upright=1.2|thumb|[[Winston Churchill (second from left), the then Home Secretary, at the siege]]

The siege of Sidney Street of January 1911, also known as the Battle of Stepney, was a gunfight in the East End of London between a combined police and army force and two Latvian anarchists. The siege was the culmination of a series of events that began in December 1910, with an attempted jewellery robbery at Houndsditch in the City of London by a gang of Latvian immigrants which resulted in the murder of three policemen, the wounding of two others, and the death of George Gardstein, a key member of the Latvian gang.

An investigation by the Metropolitan and City of London Police forces identified Gardstein's accomplices, most of whom were arrested within two weeks. The police were informed that the last two members of the gang were hiding at 100 Sidney Street in Stepney. The police evacuated local residents, and on the morning of 3 January a firefight broke out. Armed with inferior weapons, the police sought assistance from the army. The siege lasted for about six hours. Towards the end of the stand-off, the building caught fire; no single cause has been identified. One of the agitators in the building was shot before the fire spread. While the London Fire Brigade were damping down the ruins—in which they found the two bodies—the building collapsed, killing a fireman.

The siege marked the first time the police had requested military assistance in London to deal with an armed stand-off. It was also the first siege in Britain to be caught on camera, as the events were filmed by Pathé News. Some of the footage included images of the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. His presence caused a political row over the level of his operational involvement. At the trial in May 1911 of those arrested for the Houndsditch jewellery robbery, all but one of the accused were acquitted; the conviction was overturned on appeal. The events were fictionalised in film—in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The Siege of Sidney Street (1960)—and novels. On the centenary of the events two tower blocks in Sidney Street were named after Peter the Painter, one of the minor members of the gang who was probably not present at either Houndsditch or Sidney Street. The murdered policemen and the fireman who died are commemorated with memorial plaques.

Background

Immigration and demographics in London

thumb|upright=1.15|1900 map of Jewish East London. Circled on the left of the map is the location of the Houndsditch murders; circled on the right is the location of 100 Sidney Street.<br />The map is coloured to show the density of Jewish residents in East London: the darker the blue, the higher the Jewish population.

In the 19th century, the Russian Empire was home to about five million Jews, the largest Jewish community at the time. Subjected to religious persecution and violent pogroms, many emigrated and between 1875 and 1914 around 120,000 arrived in the United Kingdom, mostly in England. The influx reached its peak in the late 1890s when large numbers of Jewish immigrants—mostly poor and semi-skilled or unskilled—settled in the East End of London.

Sources

  • Siege of Sidney Street at Pathé News
  • Newsreels and documentaries on YouTube
  • Siege of Sidney Street at Huntley Film Archives
  • "Siege of Sidney Street", Witness History, on the BBC World Service
  • "The Siege of Sidney Street", History Workshop—Podcast on the Siege of Sidney Street featuring Andrew Whitehead and Constance Bantman