The Cato Street Conspiracy was an attempt to murder all the British cabinet ministers in 1820. The name comes from the meeting place near Edgware Road in London.The conspirators were members of a group of Spencean Philanthropists, named after the British radical speaker Thomas Spence. Some of them, especially Arthur Thistlewood, had been involved with the Spa Fields riots in 1816. Thistlewood came to dominate the group. Angered by the Six Acts and the Peterloo Massacre, the plan was to assassinate a number of cabinet ministers, overthrow the government and set up a Committee of Public Safety to oversee a radical revolution. According to later prosecutor of their trial, they would have formed a provisional government headquartered in the Mansion House. When George III died on January 29, 1820, it caused a governmental crisis. In a meeting held February 22, one of the Spenceans, George Edwards, suggested that the group could exploit the political situation and kill all the cabinet ministers. They planned to invade a cabinet dinner at the home of Lord Harrowby, Lord President of the Council armed with pistols and grenades. Thistlewood thought the act would create a massive uprising against the government. Ex-butcher and coffee shop keeper James Ings later announced that he would have decapitated all the cabinet members and taken two heads to exhibit on the Westminster Bridge. Thistlewood spent the next hours trying to recruit more men for the attack. Only 27 men joined the effort.When Jamaican-born William Davidson, who had worked for Lord Harrowby, went to look for more details about the cabinet dinner, a servant in Lord Harrowby's house told him that his master was not home at all. 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 the Cato Street as the base of operations.However, George Edwards was working for the Home Office and had become an agent provocateur; in fact, some of the other members had suspected him but Thistlewood had made him his aide-de-camp. Edwards had presented the idea with the full knowledge of the Home Office, who 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. On February 23, Richard Bimie, Bow Street magistrate, and George Ruthwen, 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. Bimie and Ruthwen waited for the afternoon because they had been promised reinforcements from Coldstream Guards. Thistlewood's group arrived during that time. At 7.30 PM, the Bow Street Runners decided to apprehend the conspirators by themselves. In the resulting brawl, Thistlewood killed a police officer, Richard Smithers, with a sword. Some conspirators surrendered peacefully, while others resisted forcefully. William Davidson failed to fight his way out. Thistlewood, Robert Adams, John Brunt and John Harrison slipped out the back window but they were arrested a few days later. Eleven men were later charged for the plot. 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 convinced two of the men, Robert Adams and John Monument, to testify against other conspirators in exchange of dropped charges. Most of the accused were sentenced to death for high treason on April 28. 1820 was a leap year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Part of the London skyline viewed from the South Bank London is the most populous city in the European Union, with an estimated population on 1 January 2005 of 7,421,328 and a metropolitan area population of between 12 and 14 million. ... Thomas Spence (June 21, 1750 - September 8, 1814), inventor of a system of land nationalization, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, the son of a Scottish netmaker and shoemaker. ... Arthur Thistlewood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... 1816 was a leap year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Following the Peterloo massacre of August 16, 1819, the UK government acted to prevent any future disturbances by the introduction of new legislation, the so-called Six Acts which labelled any meeting for radical reform as an overt act of treasonable conspiracy. Parliament had reconvened on November 23 and the... Print of the Peterloo Massacre published by Richard Carlile The Peterloo Massacre of August 16, 1819 was the result of a cavalry charge into the crowd at a public meeting at St. ... Mansion House is the name applied to the official residences of the Lords Mayor of Dublin and London. ... George III (George William Frederick) (June 4, 1738 – January 29, 1820) was King of Great Britain, and King of Ireland from October 25, 1760 until January 1, 1801, and thereafter King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. ... January 29 is the 29th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1820 was a leap year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... February 22 is the 53rd day of every year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Dudley Ryder, 1st Earl of Harrowby (1762-1847), the eldest son of Nathaniel Ryder, 1st Baron Harrowby (d. ... The Office of Lord President of the Council is a British cabinet position, the holder of which acts as presiding officer of the Privy Council. ... Westminster Bridge and the Palace of Westminster, with a glimpse of Westminster Abbey behind the tower of Big Ben. ... The modern concept of Small Office and Home Office or SoHo , or Small or Home Office deals with the category of business which can be from 1 to 10 workers. ... An agent provocateur (plural: agents provocateurs) is a person assigned to provoke unrest, violence, debate, or argument by or within a group while acting as a member of the group but covertly representing the interests of another. ... An aide-de-camp (French: camp assistant) is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state. ... February 23 is the 54th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... The Bow Street Runners were Londons first professional constables. ... The Coldstream Guards is a regiment of the British Army, part of the Guards Division. ... Under English, and later British law, high treason is the crime of disloyalty to the Sovereign. ...

John Brunt, William Davidson, James Ings, Arthur Thistlewood and Richard Tidd were hanged at Newgate Prison May 1 1820; death sentences of Charles Copper, Richard Bradburn, John Harrison, James Wilson and John Strange were commuted to transportation for life. Hanging is a form of execution or a method for suicide. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

The British government used the incident to justify the Six Acts that had been passed the previous year. However, in the House of Commons, Matthew Wood accused the government of purposeful entrapment of the conspirators to smear the campaign for parliamentary reform. 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. British House of Commons Canadian House of Commons In some bicameral parliaments of a Westminster System, the House of Commons has historically been the name of the elected lower house. ... Matthew Wood is an American filmmaker who is currently the Supervising Sound Editor (2003) employed at Skywalker Sound in Marin County, California. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is the second-highest judge of the Courts of England and Wales, after the Lord Chancellor, and the presiding judge of Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, and of the Queens Bench Division of the High Court. ... Charles Abbot, 1st Baron Tenterden (7 October 1762 - 4 November 1832), Lord Chief Justice, Kings Bench, was born at Canterbury, his father having been a hairdresser and wigmaker of the town. ...