THE BOMB BRIGADE
The appalling explosion which checked the impending conflict between
the volunteers and the Leaguers, causing the latter to melt away
from Lincoln’s Inn and rush in surging hordes in the direction of
Clerkenwell, was the most terrible outrage that had yet befallen the
alarmed capital. It was not without precedent; indeed precedent was, in
some respects, carefully followed by the organisers of this desperate
attempt to release the imprisoned incendiaries. Nearly fifty years
earlier the prison wall had been blown down for a somewhat similar
purpose by a desperate gang of Fenians. The effect of that diabolical
outrage on the policy of Mr Gladstone is matter of history. On that
occasion many houses in Corporation Lane were partially wrecked, four
persons were instantly killed, and some forty others were maimed or
injured in various degrees. The immediate object of the prisoners,
however, was not attained, for, though a considerable breach was made
in the prison wall, none escaped.
On the present occasion the damage to life and limb was somewhat less;
only two were killed, and thirty-one injured, but the destruction to
property was far more extensive than before. The latter fact was, to
some extent, explained when it was ascertained that there had been in
reality two explosions, different in character, but rapid in succession.
Early in the afternoon all the prisoners had been taken into the
prison-yard for exercise, as usual. Raggett, one of the alleged
incendiaries (son of the half crazy shoemaker), was observed to fall
out shortly after a small indiarubber ball was thrown over the wall.
The ball was supposed to have been thrown by a street boy, and a warder
threw it back, not dreaming that it was in reality a pre-concerted
signal. Raggett was ordered to join the ranks, but made some excuse
about a nail in his boot hurting him, and obstinately kept aloof.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, two men, having the
appearance of chimney-sweeps, and whose faces were covered with soot,
were observed in the act of wheeling a hand-truck on which was a
large barrel. Fitted in the barrel was a funnel, or tun-dish, which
undoubtedly held a fuse. The supposed chimney-sweeps, having wheeled
the truck rapidly but carefully to a selected position in close
proximity to the prison wall, suddenly deserted it, and disappeared
immediately and without question in the adjacent slums. A few people,
moved by a fatal curiosity, stopped and gazed at the truck; and a
policeman, noticing first the loiterers and then the barrel, approached
slowly, and perhaps with some suspicion. Before he could reach the
spot, a terrific flame burst from the ignited gunpowder, and with a
rending crash a large section of the prison wall fell outward into the
street. The unfortunate constable, struck on the temple by a broken
paving-stone, fell dead, and by his side a woman, whose face was
covered with blood, stumbled with outstretched arms into the gutter
and lay there prostrate. Bricks, stones, and fragments of masonry fell
in all directions, beating down the shrieking, panic-stricken people
as they fled through the adjacent streets. Crash after crash followed,
as the walls of other buildings tottered and collapsed; then, as a
crowning climax of the outrage, another distinctive detonation came
from the Sessions-house, designed, no doubt, to distract attention
from the prison. It served, unquestionably, to facilitate the escape
of Raggett and three of his fellow-prisoners, who scrambled over the
fallen masonry and got free before the dazed and stupefied warders
could realise what was happening. Two warders and three prisoners lay
wounded and bleeding in the prison-yard.
In the neighbouring Sessions-house at the time there were only three
cleaners and a man who was employed as usher when the Court was
sitting. This man subsequently described what he saw. Awed by the
gunpowder explosion and the nerve-destroying sounds that followed it,
and ere he had time to rush into the street, he suddenly heard a crash
of broken glass, as some hard object was hurled through one of the
windows of the Court. As it fell on the floor a blue flame shot into
the air; there was an ear-splitting report. The building seemed to
rock, huge beams gave way and fell, and every window with its framework
was blown outwards. A cloud of dust and powdered mortar filled the air.
The women lay huddled and screaming in a heap, and the usher, with a
gash in his cheek caused by splintered wood, staggered back against the
wall, gazing helplessly upon the shattered seat of justice.
* * * * *
In the midst of the welter that followed the foregoing catastrophe, the
Cabinet, at a hastily-summoned meeting, at last decided on something
in the nature of drastic action. Since the suppression of the Leaguers,
for the time being at any rate, was quite impossible, it was resolved
to raid the offices of the _Epoch_, which had become more and more
revolutionary in its articles, and was held by the police to have
indirectly incited the recent outrage. It certainly was significant
that this very moment was chosen for publication of a sketch of the
career of Jack the Painter, who was extolled by the _Epoch_ as a hero
and martyr for his attempts to destroy certain of the royal dockyards
in the time of the American war with the mother country. The _Epoch_
dwelt on the brutality of the punishment dealt out to this man, who
was convicted at Winchester in 1777, and sentenced to be executed at
the gate of Portsmouth dockyard. There the wretched man was drawn up
by pulleys to a gibbet sixty-four feet high, made of the mizzenmast of
the frigate _Arethusa_, higher than Haman hanged on the gallows he had
meant for Mordecai. His body afterwards hung in chains at the entrance
to the harbour for several years. This, and many another barbarous
punishment, said the _Epoch_, was ruthlessly carried out in the sacred
name of Justice. “Let Justice be purified by the shedding of blood--an
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, exacted by a counter-claim which
no statute of limitations should avail to bar.”
Further articles containing like passages were found ready in type
when the police in great force made a sudden descent on the offices of
the journal; but, apparently, the contingency had been anticipated. No
resistance was offered by the staff, but after only a day’s interval
the _Epoch_ reappeared, published at another printing-office, and
printed this time in blood-red ink.
The Christmas holidays were drawing near; and, impressed by the
lamentable condition of his province, the newly-created Archbishop of
London issued a pastoral, which was read from hundreds of pulpits to
the assembled congregations. His lordship called upon all faithful
children of the Church to keep the approaching Bank holiday, not as a
day of feasting and pleasure, but as one of solemn prayer and national
humiliation, to the end that the divine mercy might be vouchsafed
and the tyranny of the time be ended speedily. He reminded Churchmen
that, though too much ignored, the 26th December was the great
commemoration-day of the first Christian martyr--Stephen, a man full
of faith; Stephen who fearlessly denounced a stiff-necked generation,
uncircumcised in heart and ears, rebels against the Just One, of whom
they had been the betrayers and murderers. Christians, so-called,
said the Archbishop in this modern time were not less betrayers and
murderers of the Just One. They had received the law by the disposition
of angels and had not kept it. “Because there is wrath, beware lest
he take thee away with his stroke; then a great ransom cannot deliver
thee.”
This episcopal admonition made a deep impression. At St Stephen’s
Church in particular special services were arranged, and a great
street procession was organised for the approaching Bank holiday. But
while the pastoral counsel was adopted in many of the metropolitan
churches, a spirit of rebellion sprang up in other quarters, and there
was much resentment at what was described as an act of ecclesiastical
dictation. The publicans, in particular, were furious at the idea of
their custom being diminished on one of the great drinking days of
the Christian year. In all these past months of stress and trouble
the trade had reaped huge gains from the disorder that prevailed. The
swing-doors of their Temples of Bacchus at nearly every street corner
were never still. Men and women thronged the showy bars; they drank,
and drank again, the flaring lights shining on their dulled eyes and
sodden faces. They talked, maundered, shouted choruses, quarrelled,
fought; the beer engines poured forth unending streams into innumerable
“pewters” and the money poured into the tills. Humanity sank deeper and
deeper into the slough of despond and the slime of self-indulgence;
and the brewers and publicans reaped their rich reward as licensed
purveyors of poison for the people.