Spa Fields Riots, March on the Tower of London, 1816
Who Fought
A section of the crowd led by Watson junior and Thistlewood, armed with weapons raided from a gunsmith's shop, faced troops stationed at the Royal Exchange and the Tower of London.
History & Significance
The Spa Fields riots were incidents of public disorder arising out of the second of two mass meetings at Spa Fields, Islington, England on 15 November and 2 December 1816.
The meetings had been planned by a small group of revolutionary Spenceans, who invited the popular radical speaker Henry Hunt to address the crowd. They hoped that the meetings would be followed by rioting, during which they would seize control of the government by taking the Tower of London and the Bank of England. The first meeting ended peacefully, with Hunt being elected to deliver a petition to the Prince Regent, requesting electoral reform and relief from hardship and distress. At the second meeting some of the Spenceans harangued the crowd before Hunt arrived and led away a section of it. The rioters raided a gunsmith's shop and exchanged gunfire with troops at the Royal Exchange. Other incidents took place at Snow Hill and Minories, but after soldiers refused to hand over the Tower of London the rioters dispersed.
In the aftermath of the riots, four leading Spenceans, John Hooper, Thomas Preston, Arthur Thistlewood and James Watson, were arrested and charged with high treason. Watson was tried first and the chief prosecution witness was John Castle, a government spy who had infiltrated the Spenceans. Castle's evidence was discredited by defence counsel and Watson was acquitted, at which point the prosecution presented no evidence against the other defendants and all four were released.
The ending of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 led to a sharp downturn in the British economy, bringing mass unemployment and distress. Radical leaders in London had organised petitions calling for parliament to relieve distress, but without success, and the Spenceans thought that more extreme action was needed. They called a mass public meeting at Spa Fields for 15 November 1816, with the object of marching to the Prince Regent's house to deliver their demands, which included universal (male) suffrage, annual parliaments, secret ballots and redistribution of land. They invited several leading radical speakers to attend, but Hunt was the only one to agree, and when he met the organisers prior to the meeting he persuaded them not to march to the house and to moderate their demands by dropping land reform. Hunt was a very popular speaker and the meeting was attended by around 10,000 people. He prevented any departure from the agreed plan and the meeting passed off peacefully, with Hunt and Sir Francis Burdett being elected to deliver the petition. However, when Hunt proposed that the meeting be adjourned until parliament next sat, Watson's son, also called James Watson, persuaded the crowd to support the earlier date of 2 December. Young Watson, Thistlewood and some of the other Spenceans had only reluctantly agreed to Hunt's terms for the first meeting and wanted the second to end in riots.
The ground they fought on
The site of Spa Fields Riots, March on the Tower of London, 1816 lies on Thames Group, bedrock that formed in the Eocene. The rock here is clay, silt, sand and gravel.
Thistlewood led an armed band from the Minories to the Tower of London, climbed a wall and invited the soldiers to surrender; they refused, and the most serious public disturbance in London since the Gordon Riots of 1780 gradually petered out, leaving behind a trail of skirmishes at the Royal Exchange, Snow Hill, Fleet Market and the Minories, a dead passer-by, a wounded gunsmith and a government case for high treason that collapsed when the chief prosecution witness was exposed as an agent provocateur.
- A passer-by was killed during the raid on the gunsmith's shop in Snow Hill; the gunsmith was wounded. Shots were exchanged at the Royal Exchange. A sailor, John Cashman, was later found guilty of theft of firearms and hanged on 12 March 1817.
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