In person Thistlewood was tall and thin; his countenance was dark, but by no means expressive. He had no family by either of his wives, but a natural son took leave of him on the day before his execution.
Richard Tidd, singularly enough, was born at Grantham, in the same county with the birth-place of his leader, in the year 1773, and he was brought up to the trade of a shoemaker. At the age of sixteen years he quitted his master, and went to Nottingham, and having lived there until he had reached the age of nineteen, he proceeded to London. Here he appears to have taken considerable interest in the politics of the day; but having, in the year 1803, committed perjury, in swearing himself a freeholder, in order to enable him to vote for Sir Francis Burdett, as member for Middlesex, he fled to Scotland, to avoid prosecution. Having resided there during five years, he then returned to England, and after a short stay at Rochester, he proceeded once again to the metropolis, where he became a party to the plot for which Colonel Despard and others were executed, but escaped their fate, by being temporarily absent from town. During the war he enlisted into more than half the regiments of the crown, but he had no sooner received the bounty, than he deserted; and it appears most extraordinary that he should have so frequently escaped. In 1818 he commenced his last residence in London, and he then exhibited violent political feelings. Having become acquainted with Brunt, he was introduced by him to Edwards, and the assumed violence of the latter suiting his feelings well, he eagerly closed with every proposition which he made, however desperate it might be. It is not a little remarkable that he had always an impression on his mind that he should be hanged, and he frequently declared his belief to this effect to his friends. He left a wife and daughter behind him to deplore the truth of his prediction.
James Ings was the son of a respectable tradesman in Hampshire, and being possessed of a considerable property, when he came of age, he married a respectable young woman, and entered into business as a butcher, at Portsmouth.
Trade growing bad at the termination of the war, and his property having decreased, some of his tenements were sold, and he came up to London in 1818, with a little ready money, produced by the sale of a house, and opened a butcher's shop at the west end of the town. He could, however, get no business, and in a few months gave up the shop; and, with a few pounds he had left, he opened a coffee-house in Whitechapel.