Besieging Fake History

 Otto English’s description of the Siege of Sidney Street is laughably bad:

In a footnote he adds the following description of the event: 

Where to start with this?

Problem #1: English Confuses Two Separate Incidents

The gunfight on Sidney Street in January 1911 did not result in the deaths of three policemen. No policemen were killed during the Siege of Sidney Street. One policeman was seriously wounded in the gunfight – Sergeant Ben Leeson – and had to retire. He published his memoirs, Lost London, in 1934.

Three policemen - Sergeants Tucker and Bentley and Constable Choate – were murdered by the criminal gang but not during the Siege of Sidney Street. Their killings took place a month earlier, in December, in Houndsditch. 

Not to be confused with the Siege of Sidney St

Problem #2: English is Wrong About the Number of Gangsters Killed

Only two gangsters were killed in the gunfight, not three. Their names were Fritz Svaars and Joseph Sokoloff. One was killed by bullets and the other suffocated in the smoke. Another member of the gang – George Gardstein – had been killed by police during the earlier Houndsditch incident.

Problem #3: English is Wrong About Churchill's Initial Reaction

Churchill did not “hot foot” it down to Stepney when he heard about the gunfight. He was first notified of the battle when he was in his London home – 33 Eccleston Square. Churchill “hot footed it” to the Home Office. However, there were no additional updates there. It was only then that he decided to go see events for himself. 

Problem #4: Churchill Didn't Take a Photographer With Him

At one point English mentions the work of Churchill's greatest biographer -  Martin Gilbert. It seems that English didn't bother to read Gilbert's work though. If he had he wouldn't have made this mistake. Churchill did not take a photographer with him to Sidney Street. Churchill himself mocked the suggestion that he did:

I am sure he [Alfred Lyttelton] does not suppose there is a branch of the Home Office to organise the movements of photographers. It is the misfortune of a good many Members to encourter in our daily walks an increasing number of persons armed with cameras to take pictures for the illustrated Press which is so rapidly developing. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that his own Leader (Mr A.J. Balfour), when he risked his valuable life in a flying machine was the victim of similar publicity, but I certain should not go so far as to imitate the right hon. Gentleman (mr Lyttelton) by suggesting that he was himself concerned in procuring the attendance of a photographer to witness his daring feat in the way of aerial experience (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p.229)

Problem #5: Churchill Didn't Take Charge of the Police Operation

Churchill did not make a "show" of taking charge of events. To quote an eyewitness to the event, Sydney Holland:

The only possible excuse for anyone saying that [Churchill] gave orders is that [he] did once and very rightly go forward and wave back the crowd at the end of the road.... and you did also give orders that [he] and I were not to be shot in our hindquarters by a policeman who was standing with a 12-bore behind [us]” (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, pp.223-224).

  Churchill also was approached by a junior firefighter and asked to overrule a police command for the fire brigade to stay back. Churchill declined to do so (or rather, he instructed the Fire Brigade to wait) because of the danger from gunfire. But this hardly amounted to him taking command of the police operations. Donald Rumbelow, a former curator of the City of London’s Police Museum, wrote that:

"[Churchill] had no wish to take personal control but his position of authority inevitably attracted to itself direct responsibility. He saw that he would have done much better to have remained in his office but it was impossible to get into his car and drive away while matters were so uncertain and – he wrote later – so ‘extremely interesting’" (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.136; emphasis added).

Problem #6: English Gets the Cause of the Fire Wrong

English's attribution of the cause of the blaze to artillery shot is contradicted by two eyewitness accounts. According to firefighter Cyril Morris, the opinion of the fire brigade was that the fire was caused by a bullet hitting a gas pipe:

We found two charred bodies in the debris, one of them had been shot through the head and the other had apparently died of suffocation. At the inquest a verdict of justifiable homicide was returned. Much discussion took place afterward as to what caused the fire. Did the anarchists deliberately set the building alight, thus creating a diversion to enable them to escape? The view of the London Fire Brigade at the time was that a gas pipe was punctured on one of the upper floors, and that the gas was lighted either at the time of the bullet piercing it or perhaps afterwards by a bullet causing a spark which ignited the escaping gas (Morris, Fire!, p.39).

Journalist Philip Gibbs, who witnessed the event from a nearby pub, wrote that the fire was actually caused by the criminals themselves:

In the top-floor room of the anarchists' house we observed a gas jet burning, and presently some of us noticed the white ash of burnt paper fluttering out of a chimney pot.

"They're burning documents," said one of my friends.

They were burning more than that. They were setting fire to the house, upstairs and downstairs. The window curtains were first to catch alight, then volumes of black smoke, through which little tongues of flame licked up, poured through the empty window frames. They must have used paraffin to help the progress of the fire, for the whole house was burning with amazing rapidity (Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism, p.67).

In fact, it would have been extremely difficult for the Royal Artillery to cause the fire because they didn't shell the street. The fire started around 1 PM (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.136), and the artillery did not arrive until c.2:40 PM, around the same time Churchill left the scene. Martin Gilbert records Churchill's denial that he ever called up the artillery (Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p.224).

Churchill's testimony at the inquest. Note the artillery arrived after the fire had already started

Conclusion: Fake History

In the span of several sentences, English managed to make six incorrect assertions. Had he just looked at the Wikipedia page he could have avoided this. A poor effort for someone claiming to debunk “fake history”.  

Bibliography

Gibbs, Philip, Adventures in Journalism (Harper & Brothers, 1923)

Gilbert, Martin, Churchill: A Life (Pimlico, 2000)

Morris, Cyril Clarke Boville, Fire! (Blackie and Son Ltd, 1939)

Rumbelow, Donald, The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street (The History Press, 2009)