William Davidson (conspirator)

William Davidson (1781–1820) was a British African-Caribbean radical executed for his role in the Cato Street Conspiracy against Lord Liverpool's government in 1820.

Davidson was the illegitimate son of the Jamaican Attorney General and a local black woman. At the age of 14 he travelled to Glasgow to study law. In Scotland he became involved in the movement for parliamentary reform. He was apprenticed to a Liverpool lawyer, but ran away to sea. Later, he was press-ganged into the Royal Navy.

After his discharge, he returned to Scotland. His father arranged for him to study mathematics in Aberdeen. Davidson withdrew from study, moved to Birmingham, and started a cabinet-making business. He courted the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Her father suspected that Davidson was after her £7,000 dowry, and arranged for Davidson to be arrested on a false charge. When Davidson discovered she had married someone else he attempted suicide by taking poison.

Davidson's cabinet-making business failed, and he moved to London. He married Sarah Lane, a working-class widow with four children. They had two more children. Davidson became a Wesleyan Methodist, and taught at the Sunday School. However, he left after he was accused of attempting to seduce a female student.

Following the Peterloo Massacre, William Davidson became involved in radical politics again. In October 1819 Richard Carlile was found guilty of blasphemy and seditious libel, and sentenced to three years imprisonment. Davidson said that this had caused him to lose his belief in God. He joined the Marylebone Union Reading Society, a club that offered a reading room of radical newspapers such as the Republican and the Manchester Observer for a subscription of twopence a week. He also read the works of Tom Paine.

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