THE FENIAN TROUBLES.
My year of office as Mayor was made very anxious by the aggressive
tactics of the Fenian agitators. A bomb was placed at the side door of
the Town Hall, and exploded, breaking in the door, destroying the
ceiling and window of the mayor's dressing-room and doing considerable
damage to the furniture. The bomb consisted of a piece of iron gas
piping about 3 inches in diameter and 18 inches long, filled with
explosives and iron nails. The miscreants, after lighting the fuse, ran
away; but the Town Hall was watched by a double cordon of police; the
first took up the chase, the second joined in, and the two men
eventually jumped into a canal boat filled with manure, and were then
secured. They were tried, and sentenced to fourteen years' penal
servitude. They were two Irish stokers, mere tools in the hands of an
Irish-American, who had planned the blowing up of all our public
buildings, but managed to get away. An attempt was also made on the
Custom House, but failed.
The Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, was much exercised by the
position of things in Liverpool, and telegraphed to me enquiring how
many troops were available in Liverpool. I replied fifty, of whom
twenty-five were raw recruits. Next morning the General in command at
York called at the Town Hall, and stated that he had been instructed to
send 2,000 infantry, and two squadrons of cavalry, and wished me to
arrange for their accommodation. He startled me by adding, "I should
like to send you a Gatling gun; they are grand things for clearing the
streets." I felt this was getting serious. I assured him that we did not
apprehend any grave trouble, or disturbances, and if it was known that I
had consented to a Gatling gun being sent for the purpose he mentioned,
I should make myself most unpopular, and that I hoped that the troops
would be sent down gradually so as not to cause alarm. We arranged to
place some of the troops at Rupert Lane, and some in volunteer
drillsheds, but several hundred had to be quartered in the guard ship on
the Mersey. All this was carried out so quietly that no notice of it
appeared in the newspapers. We were congratulating ourselves upon the
success of our scheme, when I received a note from Lord Chief Justice
Coleridge, then presiding at the assizes, requiring my presence at St.
George's Hall. I immediately obeyed the summons, and was ushered into
the judge's private room. The Chief Justice at once stated that he was
informed that a large number of troops had been brought into the town,
without his sanction as the Judge of Assize. In vain I pleaded my
ignorance that his Lordship's permission was necessary, that the troops
had not been requisitioned by me, but had been sent by orders of the
Home Secretary. His Lordship was much annoyed and said I ought to have
known that a Judge of Assize was the Queen's representative, and no
troops could be moved during an assize without the judge's sanction. His
anger was however short-lived; he came to dine with me at the Town Hall
the same evening, and made a capital speech, as he always did, and the
morning's episode was not again mentioned.
Things in Liverpool continued very unsettled and anxious, and to add to
the difficulty a strike began. We were obliged to show the troops; the
cavalry paraded the line of docks for two or three days, producing an
excellent effect.
The Home Secretary was very anxious, and wrote to me long letters. The
chief constable, Major Greig, was away ill, and this threw much
responsibility upon the mayor. We were able to collect much information,
which led to the arrest of many notable Fenians, and we stopped the
importation of several consignments of infernal machines. An amusing
incident occurred in connection with one of these. We were informed that
a consignment of thirty-one barrels of cement was coming from New York
by a Cunard steamer, each barrel containing an infernal machine. We
placed a plain clothes officer in the Cunard office to arrest whoever
might claim the cement, which, however, no one did, and we took charge
of the casks as they were landed. Several casks were sent up to the
police office and were there opened and the machines taken out. I was
asked to go down to see the machines, and found them lying on a table in
the detective office, several police officers being gathered round. I
lifted the cover of one; a rolled spill of paper was inserted in the
clock work; this I withdrew, and immediately the works started in
motion, and with equal rapidity the police vanished from the room. I
simply placed my hand on the works and stopped them, and invited the
police to return. On unrolling the spill of paper I found it to be one
of O'Donovan Rossa's billheads; he was at that time the leader of the
Fenian brotherhood in America.
The machines were neatly made; on the top were the clock works, which
could be regulated to explode at a given time the six dynamite
cartridges enclosed in the chamber below.
Having taken all the machines out of the casks of cement, the difficulty
arose what to do with them, and eventually we chartered a tug and threw
them overboard in one of the sea channels.
An amusing incident occurred showing how excited public feeling was at
the time. I was sitting one morning at the table in the Mayor's parlour
in the Town Hall, when I heard a crash of broken glass, and a large,
black, ugly-looking object fell on the floor opposite to me. I rang the
bell and the hall porter came in; I said, "What is that?" "A bomb!" he
exclaimed, and immediately darted out of the room, but he had no sooner
done so than he returned with a policeman, who exclaimed, "Don't be
alarmed, sir, it's only an old pensioner's cork leg." A crowd had
collected in the street outside, in the centre of which was the old
pensioner, who was violently expostulating. On ordering the police to
bring him inside, he said he was very sorry if he had done wrong, but he
was so angry at the many holes in the street pavements, in which he
caught his wooden leg, that he had adopted this rather alarming method
of bringing his complaint under the notice of the Mayor and the
authorities. The cork leg, both in form and colour, much resembled a
bomb made out of a gas pipe, of which we had seen several at the Town
Hall.
At the end of my year of office I received the thanks of the Home
Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, for my assistance and, at his request,
I pursued enquiries in America which had an important bearing in
checking the Fenian movement at that time.
[Illustration: LIVERPOOL TOWN HALL.]