Forgotten London: Cato Street Conspiracy

There is a former stables on Cato Street near Edgeware Road in London that is the last reminder of a forgotten conspiracy against the state.

In 1820 a group of desperate men gathered there on the night of February 23rd to put their plot into motion. Their goal was to wipe out the Cabinet, start a glorious revolution and install themselves as leaders of same, at Mansion House. They called themselves the Spencean Philanthropists, after the radical (and bookseller) Thomas Spence and their target was the home of Lord Harrowby, where the Cabinet was supposed to be meeting for dinner. With all their victims in one place, it would be easy to destroy the hated politicians and Lordships who stood in their way. 

Unfortunately for them the Philanthropists had a spy in their midst, and their plans were well known. The dinner party was a fiction, intended to lure them out into the open. Some of them were immediately arrested when the loft of the stables was invaded by police; one of the policemen was stabbed to death, and those conspirators not caught at Cato Street were nabbed in the days following, as the authorities rounded up the Philanthropist's leadership.

It was a triumph for the Bow Street Runners, who were first on the scene. They were meant to be backed up by a detachment from the Coldstream Guards, but the troopers got lost on the way to the conspiracy so the Runners made the assault themselves. 

Five of the Philanthropists were condemned to death and the rest transported to Australia. The executions were unusual; as traitors, the five were condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but their sentence was commuted to hanging and beheading. Their heads, once cut off, were displayed to the watching crowd and then flung into the coffins with their bodies. 

The Cato Street Conspiracy

The site still exists today.

Gamification:

The Cato Street Cult

Radicals: Fascist, Communist, foreign, Irish, Jewish, what-have-you. The radical has wild eyes and a tendency to hairiness – combs and razors being apparently tools of oppression. Dressed in solidarity with the working class, or in something cheap and warm, the radical carries his (or her) pamphlets, émigré newspapers, manifestos, and grudges wherever she (or he) goes. He (or she) mostly goes to drafty lodge halls, noisy protest meetings, sympathetic art happenings, or cheap tea shops. The only thing she (or he) hates more than The Class System (or the Jews, or the Bankers, or the Arms Merchants) is people who hate it incorrectly ... [Bookhounds p 55-6]. 

It's alleged that the leader of this so-called Philanthropic group sells books and radical pamphlets out of a stall in High Holborn, and can often be found near Tottenham Court Market. That may or may not be so. What is certain is that this group went from ignominious nobodies to public enemies in one fell swoop, when they made an explosive attempt of the life of the Earl of Harrowby. This attempt failed, but several were wounded and one innocent bystander, an employee of Coutt's bank, killed. The Philanthropists claimed responsibility and signed the note they sent to the papers with the name Arthur Thistlewood. Thistlewood was one of the Cato Street conspirators hung and beheaded, the other four being Richard Tidd, James Ings, William Davidson and John Brunt. 

According to those who claim to know these things the core group consists of these five, with a wider net of informants, rough lads and sympathizers. They claim to be working towards the Rights of Man, with the aim of overthrowing the ruling class and establishing themselves as the new power.

Those with occult leanings understand the Philanthropists' goal to be slightly more esoteric. They point to the Philanthropists' original target, the Earl of Harrowby, as proof. Why should an otherwise undistinguished member of the aristocracy be their first target? It seems nonsensical, until a connection is drawn between the current Earl and the target of the original Cato Street conspirators, in 1820. Also, they seem obsessed with obtaining relics of the original conspirators, and are currently searching for the knife hangman John Foxton is supposed to have used to cut off the heads of the Cato Street five. 

Moreover the potter's field in which the conspirators may have been buried, severed heads and all, has been targeted by graverobbers. At the time nobody understood why anyone would bother, but those who ought to know claim that the Philanthropists are very interested in recovering the heads of the original five. Though it's understood that this attempt, like the assassination, did not succeed - possibly because the heads were never there to begin with. A collector of medical curiosities, Arthur Scroggins, claims to have those fateful heads pickled in jars, part of a gruesome collage. Nobody believes he has the real thing - except possibly those Philanthropists ...