Collection of prints, broadsides, and ephemera relating to the Cato Street Conspiracy, 1820, 1960

A collection of 41 printed items that chronical the 1820 plot to murder the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, and his cabinet, so named for location where the thirteen conspirators meet near Edgware Road in London. The police learned of the plot through an informer, George Edwards, leading to a police trap in which one policeman, Richard Smithers, was killed, but the plotters were apprehended. Five other conspirators were transported to Australia. The collection includes portraits of the plotters, views of the Cato Street area and the interior of the loft where they were found, broadsides describing the events (some with images), and descriptions of the execution of five of the conspirators. The collection includes a series of portrait prints by Robert Cooper after drawings by Abraham Wivell that were published as illustrations to Thomas Kelly's "The Cato Street Conspiracy" (1820). A drawing signed "Peter Jackson, July 31, 1960" is a 20th-century view of the exterior of the London building where the conspirators were discovered