Axe, executioner's axe

This axe was made to execute the five ringleaders of the Cato Street conspiracy - Arthur Thistlewood, Richard Tidd, James Ings, William Davidson and John Thomas Brunt.

The men had plotted to assassinate the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers but were betrayed by a government spy. They were found guilty of conspiracy to subvert the constitution and to levy war: treasonable offences for which the sentence was drawing, hanging and quartering.

Although made for their execution at Newgate Prison, the axe was never used. Instead it was placed on the scaffold near the wooden block on which the men’s heads were severed by a masked man with a surgical knife after they had died on the gallows.