On the evening of 23rd February 1820, a group of radicals met secretly in this house on Cato Street, just off the Edgware Road, with just one thing on their mind. To murder the entire British cabinet.
This was not the more famous Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot of 1605 where Guy Fawkes and his Catholic conspirators attempted to blow up the King as he opened Parliament.
No, this was a serious attempt to spark wholesale revolution in the country by killing the entire British cabinet in one go, leaving Britain leaderless, allowing anarchy to take its place.
The men were incensed by the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 when calvary charged protestors at a reform rally in Manchester killing 18 and injuring a hundred more.
Although reactionary fever had gripped Europe in the late 18th century, unrest had not really spread to Britain until the Peterloo Massacre.
This was the catalyst for change and the Cato Conspirators, a mixed, ragged bunch of men, hatched the plot to kill the political elite in revenge. They gathered at Cato Street to collect their weapons, and then planned to head to an address on Grosvenor Square, where they thought they would find the Prime Minister and his cabinet enjoying dinner.
As it was, they never got close to their target, as the group had been infiltrated by a government spy, and as they prepared in the loft for their dastardly deed, the house was stormed by Bow Street Runners, the forerunner of the London Police Force.
Even though some men escaped by jumping out the loft, they were eventually caught, rounded up, and five of the ringleaders were later executed outside Newgate Prison.
Image. Cato Street Conspiracy discovered here 23 February 1820This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.