The police interviewed Émile's boss, Dupuy, on rue de Rocroy. He described the two errands that Émile had completed on the morning of November 8. Dupuy believed that he had taken forty-five minutes to get to his stop on boulevard de Courcelles, and then (believing he had begun with the latter errand) twenty-seven minutes to reach rue Tronchet, near the church of the Madeleine. He would have spent no more than ten minutes combined at the two addresses. Simply put, it seemed impossible that he could have somehow—between errands—gone back up to his room in Montmartre to pick up a bomb, returned to central Paris, and placed it in front of the door of the Carmaux Mining Company on avenue de l'Opéra. Moreover, upon his return to work, Émile had indeed seemed calm and maintained this demeanor when Dupuy returned with a newspaper describing the horrific explosion in the police station. He had left work at 6 P.M. as usual. Émile Henry was dropped from the list of suspects.
Also on the list was Rullière, the nineteen-year-old son of the mistress of Ravachol, a young man known as "the son of Ravachol." The container for the bomb resembled those used by Ravachol, arousing interest in Rullière's whereabouts. Among the other suspects, seven could be designated only as X because their names were unknown, although fairly complete descriptions were available for six of them, including a certain "bird merchant on the avenue de l'Opéra, small, graying, 48 to 50 years of age," and his female companion, "small, about 40 years old, brown hair, with a black hat and scarf." A shoemaker, a porcelain decorator, and a female embroiderer were hauled in; they had attended anarchist meetings. Foreigners suspected of anarchism appeared on the list, among them two Italians, a Belgian student, a couple of German subjects, an Austrian, and a Swiss, as well as various provincial anarchists and a certain Puchel known as "Choucroutemann," presumably an Alsatian who liked to eat—especially choucroute, sauerkraut—and who had turned up in Paris nine days before the explosion. Along with an Italian anarchist known as "Macaroni," Puchel disappeared immediately after the incident.
Stories came forth, possible explanations. A merchant had observed two young men about nineteen years of age strolling in front of the building at number 11. They had paused to look at a combination cane and pistol in the window of the store, so the merchant continued to watch them until they left. Several passersby had been struck by "the attitude" of a rather slight young man who walked out of the building.
The police followed up on every possible lead, even the highly improbable ones. One story had Malato and the brothers Placide and Remi Schouppe deciding to attack the Carmaux Mining Company because they assumed that the police would think it the work of miners (this made little sense, in that anarchists eagerly accepted responsibility for their violent acts). Gustave Mathieu, believed to have helped Ravachol construct bombs, would have made the "engine," with the help of a certain Madame Mollet, who carried the bomb. When police later interviewed the wife of Ortiz, the anarchist-burglar, she claimed that her husband had carried out the attack, and this story had begun to circulate among anarchists. The source was hardly credible—Madame Ortiz was dead drunk at the time.
The massive police search for the bomber reflected the new investigating techniques that emerged in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Policing had become more scientific, emphasizing attention to tiny but significant clues. The fictional investigator Sherlock Holmes (who first arrived on the British scene in 1887) epitomized this new approach. The interviewing of suspects and witnesses had become more systematic. The press, with close ties to the prefecture of police, was able to follow major cases with often surprising accuracy, thanks to inside information and leaks, some of which were purchased. The success of memoirs published by prefects of police and of both newspaper serials and popular novels focused on crime revealed the intense public interest in this realm. Readers, already woozy from stories of the spectacular scandals involving leaders of the Third Republic, could turn their attention to events even more dramatic and threatening: the anarchist bombings.
Meanwhile, the anarchist press smirked about the "firecracker" that had exploded. In Père Peinard, Émile Pouget described 11, avenue de l'Opéra as one of the most elegant corners of a "neighborhood of aristos ... fancy digs, goddammit! Marble everywhere, gilded things everywhere else, and damned soft rugs on every stairway—a lot softer than the straw mattresses of prol[etarian]s." Père Peinard could not help but note that the sergeants who arrived on the scene had refused to carry the package because "it was not done to have a policeman in uniform actually carrying a package." And as for the explosion, "Oh, hell, here was a blow that rocked the whole miserable joint off its hinges. The swine were no longer living!" The government had thought that subjecting Ravachol to the guillotine had put an end to bombings, but "now the really good stuff will begin." Apparently the dynamite missing from Soisy had been found: "It appears so ... a thousand bombs!"
In the opinion of most people of means, anarchism amounted to nothing less than a philosophy of murder and theft. They considered all anarchists to be cruel, hateful people who killed the elderly to steal from them, or robbed graves—as Ravachol did—while preparing "diabolical bombs intended to blow the bourgeoisie into another world." Moreover, the theft of dynamite earlier that year from Soisy-sous-Étiolles was common knowledge. It was out there somewhere. Some anarchists had told the compagnons that they were combatants in a modern war. They should prepare their dynamite; the moment was not far off when they would be called upon to use it. An anarchist newspaper helpfully provided the formula for mercury fulminate, a great quantity of which could be made for one and a half francs, to which could be added mercury, azotic acid, and alcohol baumé. If one wanted to blow up the theater of Odéon, the Opera, or a café, here was how to do it. The paper illustrated how to make a bomb, with mercury fulminate at the bottom, as if it was as simple and normal a task as making a Provençal beef stew. And if the dynamiter wanted to blow up your house? "Nothing easier!" He could hide a small bomb in his pocket, find a pretext to walk in, and leave behind "this trinket which appears so harmless ... a quarter of an hour later, you blow up."
The bomb in the police station carried Paris's panic to a new level. Big business and the grand cafés worried about its economic impact, especially with the Christmas holidays little more than a month away. Some wealthy people were afraid to go to theaters, restaurants, shops, or the Bois de Boulogne, where they believed they saw an anarchist behind every tree. According to rumors, bombs were about to explode in churches, poison had been prepared for reservoirs, and the Black Death or cholera was about to descend. (The most recent epidemic of the latter had passed through only eight years earlier.) Police complained that current law limited their ability to repress the anarchists. They feared the possible reconstitution of militant groups such as the Avengers of Ravachol.
In various locations in and around Paris, pranksters planted discarded sardine cans, which were taken to be small explosive devices. From March to November 1892 about three hundred "bombs" were found and transported—very carefully—to the municipal laboratory for analysis. There, a special device had been built in the basement to absorb the shock of an explosion. The "bombs," such as the six that arrived on the morning of November 15, were detonated here. Half of them, like the can found at Les Halles that was filled with mere gravel, were the work of mischief makers. Three turned out to be "infernal machines," though minor ones. But the threat continued. Just after Christmas, a small bomb exploded in the barracks of the prefecture of police.
In mid-December Rose Caubet Henry cleaned out her son's room on rue Véron. She told the concierge that she would return later in the week with a mover from Brévannes. A wagon carried away Émile's few possessions, under the watchful eyes of policemen, who followed it until it passed beyond the fortifications.
Earlier that month, Émile had written a letter from London to the compagnon in Orléans to whom he had earlier sent the letter for Dupuy. He apologized for his long silence, caused by many "hassles." Now he was on the eve of a tri
p, probably a very long one. Émile promised that when they next met, he would relate his "peregrinations" from city to city. His friend certainly had learned from newspapers the details of "the pretty little dance" that had killed five policemen in Paris. Émile had learned from a journalist the day after the explosion that his brother was in prison in Bourges and that the police were looking for Émile himself. Why? He had no idea but was sure that the cops would come to visit him soon. His employer must have told the police where he had been living because no other person knew of his address in Paris (he added, "A serious anarchist knows how to stay hidden in order to be ready to act quickly when the moment comes"). Therefore Émile had left without fanfare and headed for London.
Émile told his friend that he had a little money and would leave London in four or five days. The place bored him. He would go to Liverpool and await the next boat for New York. After about six months in America, he would return to France. He swore that he would make the bourgeois pay for all of their persecutions and that "until the day that I fall in this battle, I will bite as long as I still have teeth." To his dear friend he said goodbye, and perhaps adieu. He hoped to write from Liverpool, and Émile assured him that no matter where he was, he would have in his heart only love for anarchism and ferocious hatred for "our enemies."
But Émile remained in London. It may have been dull, but it was safe. Police repression in continental European states had turned London into something of a refuge for anarchists. The chief police inspector, the Irishman William Melville, estimated that about a thousand foreign anarchists resided in the city. They had come in waves: the French after the Commune, the Germans in the wake of Bismarck's crackdown on the socialists in 1878, the Italians after the first attempt to kill King Umberto I in 1878, and the Russians after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. The number had increased after Switzerland became less hospitable in the 1880s, alarmed by the anarchists' incendiary publications and revolutionary activism and pressured by the French government. About four hundred French anarchist exiles lived in London during the early 1890s. Their movements were frequent and unpredictable; therefore the chief inspector's count was simply an estimate (and did not include, in principle, various criminals on the lam, hangers-on, and other refugees passing through).
Italian anarchists, of whom there were several hundred among the five thousand Italians living in London, led the way in activism. Many lived in Soho (a prime location for the down-and-out), Holborn, Whitechapel, or Clerkenwell (northeast of Bloomsbury), or around Fitzroy Square. Extremely poor, they were squeezed together in miserable housing. Many Italian anarchists worked, when they could, in the trades they had learned in Italy, particularly as shoemakers, tailors, or waiters; some taught Italian. One Italian priest noted that he feared the Italian secret societies and that, of the three thousand Italians living in his parish, only about twelve hundred went to church.
More interested in the philosophy of anarchism, the German anarchists seemed less dangerous because few were tempted by "propaganda by the deed." They were followed in number by the Russians, the Italians, the French, the Belgians, the Dutch, and the Spanish. Although drawn from a variety of countries, the anarchists tended to stay in the same neighborhoods, seeking the solidarity of like-minded souls, something to eat, and perhaps even the possibility of a job.
Great Britain had suffered terrorist attacks from the Fenians, the Irish nationalist organization, but there were few British anarchists, despite the publication of the anarchist newspaper Commonweal (which began in 1885) and Kropotkin's Freedom (which debuted the following year). They included David Nicoll, who wrote "The Anarchists are 'criminals,' 'vermin,' 'gallows carriers.' Well, shower hard names upon us! Hunt us down like mad dogs! Strangle us like you have done our comrades [in Spain], Shoot us down as you did the strikers at Fourmies, and then be surprised if your houses are shattered with dynamite." After eighteen months in prison, he continued to write and publish on behalf of anarchism. After one bombing in which innocent people were killed, he wrote that he could not "feel the least pity for those who, living in luxury and splendor, never give a thought to those on whose labors their blissful existence is built."
Immigration played a large role in this "first wave" of modern terrorism, as political refugees moved from one country to another during the closing decades of the nineteenth century—particularly to those places willing to provide sanctuary, notably Great Britain, Switzerland, and the free city of Tangier in North Africa, as well as Egypt. Immigrants provided recruits to the anarchist cause. Italian anarchism was carried to Argentina by immigrants and temporary migrants, including the "swallows"—seasonal workers who returned home each year to Italy. One song sung by Italian anarchists included the line "The entire world is my country." In Europe, only Russia required a passport for entry.
Indeed, the rapid improvement in transportation (of news and goods and people) was largely responsible for the internationalization of anarchism. Shipping lines stretched across oceans, making Barcelona, Marseille, and Buenos Aires important anarchist hubs. Anarchists also found havens in the United States, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Persia, the Ottoman territories in the Balkans, China, Japan, India, the Philippines, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Russian anarchists operated in France, Belgium, Austria, Japan, and Hong Kong, as well as in Great Britain. Their French counterparts could be found in Spain, Argentina, and even Ethiopia; German anarchists showed up in Britain, the United States, and Australia. The burgeoning popular press of the 1880s carried word of attacks and the ensuing police repression across the world, drawing ever greater numbers to the cause.
In Great Britain, terrorism and the presence—permanent or temporary—of foreign nationals became linked in the popular imagination. During the 1870s, political refugee clubs in London grew in number, and by the time of the Congress of Socialist Revolutionaries and Anarchists in London in 1881, a secret "black international" (the color was derived from the anarchist flag) was rumored to be planning attacks throughout Europe. During the 1880s, immigration to London increased, particularly as Jews fled persecution in the Russian Empire. There were anarchists among them. The steady stream of immigrants generated xenophobia even in this World City, accentuated by a fear that the newly arrived might convert British workers to socialism or anarchism.
The Russian, French, Italian, Belgian, and Spanish governments, among others, viewed the anarchists in London with consternation and alarm, believing that London had become the center of a worldwide anarchist conspiracy. They resented how Britain tolerated the presence of dissidents and gave asylum to political refugees unless they stood accused of a specific crime. After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, French and Russian officials pressured the British police to adopt a more aggressive attitude and urged politicians to pass more restrictive laws, but the British government rejected these overtures, viewing them as an attempt to meddle in Britain's domestic affairs. Continental governments complained that British authorities refused to cooperate in the surveillance of anarchists. When in 1891 the Italian ambassador triumphantly showed Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister, an admission ticket for a dance sponsored by the anarchist Autonomy Club to raise money for anarchist propaganda in Italy, the Italian hoped that the Briton would at last grasp the gravity of the threat. But Salisbury dismissed the man, telling him that dancing seemed an unlikely way to start a revolution.
But anarchists in London were in fact being watched. The Special Branch of Scotland Yard, created in 1883 to prevent Fenian bombings, had by the late 1880s turned its attention to foreign anarchists in that city. As it would after World War I, the Special Branch coordinated the policing of anti-colonialists in Britain, the lands that constituted its empire, and other countries. Agents referred to themselves as "Anarchist-hunter [s]" and infiltrated anarchist groups. The officers of Scotland Yard knew well that they had to watch the most prominent anarchists in London themselves and not merely rely on information provided by agents, many of whom
were themselves foreigners trying to make ends meet. Knowing that they were the targets of surveillance strengthened the solidarity and determination of refugee anarchists living in London, though the city still remained generally more hospitable than any other in Europe.
As anarchism globalized, so did international cooperation to police its adherents. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium were the first to establish formal agreements to combat terrorism together. As part of this effort, police agents from France, Italy, Russia, and other countries were dispatched to Britain, where they infiltrated anarchist groups. The Russian police, the Okhrana, opened an office in Paris, with the consent of the French government, in order to monitor the activities and publications of Russian political exiles. Embassies and consulates directly organized such efforts, funneling monthly stipends to spies and informers, some quite well educated, others not at all. Recruits were not in short supply.
Soho, Tottenham Court Road, Fitzroy Square, and other neighborhoods in which anarchist exiles converged were crawling with police and secret agents in the pay of the anarchists' home countries, sometimes to the point of absurdity, as depicted in G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. In this story Gabriel Syme, a detective with poetic pretensions, infiltrates a secret group of anarchists living in London, the European Dynamiters. Each of the seven leaders of the group is known by a day of the week. All turn out to be police spies, although at the beginning none know the real identity of any of the others.
The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror Page 12