Conspiracy on Cato Street

by Vic Gatrell

Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, and a Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine Book of the Year. 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature

476 pages, Paperback

Published May 18, 2023

About the author

Vic Gatrell is a social historian of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, and a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

a.k.a. V.A.C. Gatrell

Reviews

[Anand]

I wanted to like this! But while there were some great stories and bits of background, I found it a tough read.

It’s at once meticulously detailed and rather lazy - the author shares so much tedium about every move each person makes, but organises it by subject and by person instead of a chronology that brings the whole story together. As a result, the reader is left to piece things together. It’s a shame, because then he does tell a chronological story, he does it very well.

Also, the author seems to be a curmudgeon - the repeated accusations to ‘other historians’ feel petty and unnecessary.

[Toby]

Following hard on the heels of the Peterloo bicentenary of 2019 was the Cato Street conspiracy of 2020. The former had a Mike Leigh film made of it, an exhibition at a Manchester museum and a clutch of books (including the excellent one by Robert Poole). Cato Street seems to have gone by unremarked. Vic Gatrell's study of the subject came out in 2022, just missing the anniversary. It covers in excellent detail the story behind the conspiracy and the five conspirators who were hanged and beheaded (after death) for treason.

The novelty, and strength, of the book is its structure. The conspiracy itself is dealt with fairly briskly in the first few chapters. It is a tale of unremarkable bungling. At the height of British security and supervision following the Napoleonic wars, significant economic distress and the Peterloo massacre, a group of inadequately armed (physically and mentally) men are duped by an agent provocateur into attempting a wholesale massacre of the cabinet. They are quickly caught (although one of the arresting agents is killed in the attempt - something that Gatrell does rather gloss over) and after a trial for which the conclusion was rather foregone, five are executed and the rest are transported. There is a reason by the Cato Street Conspiracy is not better known. It was never going to be 14th July.

Gatrell then spends some time looking at the context of the conspiracy, the lives of the conspirators (two of whom were descended from African slaves, something that I didn't know) and finally the trial and the executions themselves. All of this is done with a certain verve and a passion and anger that is unusual in academic history writing (at least it used to be unusual, it seems a little more common now). As with the works on Peterloo, there is little attempt to vindicate the government ministers who are seen as part of the oppressive machinery of state. Perhaps there is no vindication for them, although I have always felt that these men were themselves rather hapless in the face of economic and social changes over which they had no control but which could have resulted in each of their heads being paraded around London (as some of the conspirators hoped to do).

[Chris]

I bought this book because I recalled hearing about the Cato Street conspiracy during my A level syllabus in history way back in the 1970s (and read a generally favourable review in the Literary Review). I wanted to re-acquaint myself with the events. The book surpassed my expectations! Not only does Gatrell give the chronology of the main events leading up to the arrest of the conspirators in early 1820 but he dissects the reasons why they felt impelled to plot to murder the whole British cabinet while it was at dinner one evening, and indeed sketch out (they were no more than back-of-an-envelope ideas) the subsequent coup d'etat in which they would form a provisional government. As we know, they were unsuccessful, and Gatrell is in his element when spelling out why. They were infiltrated by government spies and indeed were egged on by these spies because the government, Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, in particular, wanted to show to the general population that is was being conspired against and was able to overcome this. They wanted to make a bloody example (five of the conspirators were executed) to instill fear in those of a radical bent, and to show their supporters amongst the gentry that they were well in control of events. This is an excellent exposition of life in early nineteenth century England, the hardships being endured by those at the bottom of the pile of society, where they turned for the slightest hope of a better future, the clubs and meetings they attended, the pamphlets they read, the orators they went to listen to, and the repression which was clamped onto them. Gatrell even tells us on a couple of occasions that felony trials at the Old Bailey, the central criminal court (as it still is) took on average only 8 minutes to reach a verdict. The juries were selected specifically for positive outcomes (from the prosecution's point of view) and in any event rarely contained anyone of the social class most of the accused were part of. I can thoroughly recommend this book to those interested in English political and social history.

[Basil Bowdler]

One of the most empathetic bits of history I've ever read. Moving beyond dismissals of the Cato Street Conspiracy as a historical 'dead end', Gatrell uses a wealth of archival material and contemporary prints and engravings to emphasise the importance of one the greatest plots against the British state in history. The book really comes into its own, though, when Gatrell moves beyond the conspiracy to explore the world of radical politics and state repression in regency Britain, painting a very different picture to visions of sentimental gentility a la Austen/Bridgerton. Without ever glamorising the conspirators or their bloody design, Gatrell's book is a triumph of human sympathy and understanding.

[Simon Chipps]

4 stars
Really interesting history of the conspiracy. There aren't too many books on this piece of history and this book corrects that, painting a new and fuller history of the conspirators. Many of the previous works of history rely very heavily on the mad and bad caricatures of the time and this text contains far more nuance and context. The context and wider history it gives adds real depth without running too far down rabbit holes and testing the readers patience. A recommend.

[Steven Houchin]

I did not finish this book. Got about 20% thru. Although the Cato Street incident is interesting, and its causes compelling, the writing is extremely dry and has way too much detail. The author’s research is impressive, but it seems like he tries to include every small factoid he can. I’m sure this book will serve well as a reference for hard-core researchers of the period but is too much for a more casual reader.

[Michael O'Hanlon]

Desperate men driven by hunger attempt to overthrow the state. A timely exploration of a much overlooked and largely forgotten but nonetheless quite shocking incident in English history.

[Aidan Curran]

incredible piece of historical reading. wish it got more sociological instead of granular in its detail, as that is where it triumphs