Siege of Sidney Street

views updated

Siege of Sidney Street in January 1911, a gun battle centring on 100 Sidney Street, in which members of an anarchist group suspected of murder and robbery were besieged by the police supported by the army; the then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, visited the site in person. The house itself was burnt to the ground (two bodies were found in the wreckage) and other gang members arrested, although the supposed leader, ‘Peter the Painter’, was never found or positively identified.