2-703-815 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'An East End Episode: Scots Guards on Action at Sydney Street in 1911', (c1935). The Siege of Sidney Street (also known as the Battle of Stepney) in the East End of London, was a gunfight between a combined police and army force and two Latvian revolutionaries. It happened after a gang of heavily armed Latvian burglars shot five police officers who attempted to arrest them as they attempted to break into a jeweller's shop. Four of the policemen died. Three members of the gang were cornered at 100 Sidney Street and surrounded by the police. A gunfight ensued, but the police had inferior weapons and reinforcements in the form of soldiers from the Scots Guards were called in by order of Home Secretary Winston Churchill, who arrived to observe the scene himself. After six hours of fighting, the building caught fire and Churchill controversially gave the order that the Fire Brigade take no action. Two of the burglars' bodies were discovered in the burned out building but no trace of the third was ever found. From "Wonderful London, Volume 3", edited by Arthur St John Adcock. [The Fleetway House, London, c1935]