Siege of Sidney Street

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 revolutionaries.

[8] The Tottenham Outrage of January 1909, by two revolutionary Russians in London—Paul Helfeld and Jacob Lepidus—was an attempt to rob a payroll van, which left two dead and twenty injured.

The popular press reflected the opinions of many at the time;[10] a leading article in The Manchester Evening Chronicle supported the bill to bar "the dirty, destitute, diseased, verminous and criminal foreigner who dumps himself on our soil".

[11] The journalist Robert Winder, in his examination of migration into Britain, opines that the Act "gave official sanction to xenophobic reflexes which might ... have remained dormant".

[6][17][18] A leading figure in the group was George Gardstein, whose real name was probably Hartmanis; he also used the aliases Garstin, Poloski, Poolka, Morountzeff, Mourimitz, Maurivitz, Milowitz, Morintz, Morin and Levi.

[6] Another of the group's members was Karl Hoffman—whose real name was Alfred Dzircol—who had been involved in revolutionary and criminal activities for several years, including gun-running.

[30][31] The events in Houndsditch in December 1910 fell into the purview of the City of London service, and the subsequent actions at Sidney Street in January 1911 were in the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan force.

When they faced armed opponents—as was the case in Sidney Street—the police were issued with Webley and Bull Dog revolvers, shotguns and small-bore rifles fitted with .22 Morris-tube barrels, the last of which were more commonly used on small indoor shooting galleries.

[33][35][36] At the beginning of December 1910 Smoller, using the name Joe Levi, visited Exchange Buildings, a small cul-de-sac that backed onto the properties of Houndsditch.

He considers that those present consisted of Gardstein, Smoller, Peters and Dubof, with a second group in case the work needed to continue into the following day, which included among their number Sokolow and Svaars.

[32][50] The City of London police informed the Metropolitan force, as their protocol demanded, and both services issued revolvers to the detectives involved in the search.

[68][69] In the early hours of the morning of 17 December Milstein and Trassjonsky became increasingly concerned as Gardstein's condition worsened, and they sent for a local doctor, explaining that their patient had been wounded accidentally by a friend.

At midday the coroner reported the death to the local police who, led by Divisional Detective Inspector Frederick Wensley, went to Grove Street and discovered the corpse.

The picture, and descriptions of those who had helped Gardstein escape from Exchange Buildings, were distributed on posters in English and Russian, asking locals for information.

An estimated ten thousand people waited in St Paul's environs, and many local businesses closed as a mark of respect; the nearby London Stock Exchange ceased trading for half an hour to allow traders and staff to watch the procession along Threadneedle Street.

After the service, when the coffins were being transported on an eight-mile (13 km) journey to the cemeteries, it was estimated that 750,000 people lined the route, many throwing flowers onto the hearses as they passed.

[83] The following day Federoff, Peters and Dubof all appeared at the Guildhall police court where they were charged with being connected to the murder of the three policemen, and with conspiracy to burgle the jewellery shop.

Wensley and his colleagues visited the lodgings on Gold Street, Stepney and found knives, a gun, ammunition, false passports and revolutionary publications.

The case became connected in the press with the Houndsditch murders and the subsequent events at Sidney Street, although the evidence at the time for the link was scant.

[93] The posters of Gardstein proved effective, and late on New Year's Day a member of the public came forward to provide information about Svaars and Sokoloff.

This, along with the structure of the building, which had a narrow, winding stairwell up which police would have to pass, meant any approach to the gang members was too perilous to attempt.

[101][f] Some members of the police returned fire, but their guns were only effective over shorter ranges, and proved ineffective against the comparatively advanced automatic weapons of Svaars and Sokoloff.

[33][107] Churchill arrived on the scene at 11:50 am to observe the incident at first hand;[108] he later reported that he thought the crowd were unwelcoming to him, as he heard people asking "Oo let 'em in?

[33][g] In a subsequent letter to The Times, Churchill clarified his role while he was present: I did not interfere in any way with the dispositions made by the police authorities on the spot.

[113]Shooting between the two sides reached a peak between 12:00 and 12:30 pm, but at 12:50 smoke was seen coming from the building's chimneys and from the second floor windows; it has not been established how the fire was started, whether by accident or design.

I told the fire-brigade officer on my authority as Home Secretary that the house was to be allowed to burn down and that he was to stand by in readiness to prevent the conflagration from spreading.

[126] His presence was controversial to many and the Leader of the Opposition, Arthur Balfour, remarked, "He [Churchill] was, I understand, in military phrase, in what is known as the zone of fire—he and a photographer were both risking valuable lives.

The jury took fifteen minutes to reach the conclusion that the two bodies located were those of Svaars and Sokoloff, that Tucker, Bentley and Choate had been murdered by Gardstein and others during the burglary attempt.

[139][140] The MP Josiah C Wedgwood objected, and wrote to Churchill to ask him not to introduce the hard-line measures "You know as well as I do that human life does not matter a rap in comparison with the death of ideas and the betrayal of English traditions.

[6][15] Jacob Peters returned to Russia, rose to be deputy head of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police, and was executed in Joseph Stalin's 1938 purge.