William Davidson (conspirator)

William Davidson (1781-1820) was an African Caribbean radical executed by the British government

William was the illegitimate son of the Jamaican Attorney General by local African. At the age of fourteen he went to Glasgow to study law. While in Scotland he became involved in the movement for parliamentary reform. Hewas apprenticed to a Liverpool lawyer but soon ran away to sea. Later he was press ganged into the Royal Navy.

After his discharge he went back to Scotland. His father arranged for him to study mathematics in Aberdeen. Davidson tired of his studies and moved to Birmingham. Here he started a cabinet-making business. Davidson courted the daughter of a prosperous merchant. The father, disapproving of his daughter's relationship, suspected that Davidson was after her £7,000 dowry. He arranged for him to be arrested on a false charge. When Davidson subsequently discovered she had married someone else he tried to commit suicide by taking poison.

His cabinet-making business did not prosper and William decided to move to London. Here he met and married Sarah Lane. She was working-class widow with four children. They had two more children together had two more. Davidson became a Wesleyan Methodist teaching at the local Sunday School. However he was accused of attempting to seduce a female student and left this post.

Following the Peterloo Massacre, William Davidson became involved in radical politics again. In October 1819 Richard Carlile was found guilty of blasphemy and seditious libel and sentenced to three years imprisonment. Davidson said that this had caused him to lose his belief in God. He now joined the Marylebone Union Reading Society a club which offered a reading room of radical newspapers such as the Republican and the Manchester Observer for a subscription of twopence a week. He also read the works of Tom Paine.

Davidson met [[John Harrison] at the Marylebone Union. Harrison was a member of the Spencean Philanthropists in London. Davidson soon also became a Spencean. He met Arthur Thistlewood and aftera few months he became one of the Committee of Thirteen that ran the organisation.

In February 1820, George Edwards, a government provocateur, drew Davidson and Thistlewood and twenty seven other Spenceans into a plot to kill the government cabinet as they dined at Lord Harrowby's house at 39 Grosvenor Square on 23 February. Thistlewood selected Davidson as one of an Executive of Five charged with organising the assassinations.

Having worked for Lord Harrowby in the past Davidson knew some of the staff at Grosvenor Square. His job was to find out more details about the cabinet meeting. However, one of the servants told him that the Earl of Harrowby was not in London. When Davidson told Arthur Thistlewood of this, Thistlewood insisted that the servant was lying. The "assassination" should proceed as planned.

On the 23rd February the Cato Street conspirators met in a hayloft in Cato Street, near Grosvenor Square. However, there was no cabinet meeting: the Spenceans had been set up by George Edwards.

George Ruthven led thirteen police officers who stormed the hay loft. Several of the revolutuonaries refused to surrender their weapons and Arthur Thistlewood shot one of the police officers, Richard Smithers, dead. When the conspirators tried to escape Benjamin Gill hit Davidson on the wrist with his truncheon and he dropped his blunderbuss. Four other conspirators, Thistlewood, John Brunt, Robert Adams and John Harrison escaped through a window. However they were soon arrested thanks to a list George Edwards had supplied to the police.

Eleven men were charged with being involved in the Cato Street Conspiracy. Robert Adams agreed to give evidence against the other men in court, and charges against him weredropped. Davidson pleaded innocence and claimed the court was prejudiced against black people. However, there was evidence of his presence at the scene with a blunderbuss..

On 28 April 1820, William Davidson, James Ings, Richard Tidd, Arthur Thistlewood, and John Brunt were found guilty of high treason. The sentence was death. John Harrison, James Wilson, Richard Bradburn, John Strange and Charles Copper were also found guilty. However their death sentences were subsequently commuted to transportation for life.

William Davidson was executed at Newgate Prison on the 1 May, 1820.