An Authentic History of the Cato-Street Conspiracy: With the trials at large of the conspirators, for high treason and murder, a description of their weapons and combustible machines, and every particular connected with the rise, progress, discovery, and termination of the horrid plot — John Shaqi
An Authentic History of the Cato-Street Conspiracy: With the trials at large of the conspirators, for high treason and murder, a description of their weapons and combustible machines, and every particular connected with the rise, progress, discovery, and termination of the horrid plotWilkinson, George Theodore
History
An Authentic History of the Cato-Street Conspiracy: With the trials at large of the conspirators, for high treason and murder, a description of their weapons and combustible machines, and every particular connected with the rise, progress, discovery, and termination of the horrid plot
Wilkinson, George Theodore
Cato Street Conspiracy, 1820; Great Britain -- History -- George IV, 1820-1830; Thistlewood, Arthur, 1770-1820 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Murder) -- England -- London; Trials (Treason) -- England -- London
Ings is a fierce ruffian, a short stout man, apparently between 30
and 40, but of most determined aspect. His hands were covered with
blood; and as he stood at the bar, manacled to one of his wretched
confederates, his large fiery eyes glared round upon the spectators
with an expression truly horrible. The rest had nothing extraordinary
in their appearance. They were for the most part men of short stature,
mean exterior, and unmarked physiognomy.
The office was crowded with soldiers and officers, bringing in
arms and ammunition of various kinds, which had been taken on the
premises; muskets, carabines, broad-swords, pistols, blunderbusses,
belts, and cartouch-boxes, ball cartridges, gunpowder, (found loose
in the pockets of the prisoners), haversacks, and a large bundle of
singularly-constructed stilettoes. These latter were about 18 inches
long, and triangular in form: two of the sides being concave, and the
other flat; the lower extremity having been flattened, and then wrung
round spirally, so as to make a firm grip, and ending in a screw, as if
to fit into the top of a staff. Several staves indeed were produced,
fitted at one end with a screwed socket; and no doubt they were
intended to receive this formidable weapon.
The depositions of a number of officers, most of them wounded,
and several of the soldiers, having been taken, their evidence
substantiating the foregoing narrative, the prisoners were asked
whether they wished to say any thing? Cooper, and Davidson the
black, were the only ones who replied, and they merely appealed to
the officers and soldiers to say, whether they had not instantly
surrendered themselves. Ellis, the patrol, who received the murdered
body of his comrade Smithers in his arms, replied, that Davidson
had made the most resistance. At the moment when the lights were
extinguished, he had rushed out of the place, armed with a carbine, and
wearing white cross-belts. Ellis pursued him a considerable distance
along John-street; and, having caught him, they fell together, and in
the deadly struggle which ensued, Davidson discharged his carbine, but
without effect, and Ellis succeeded in securing him.
Captain Fitzclarence had seized and secured one or two of the prisoners
with his own hands, and he was not only much bruised, but his uniform
was almost torn to pieces.
We will here shortly digress, for the purpose of stating the immediate
circumstances which led to the frustration of the sanguinary plot, and
the arrest of its fiend-like authors.
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