transferred it to his son, who would eventually become King
Speaker 1: George the Fourth, who at this time ruled under the
Speaker 1: title Prince Regent, hence Regency era. The Prince wasn't great
Speaker 1: at taking the national temperature, or maybe he just didn't care.
Speaker 1: Either way, he was widely disliked, an extravagant spender, and
Speaker 1: prone to scandals. So we have political instability at the
Speaker 1: very top, combined with revolutionary ideas still perkle from across
Speaker 1: the channel, stirred together with a healthy dose of wealth inequality.
Speaker 1: The rich minority had become even richer thanks to the
Speaker 1: Napoleonic Wars, while most British citizens were dealing with unemployment, poverty,
Speaker 1: and inflated costs. Parliamentary reform was being debated, but not
Speaker 1: nearly fast enough for people who couldn't afford to put
Speaker 1: food on the table. It was a powder keg situation
Speaker 1: and almost everyone knew it. But some folks were ready
Speaker 1: to take matters into their own hands. Enter Arthur Thistlewood,
Speaker 1: an ex soldier turned semi professional malcontent who decided that
Speaker 1: if the system wouldn't change peacefully, then it was time
Speaker 1: to blow the whole thing up. Thistlewood wasn't alone. He
Speaker 1: had managed to join with some fellow radicals, including a
Speaker 1: shoemaker named Thomas Preston and doctor James Watson, an apothecary
Speaker 1: with a taste for explosives. The three were not new
Speaker 1: to the whole try to overthrow the government thing. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen, they had planned an insurrection after a reform
Speaker 1: meeting in London. We won't get into the details because
Speaker 1: it's not that interesting, but their plan was thwarted and
Speaker 1: they narrowly escaped execution for treason. But that didn't slow
Speaker 1: them down. They kept meeting, kept plotting, and kept recruiting
Speaker 1: other like minded revolutionaries. This is the part of the
Speaker 1: story where you can imagine the Ocean's eleven montage of
Speaker 1: assembling the team. The group grew to include more tradesmen,
Speaker 1: shoemakers John Brunt and Richard Tidd, along with a couple
Speaker 1: ex soldiers, John Harrison and Robert Adams. There was James Ings,
Speaker 1: a butcher who knew his way around sharp objects, and
Speaker 1: William Davidson, a cabinet maker who had been born in
Speaker 1: Jamaica to a Scottish farmer and a black Jamaican mother
Speaker 1: before making his way to London. There was also George Edwards,
Speaker 1: an impoverished model maker who would become Thistlewood's second in command.
Speaker 1: Edwards was the ideal revolutionary recruit. Broke, bitter and hungry
Speaker 1: for action. For months, the crew met regularly around London,
Speaker 1: stockpiling weapons and stoking the fires of their resentment. They
Speaker 1: also compiled a hit list with the names and addresses
Speaker 1: of over thirty ministers and cabinet officials. Fueled by the
Speaker 1: writings of revolutionary thinker Thomas Spence, the men truly believed
Speaker 1: that an armed uprising could work in England, just as
Speaker 1: it had in other places around the world. Spending time together,
Speaker 1: agreeing with each other, bolstering each other up, one can
Speaker 1: imagine the ways their small echo chamber created a sense
Speaker 1: not just of certainty but also of inevitability. Their plans
Speaker 1: stopped being theoretical and started getting practical. In eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: after the horrific Peterloo massacre, at a peaceful reform meeting
Speaker 1: in Manchester, government forces charged into a crowd of unarmed protesters.
Speaker 1: Eighteen people, including a child, were killed and over six
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy were injured. The government's response to its
Speaker 1: citizens asking for basic reforms was to mow them down
Speaker 1: with cavalry. For Thistlewood and his crew, Peterloo was the
Speaker 1: final straw. If the government was willing to massacre peaceful protesters,
Speaker 1: than peaceful protest was clearly off the table. They began
Speaker 1: planning assassinations in earnest, initially targeting the Prince Regent before
Speaker 1: settling on the entire cabinet. The men's plans kept getting
Speaker 1: more ambitious and more desperate. First, they considered murdering the
Speaker 1: entire House of Commons, but they realized there was a
Speaker 1: small hitch in the plan. They didn't have enough bullets.
Speaker 1: Thistlewood then decided he only wanted to kill the ministers anyway,
Speaker 1: so they scaled back their vision to better match their resources.
Speaker 1: They planned to attack various dinners and events, but something
Speaker 1: always went wrong. One potential target was too heavily guarded
Speaker 1: by police. Another event was canceled because of King George
Speaker 1: the Third's death. The men considered picking off individual ministers
Speaker 1: while the police and soldiers were attending the king's funeral,
Speaker 1: until someone pointed out that the ministers would probably be
Speaker 1: at the funeral too far be it from me to
Speaker 1: Monday morning quarterback. But the rebels really could have done
Speaker 1: with someone who maybe lacked muscle power but made up
Speaker 1: for it with attention to detail. Then, in February eighteen twenty,
Speaker 1: George Edwards, the model maker turned second in command, brought
Speaker 1: the group the perfect opportunity. He had spotted a piece
Speaker 1: in the newspaper which announced that Lord Harroby, the President
Speaker 1: of the Privy Council, was hosting a dinner for the
Speaker 1: entire cabinet. All of the ministers would be in one
Speaker 1: place at one time with minimal security. It was exactly
Speaker 1: the opportunity they had been waiting for. What Thistlewood and
Speaker 1: the others didn't know was that Edwards, the second in command,
Speaker 1: was also a police informant. In delivering the perfect opportunity
Speaker 1: to the rebels, Edwards was in reality planting the seed
Speaker 1: for their ultimate downfall. On the surface, George Edwards was
Speaker 1: another desperate revolutionary looking to overthrow the government, but in
Speaker 1: reality he was a spy, an agent provocateur, working to
Speaker 1: help that government by taking down the rebellion from the inside.
Speaker 1: Since at least early eighteen nineteen, Edwards had been pushing
Speaker 1: for violent action in group meetings while feeding the conspirator's
Speaker 1: plans directly to the Home Secretary. He was the perfect
Speaker 1: double agent, broke enough to seem authentic, clever enough to
Speaker 1: gain Thistlewood's trust, and ruthless enough to send his comrades
Speaker 1: straight into a trap that would cost many of them
Speaker 1: their lives. Some of the other conspirators had their suspicions
Speaker 1: about Edwards, but Thistlewood trusted him completely. Whether this says
Speaker 1: more about Thistlewood's discernment of character, or his single minded
Speaker 1: devotion to the cause, or maybe just Edwards's ability as
Speaker 1: a double crosser, is unclear. Remember that comedy of errors
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, all those failed assassination attempts that
Speaker 1: kept getting derailed by inconvenient security details and dead kings.
Speaker 1: While Edwards had been dutifully reporting every single botched plan
Speaker 1: back to his handlers. In December, he had told them
Speaker 1: the group was talking about massacring the entire House of Commons,
Speaker 1: but decided against it because, and it bears repeating, because
Speaker 1: it is a little ridiculous. They didn't have enough bullets. Again,
Speaker 1: a logistics person really would have come in handy with
Speaker 1: this crew. But after their sworded plan surrounding the King's
Speaker 1: f funeral, these men were growing desperate, frustrated, and increasingly reckless,
Speaker 1: which is exactly when Edward struck. On Tuesday, February twenty second.
Speaker 1: Edwards burst into their meeting place practically vibrating with excitement.
Speaker 1: He had just spotted an advertisement in the New Times
Speaker 1: quote the Earl of Harrowby gives a grand cabinet dinner
Speaker 1: tomorrow at his house in Grosvenor Square. That was just
Speaker 1: ten minutes from the Hayloft in Cato Street where the
Speaker 1: rebels held their meetings. After months of missed opportunities, the
Speaker 1: whole cabinet would be there, sitting ducks. If Thistlewood had
Speaker 1: been thinking clearly, he might have found this a little suspicious.
Speaker 1: The New Times was edited by a Tory loyalist, and
Speaker 1: the advertisement didn't appear in any other paper. A reasonable
Speaker 1: person might have smelled a rat. It might as well
Speaker 1: have been an announcement for a sitting duck convention. But
Speaker 1: reasonable people don't usually plan to decapitate cabinet ministers, and
Speaker 1: past delays had brought the group to an absolute fever pitch.
Speaker 1: They took the bait completely, and what tempting bait it was.
Speaker 1: The dinner was supposed to include Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool,
Speaker 1: Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth, and Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh, basically
Speaker 1: the all star team of everyone the Radicals despised most.
Speaker 1: Lord Castlereagh was the big prize, the ultimate villain in
Speaker 1: the conspirator's minds. As Irish Chief Secretary, he'd helped suppress
Speaker 1: the seventeen ninety eight Irish rebellion with breathtaking brutality. Killing
Speaker 1: him would not only eliminate a heated enemy, also potentially
Speaker 1: bring the Irish Radicals to their side. The conspirators were
Speaker 1: absolutely drunk on the possibilities. They started divvying up which
Speaker 1: minister each of them would personally execute, fantasizing about the
Speaker 1: glorious changes that would follow. After the initial killing, ings
Speaker 1: would quote cut off every head that was in the room,
Speaker 1: with Castlereagh and Sidmuth's heads going into special bags. The
Speaker 1: heads would then be stuck on hikes and paraded through London,
Speaker 1: a gruesome pantomime of the punishment traditionally given to traders.
Speaker 1: But the men weren't planning to stop with a simple massacre.
Speaker 1: Once they'd eliminated the cabinet, they intended to set fires
Speaker 1: across London seize weapons at the artillery ground, commandeer significant buildings,
Speaker 1: and establish a provisional government. They genuinely believed their dramatic
Speaker 1: act would inspire uprisings across Britain. In their eyes, this
Speaker 1: swift and brutal act of violence would be the necessary
Speaker 1: spark to blow up the old way of life and
Speaker 1: make room for a more equal future for all. Tuesday
Speaker 1: February twenty second was spent in frantic preparation. The men
Speaker 1: gathered weapons from various hiding places. Davidson, the cabinet maker,
Speaker 1: brought musket bullets and a handsaw, while Ings the butcher
Speaker 1: sharpened his long knife, declaring it was specifically for Castlereat's head. Wednesday,
Speaker 1: the twenty third started off with revolutionary fervor and organized chaos.
Speaker 1: Thistlewood scrawled out placards for after their victory, quote your
Speaker 1: tyrants are destroyed, the provisional government is now sitting. Men
Speaker 1: were sent to watch Harrowby's house, though they got distracted
Speaker 1: and ended up drinking at a nearby pub. Again not
Speaker 1: the best planners. Thistlewood had believed many others would be
Speaker 1: eager to join their cause, but strangely, mustering followers was
Speaker 1: proving challenging. Of the forty or so men they had
Speaker 1: been counting on, nearly half had failed to show up.
Speaker 1: James Wilson, an ex soldier turned milkman, said he had
Speaker 1: to deliver milk first. Some who did show up were
Speaker 1: just desperate, like James Gilchrist, an unemployed cobbler who had
Speaker 1: joined because he was starving. As evening approached, the men
Speaker 1: in the cramped loft shared bread, cheese, and porter while
Speaker 1: loading their pistols. Tensions were running high. Two few men
Speaker 1: had shown up, and some were having second thoughts. Ings
Speaker 1: began stamping and swearing, shouting, damn my eyes. If you
Speaker 1: drop the concern now, I will cut my throat or
Speaker 1: shoot myself. Thistlewood tried to rally them, assuring the rebels
Speaker 1: that the whole massacre wouldn't take more than ten minutes. Again,
Speaker 1: not the best logistical thinker, Their courage screwed to the
Speaker 1: sticking place. The men prepared to leave the hayloft and
Speaker 1: head for the square. Just then a voice called up
Speaker 1: from below. Plain clothes officers known as the Bow Street
Speaker 1: Constables climbed the ladder and ordered everyone under arrest. The
Speaker 1: dinner at Lord Harrowby's it wasn't real. It had been fake,
Speaker 1: a trap that the conspirators had walked straight into. The
Speaker 1: Cato Street conspiracy was over before it even begun. When
Speaker 1: the Bow Street runners burst into that cramped hayloft on
Speaker 1: Cato Street, chaos erupted. Some of the rebels surrendered immediately,
Speaker 1: but the rest fought back with the same violence they
Speaker 1: had been planning to unleash on the cabin. These men
Speaker 1: were genuinely prepared to kill, and one officer found that
Speaker 1: out the hard way. The arrival of the Coldstream Guards,
Speaker 1: who were a little late to the party, turned the
Speaker 1: stable and surrounding alley into a scene of complete chaos.
Speaker 1: Some conspirators were captured, others tried to hide in the vicinity,
Speaker 1: and a few managed to slip away under cover of darkness.
Speaker 1: Thistlewood was among those who escaped. Edwards, his trusted second
Speaker 1: in command, who had actually orchestrated the entire trap, was
Speaker 1: the one who helped Thistlewood find a hideout. Of course,
Speaker 1: the police then showed up at that hideout and arrested him.
Speaker 1: Edwards had set up his leader before he disappeared forever,
Speaker 1: never to be seen again. When the conspirators were hauled
Speaker 1: before the courts, they faced a laundry list of conspiracy
Speaker 1: and treason charges. Several of the men flipped, testifying against
Speaker 1: their former comrades in exchange for reduced sentences. The authorities
Speaker 1: wanted justice to be fast and merciless, so several of
Speaker 1: the men were released when it was clear there wasn't
Speaker 1: quite enough strong evidence to prosecute them. Of the eleven
Speaker 1: men who stood trial in late April, the sentences varied
Speaker 1: dramatically based on how willing they were to throw themselves
Speaker 1: on the mercy of the court. Six changed their pleas
Speaker 1: from not guilty to guilty during the trial. Five of
Speaker 1: these six were sentenced to exile in Australia for life.
Speaker 1: The sixth, James Gilchrist, the starving Scottish bootmaker, who had
Speaker 1: joined for the promise of a free meal, was believed
Speaker 1: by the authorities and given only a short prison sentence.
Speaker 1: For the five who maintained their defiance, Thistlewood, tid Ings,
Speaker 1: Davidson and Brunt, the court handed down the traditional sentence
Speaker 1: for treason, They were to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Speaker 1: This was later commuted to the slightly more humane punishment
Speaker 1: of hanging, followed by beheading, but the message was clear,
Speaker 1: these men were to be made examples of. On the
Speaker 1: morning of May one, eighteen twenty, the five men were
Speaker 1: hanged at Newgate Prison in front of a crowd of thousands,
Speaker 1: with many paying top dollar to secure premium viewing spots.
Speaker 1: After the bodies had hanged for half an hour, an
Speaker 1: unidentified figure in a black mask lowered them one by one.
Speaker 1: He decapitated each corpse, then displayed their heads to the
Speaker 1: assembled spectators with the traditional declaration, behold the head of
Speaker 1: a trader. Finally, the bodies were dumped into unmarked graves
Speaker 1: within the walls of Newgate Prison. The exact location of
Speaker 1: their final resting place is unknown. So what did this
Speaker 1: spectacular failure actually accomplish. The Cato Street conspiracy became the
Speaker 1: most notorious plot against the British government since Guy Fowx
Speaker 1: in sixteen oh five and until the Iras attempt to
Speaker 1: blow up Margaret Thatcher in nineteen eighty four. If they
Speaker 1: had succeeded, the entire course of British and world history
Speaker 1: would have changed, although almost certainly not in the utopian
Speaker 1: direction the conspirators envisioned. But of course it never could
Speaker 1: have succeeded because the plan itself was based on a lie.
Speaker 1: The executions of the conspirators would mark the end of
Speaker 1: an era. The tradition of violent revolutionary politics that had
Speaker 1: been bubbling away since the French Revolution was officially dead
Speaker 1: and buried. The British state had shown both its weakness
Speaker 1: and its strength. Yes, it was vulnerable enough that a
Speaker 1: couple dozen desperate men with homemade weapons could come terrifyingly
Speaker 1: close to eliminating the entire government, but not actually, because
Speaker 1: the government was still ruthless enough to anticipate, infiltrate, manipulate,
Speaker 1: and annihilate that threat from the inside before it actually happened.
Speaker 1: The whole affair became a public obsession. People flocked to
Speaker 1: Cato street prints and illustrations of the crime scene and
Speaker 1: executions let ordinary folks safely experience the thrill of violence
Speaker 1: from a comfortable distance, sort of the equivalent of present
Speaker 1: day true crime podcasts and documentaries. The humble hayloft where
Speaker 1: the conspiracy was born, became as famous as Parliament itself,
Speaker 1: at least for a time. There's been a tendency among
Speaker 1: many historians to dismiss Cato straight as the work of
Speaker 1: deluded fantasists, which it was, but that's also a bit
Speaker 1: of an oversimplification that avoids reckoning with the situation that
Speaker 1: brought those men there in the first place. Yes, they
Speaker 1: may have absolutely lacked some crucial organizational and critical thinking skills,
Speaker 1: but they weren't random lunatics. They were products of their time,
Speaker 1: shaped by economic desperation, political oppression, and a generation's worth
Speaker 1: of warfare and revolution in the air. The Cato Street
Speaker 1: conspiracy exemplifies what historian Mark Seltzer calls the quote wound
Speaker 1: culture of early nineteenth century Britain, where violence had become
Speaker 1: so normalized that it was an addiction, an inescapable. Part
Speaker 1: of the social fabric to be human was to practice violence,
Speaker 1: and in an era of extreme inequality, it might have
Speaker 1: seemed to some like the only solution. You can read
Speaker 1: this story multiple ways in the hands of a satirist.
Speaker 1: It's a razor sharp exploration of government paranoia and failed
Speaker 1: group dynamics as a tragedy. It's the story of desperate
Speaker 1: people driven to extremes by a system that then destroyed
Speaker 1: them for daring to fight back. In a black humor
Speaker 1: sort of way, this elaborate conspiracy that was orchestrated really
Speaker 1: based on nothing more than a fantasy. The Cato Street
Speaker 1: Conspiracy was simultaneously a historical footnote and a pivotal moment,
Speaker 1: proof that even failed revolutions can reshape how a nation
Speaker 1: sees itself and its vulnerabilities. In the end, it stands
Speaker 1: as a fascinating snapshot of England at one of its
Speaker 1: most volatile moments, a time when the gap between the
Speaker 1: rulers and the ruled had grown so wide that mass
Speaker 1: political murder seemed like a reasonable solution to some very
Speaker 1: unreasonable people. That's the story of the failed Cato Street Conspiracy.
Speaker 1: But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: a little bit more about one of the conspirators. What
Speaker 1: became of James Watson, the apothecary rebel with the taste
Speaker 1: for explosives. Luckily for him, he was actually in Debtors
Speaker 1: prison at the time of the actual conspiracy in eighteen twenty,
Speaker 1: and so he escaped arrest and trial entirely. At fifty four,
Speaker 1: he had been the oldest member of the group and
Speaker 1: possibly the most talented. Back in eighteen sixteen, Watson had
Speaker 1: created the world's first letter bomb, a volatile mixture of
Speaker 1: ground up silver, steel shavings and crushed flint that would
Speaker 1: detonate at the moment someone opened an envelope. While other
Speaker 1: pharmacists were helping people get better, Watson was coming up
Speaker 1: with new and creative ways to kill. He wrote coded
Speaker 1: messages for the insurrectionists and never stopped inventing new weapons
Speaker 1: and ways of killings. Would he have been able to
Speaker 1: see through Edward's ploy if he had been involved when
Speaker 1: the actual conspiracy came about. It's impossible to say, But
Speaker 1: if anyone would have, my money is on doctor Watson.
Speaker 1: Here was a man with genuine genius who spent it
Speaker 1: all on failed revolutions and experimental weaponry. It's hard not
Speaker 1: to wonder what might have been accomplished if he had
Speaker 1: channeled his brilliant into creation rather than destruction. But he
Speaker 1: was a victim of himself and of his times, just
Speaker 1: like his compatriots who found themselves on the wrong end
Speaker 1: of the Hangman's news. Noble Blood is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble
Speaker 1: Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing
Speaker 1: and research by Hannah Johnston. Hannaswick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hit
Speaker 1: and Julia Milaney. The show is edited and produced by
Speaker 1: Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima Il Kaali and executive
Speaker 1: producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.