At around 7:30 am on 3 January 1911, a quiet street in London’s East End exploded into a scene of chaos. A house on Sidney Street, Stepney, was surrounded by police officers, armed with revolvers. Inside, heavily armed revolutionaries—Latvian anarchists, to be precise—were holed up, determined to shoot their way out. By the time the smoke cleared, the siege would have made history, drawing in Scotland Yard, the military, and even a future Prime Minister.
How Did We Get Here?
To understand the gunfight at Sidney Street, we need to go back a few weeks earlier to the Houndsditch Murders. On 16 December 1910, a gang of Latvian anarchists attempted to rob an import business at 120 Houndsditch, not a jeweller’s shop as sometimes reported. This wasn’t some petty crime; these men were political radicals, part of a wave of Eastern European revolutionaries who had fled Tsarist oppression and sought refuge in London.
Their plan was audacious but sloppy. As they tried to tunnel into the shop from an adjacent house, they made too much noise, attracting the attention of neighbours. When local police officers arrived to investigate, the gang panicked. A gunfight broke out, leaving three policemen dead and two more critically wounded—the most serious loss of police lives in the UK until the IRA’s Hyde Park bombing in 1982.
The gang scattered, but police launched a massive manhunt. Eventually, they tracked two of the suspected gunmen to 100 Sidney Street, a lodging house in Stepney. The decision was made to take them down—violently if necessary.
The Siege Begins
On the morning of 3 January, police arrived at Sidney Street armed with Webley revolvers. Their opponents, however, were better prepared. The anarchists inside had Mauser pistols and possibly even a Winchester rifle—a serious advantage in firepower. When police officers attempted to enter, they were met with a hail of bullets, forcing them to retreat.
Realising that standard police tactics weren’t going to work, the Home Secretary—a certain Winston Churchill—was called in. Churchill, never one to miss a dramatic moment, personally arrived on the scene in a top hat and overcoat, ready to take charge. He authorised the deployment of Scots Guards, making the Sidney Street Siege one of the first times in modern British history that soldiers were used against civilians on home soil.
Gunfire, Fire, and a Home Secretary with a Flair for Drama
The battle raged for hours. Bullets zipped through the cold January air, shattering windows and embedding themselves in brickwork. The anarchists inside, despite being outnumbered, fought on fiercely. Then, around midday, flames began licking at the windows of 100 Sidney Street.
Churchill, now standing in full view of reporters and newsreel cameras (because of course he was), refused to let firefighters douse the flames while gunmen were still inside. It was, he argued, too dangerous. The fire spread, the roof collapsed, and when the blaze finally died down, two charred bodies were found inside.
A firefighter also lost his life when part of the burning building collapsed, a tragic but often overlooked casualty of the siege.
As for Peter the Painter, the supposed mastermind behind the gang, his fate remains one of history’s great mysteries. Some believe he never existed, while others suggest he was Jānis Žāklis, a Latvian anarchist who managed to escape and disappear.
Aftermath and Legacy
The Sidney Street Siege became a media sensation, largely thanks to Churchill’s theatrical involvement. Newsreels of the event were shown in cinemas, marking one of the first times a major crime incident had been captured on film.
Politically, the siege reinforced fears of anarchist violence in London, leading to tougher immigration laws. For Churchill, the event was both a triumph and an embarrassment—his eagerness to take charge earned him praise in some quarters but also accusations of showboating.
As for the Latvian anarchists, those who survived the siege were either arrested or fled the country. The Houndsditch Robbery and its bloody aftermath became one of the defining moments of pre-World War I Britain, a strange mix of political radicalism, crime, and early 20th-century media spectacle.
The Sidney Street Siege remains one of London’s most extraordinary crime stories. It wasn’t just a botched robbery and a dramatic shootout; it was a moment where revolutionaries clashed with the establishment, a harbinger of the violent political struggles that would dominate the 20th century. And at its centre, like a cigar-smoking action hero in a period drama, was Winston Churchill, looking on as history burned before him.
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