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The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street
In December 1910, an armed gang of Latvian revolutionaries attempted to rob a jeweller's shop in Houndsditch, in the City of London. In their escape, they killed three policemen and crippled another two. After a manhunt of nearly three weeks, police were tipped off by an informant that two of the gang were hiding in a house in Sidney Street, in London's East End. So began the siege and a gun-battle involving both the police and the army, and more controversially Home Secretary Winston Churchill, which ended with a burning house and two dead gunmen. The final twist was to come with the release of the man who killed three English policemen and lived to become a mass murderer under Lenin and Stalin as head of the all-powerful Soviet Cheka. Donald Rumbelow has drawn upon rare documentary and eyewitness material, including files unavailable to previous historians, to present a lucid and exciting account of these extraordinary events and of the trial that followed. The result is all the more remarkable when one realises that the author rescued all the contemporary police documents and photographs about this case from destruction.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 8, 2016
A thrilling tale of Anarchists, terrorism, armed robbery and revolution played out in Edwardian East London.
Peter the Painter is the name most people know in connection with the Siege of Sidney street and learning more about his part in things was one of my reasons for reading this book. Possibly the reason for Peter's lasting legend is the fact that so little is known about him and he remains a mysterious character on the edge of the story.
The book covers events from the Tottenham Outrage, in which two armed men,Paul Hefeld and Jacob Lepidus stole the weekly wages as they were being delivered to a rubber factory, up to the trial of those arrested after the Siege of Sidney Street itself. The Tottenham robbery was committed very near to a police station and there was a subsequent 2 hour chase during which a tram was hijacked and later a horse drawn milk float was stolen. Hefeld and Lepidus fired off some 400 rounds of ammunition during the chase and killed a policeman and a 10 year old boy. The Siege followed the investigation into a failed robbery of a jeweller's shop in Houndsditch in which 3 police officers were killed and one of the robbers fatally wounded by one of his own gang members. Famously Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, arrived on the scene of the siege to boos from the watching crowd as a detachment of Scots Guards from the Tower of London and hundreds of police officers exchanged fire with two well armed men inside number 100.
The penultimate chapter covering the later lives of those involved is interesting but I was still left with a lot of questions unanswered.
I've long been interested in the story of the Siege of Sidney Street and the events that preceded it, the idea of shady conspirators and revolutionaries walking the streets of London always seemed to have a certain twisted romanticism, that view has been tempered slightly by more recent events and the current climate but maybe this just adds another layer of interest to the tale.
Rumbelow was himself a policeman and the way he lays out the evidence before us is sometimes a little dry, he is also prone to repetition, though that's not always a bad thing in such a complicated affair. If anything the main problem with the book is that Rumbelow just isn't a writer you would chose to read if you didn't have an interest in the story he's telling, he's not a bad writer, just not a very interesting one. I would love it if someone like Ben Macintyre wrote on the subject. In fact come on Ben, nothing has been written on the subject for some time and I'm sure a writer of your quality can dig up something a little extra...
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/lon...
Peter the Painter is the name most people know in connection with the Siege of Sidney street and learning more about his part in things was one of my reasons for reading this book. Possibly the reason for Peter's lasting legend is the fact that so little is known about him and he remains a mysterious character on the edge of the story.
The book covers events from the Tottenham Outrage, in which two armed men,Paul Hefeld and Jacob Lepidus stole the weekly wages as they were being delivered to a rubber factory, up to the trial of those arrested after the Siege of Sidney Street itself. The Tottenham robbery was committed very near to a police station and there was a subsequent 2 hour chase during which a tram was hijacked and later a horse drawn milk float was stolen. Hefeld and Lepidus fired off some 400 rounds of ammunition during the chase and killed a policeman and a 10 year old boy. The Siege followed the investigation into a failed robbery of a jeweller's shop in Houndsditch in which 3 police officers were killed and one of the robbers fatally wounded by one of his own gang members. Famously Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, arrived on the scene of the siege to boos from the watching crowd as a detachment of Scots Guards from the Tower of London and hundreds of police officers exchanged fire with two well armed men inside number 100.
The penultimate chapter covering the later lives of those involved is interesting but I was still left with a lot of questions unanswered.
I've long been interested in the story of the Siege of Sidney Street and the events that preceded it, the idea of shady conspirators and revolutionaries walking the streets of London always seemed to have a certain twisted romanticism, that view has been tempered slightly by more recent events and the current climate but maybe this just adds another layer of interest to the tale.
Rumbelow was himself a policeman and the way he lays out the evidence before us is sometimes a little dry, he is also prone to repetition, though that's not always a bad thing in such a complicated affair. If anything the main problem with the book is that Rumbelow just isn't a writer you would chose to read if you didn't have an interest in the story he's telling, he's not a bad writer, just not a very interesting one. I would love it if someone like Ben Macintyre wrote on the subject. In fact come on Ben, nothing has been written on the subject for some time and I'm sure a writer of your quality can dig up something a little extra...
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/lon...
August 1, 2011
excellent, just shows that extremism is not a 21century condition, this gives a thrilling account of a real event that now long forgotton, of real anarchists, hijacking trams, and having gunbattles in the streets of london with the police, the army, and the public.Well worth a read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews