Peter the Painter, also known as Peter Piaktow (or Piatkov, Pjatkov, Piaktoff), was the leader of a gang of Latvian revolutionary criminals in the early 20th Century. After supposedly fighting in and escaping the Sidney Street Siege in 1911, he became an anti-hero in London's East End. He was never caught, and there is some question as to whether or not he actually ever existed.
In the wake of the Houndsditch Murders on 16 December 1910, one of the revolutionary gang involved was found dead at a flat at which Peter Piatkow had lived with Fritz Svaars aka Fricis Svars, both of whom were believed to be members of a Latvian radical group. Svaars was the cousin of Jacob Peters, another Latvian revolutionary. The Siege of Sidney Street was triggered when the police were informed that Svaars and his comrades were hiding out at 100 Sidney Street in January 1911.
There are a number of candidates for the true identity of Peter the Painter. He was frequently identified with Yakov Peters (Jacob Peters), who was tried but acquitted for his involvement in the affair and later became a Cheka agent after the Russian Revolution. Donald Rumbelow, for example, identifies Peters with the Painter.[1]
In 1988, based on research in the KGB archives, the anarchist historian Philip Ruff suggested Peter the Painter might in fact be Gederts Eliass[2], a Latvian artist involved in the 1905 Revolution and living in exile during the time of the Siege, returning to Riga after the 1917 Revolution.[3] More recently, Ruff has identified Peter the Painter with Janis Zhaklis, or Zhakles, another Latvian revolutionary. Like Peters, Zhaklis was a member of the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1905; among his revolutionary exploits was the liberation of Fritz Svaars from prison in Riga. Zhaklis associated with Eliass in exile in Finland, where they were involved together in the expropriation of a bank. He broke with the Social Democrats and became an anarchist. It is unclear what fate befell him after 1911.[4]
The type of gun Peter the Painter allegedly used at Sidney Street, a German Mauser C96 pistol, was also sometimes called a Peter the Painter after him, particularly in Ireland during the War of Independence and later.[5]
A social housing development built in 2006 by Tower Hamlets Community Housing on the corner of Sidney Street and Commercial Road has been called Peter House and Painter House, after Peter the Painter, provoking condemnation from a local councillor and the Metropolitan Police Federation.[6]
The song "Peter the Painter", by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, is unrelated, referring instead to the artist Peter Blake.