Tottenham Outrage

The Tottenham Outrage is the name given to an armed robbery and double murder which took place in Tottenham, Middlesex, and Walthamstow, Essex, on 23 January 1909. It was perpetrated by two anarchists, Paul Helfeld and Jacob Lepidus (sometimes spelled Lapidus), both Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. Both anarchists later committed suicide.

The Tottenham Outrage became a cause célèbre in Edwardian London, with the route of the funeral cortège of the policeman murdered in this act being lined by a crowd of half a million people. The event led to the creation of the King's Police Medal, to reward the gallantry of the police officers involved. It also reinforced a feeling of xenophobia, a fear of immigrants, and further reinforced anti-Semitic views which would be further inflamed by the 1911 Sidney Street Siege.

Before the robbery, Helfeld worked at the Schnurmann Rubber Factory in Chesnut Road, Tottenham, for a short period of time. While working there, Helfeld observed that the weekly collection of wages occurred every Saturday morning. Each week, the wages clerk, Albert Keyworth, aged 17, was taken in the factory owner's car by Joseph Wilson to a bank in South Hackney to collect about £80 in gold, silver and copper.

At 10:30 a.m. on Saturday 23 January 1909, Helfeld and Lepidus, respectively armed with FN M1900 and Bergmann 1894 semiautomatic pistols, waited on either side of the entrance to the factory awaiting the car holding the wages. Keyworth left the car and while proceeding to the factory was seized by Lepidus, who tried to snatch the bag, and during the following struggle they both ended up on the ground, whereupon Joseph Wilson joined the fight and restrained Lepidus.

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