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. In peacetime, it was more difficult to justify.[1]