William J. Oliver

William J. Oliver, (?1774-1827) also known as ‘Oliver the Spy’, W.J. Richards and W. O. Jones, was a police informer and supposed agent provocateur at a time of social unrest, immediately after the Napoleonic Wars.

The Luddite protests of 1811–15 had been followed by the Spa Fields riots of 1816, the Blanketeers demonstration in March 1817 and soon afterwards the Pentridge or Pentrich rising, in June, and it was a time when many of Britain’s middle and upper classes saw a genuine risk of revolution.

The system of police informers was not new, but had largely escaped popular censure during the wars against France . Now, in peacetime, it was more difficult to justify.

Although some early newspaper reports described him as Welsh and a native of either Cardigan or Pembroke, in evidence to the Home Office he claimed to be from Pontesbury in Shropshire. He may have been baptised there in October 1774. He married Harriet Dear of Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire and they had a son.

He was described as ‘a person of genteel appearance and good address, nearly six feet high, of erect figure, light hair, red and rather large whiskers, and a full face, a little pitted with the small-pox. His usual dress . . . was a light fashionable coloured brown coat, black waistcoat, dark-blue mixture pantaloons, and Wellington boots.' By the time he came to public notice he had already been living for thirty years in London, and had worked as a carpenter and builder, and also latterly as a surveyor. He had not done well as a builder and he declared that he had lost money.

On 28 March 1817 he approached the Home Office offering his services as an informer. He was accepted by Lord Sidmouth and on 23 April began a tour of the North and Midlands, ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining petitions for Parliamentary Reform and representing himself as a 'Liberal patriot'. To the more staid reformers he represented himself as intent on organising a large petition, while insinuating that stronger measures might soon be necessary. To the more violent reformers, angry about the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, he spoke of the use of physical force in London, where seventy thousand men were allegedly ready to rise, as soon as plans were complete. Birmingham, Derby, Sheffield, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Leeds, Halifax, Royton, Middleton, Manchester, Barnsley and Nottingham were all visited, during which time he wrote reports for the Home Office.

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