Siege of Sidney Street

Date: January 3, 1911 • Location: Bethnal Green, United Kingdom

A gun battle in the East End of London left two dead and sparked a political row over the operational involvement of Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary.

The siege of Sidney Street of January 1911, also known as the Battle of Stepney, was a gunfight in the East End of London between a combined police and army force and two Latvian revolutionaries. The siege was the culmination of a series of events that began in December 1910, with an attempted jewellery robbery at Houndsditch in the City of London by a gang of Latvian immigrants which resulted in the murder of three policemen, the wounding of two others, and the death of George Gardstein, a key member of the Latvian gang.