The ‘Infernal Machine’
On Tuesday morning, 26 February 1884, just three minutes after 1 a.m. (according to the number of stopped station clocks found afterwards), an explosion occurred at Victoria Station, the terminus of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, and the London, Chatham & Dover Railways. The headline that hit the papers, just a few hours later shouted:
DYNAMITE OUTRAGE AT VICTORIA STATION
The last trains for the night from London-bridge, Clapham Junction and Ludgate-hill had discharged their passengers and the night staff were just starting their usual routine of locking the doors, checking the gas and readying the fire-hose in case of an emergency, as they did every night, when ‘a red sort of flash … and a sound like a small cannon’ stunned them to the spot. Mr George Manning, the night inspector, witnessing the explosion just twenty to thirty yards away, stated that ‘it was as if a small cannon had been fired out of the window of the cloak-room up the platform’. The boom travelled as far as Clapham Junction (roughly 3 miles or 5 kilometres distance) where, extraordinarily, a female attendant from the Refreshments Rooms heard the noise, believed it to be from the station, and came in to help!47 The boom was followed by ‘the crashing of the roof, the fall of glass in every direction … and cries of alarm in the neighbourhood’.48 There was another whoosh of explosion when the gas from the broken gas-pipe ignited and the burning station lit up the dark skies.
The honest Mr Manning did confess that his first thoughts were to take his men and run for their lives, but then decided they needed to ‘obey the call of duty’ and set about using the firehouse they had already conveniently fixed to douse the fire. It was a fight to bring the flames under control but they were able to keep them in check until the arrival of the near-by fire brigade. The police had also arrived and Superintendent Hamblin of ‘B’ Division placed a cordon of police around the area. Colonel Majendie, Colonel Ford and Captain Shaw were ‘early on the spot’ and quickly began interviewing key personnel already on site. Photographs were taken from ‘different view points’ and an artist’s eyes and skills were brought to bear on the wrecked scene. The Police and the Explosives Department had become practised in the art of dealing with explosion situations.49
Whilst the officials had to wait upon more extensive searches, analysis and deliberations before giving a formal conclusion, the press were lucky in finding an expert already on the scene. By amazing coincidence, Major Bagot just happened to be passing along Victoria Street, when he heard the explosion and hurried to give help. He had some experience of explosive materials, and brought it to bear on the scene of the crime as he set about gathering data. As he entered the Booking Hall, he registered the distinctive smell of dynamite. He knew the authorities would want to know what type of explosive had been used so he set about obtaining the means to carry out a test. Unable to acquire some lignic acid, ‘he tried the effect of vitiated atmosphere on an ordinary razor’ which, despite the delay, ‘was sufficiently conclusive to his mind’ that it was indeed dynamite. He noted that the greatest degree of damage had been done laterally, proven by the bulging walls, at precisely the same height as where the explosive material must have been. He further noted that ‘the supports of the roof, not the roof itself that [had given] way, whereas laterally objects much further distanced than the roof had been literally pulverised’. He also noted that the subway from the District Station to the termini of the London, Brighton & South Coast had its iron rails broken and twisted into ‘the most grotesque shapes’; the stairwell was filled with masonry from above, but little damage had been done to the subway itself despite the bomb exploding right above it.50
Captain Shaw’s initial summation and report to the Metropolitan Board of Works merely stated the facts and gave no conclusions:
Called at 1.30 am (Tuesday) to the Victoria Station, Buckingham-palace road, Pimlico, to the premises of London, Brighton and South Coast Railway company (J P Knight general manager) cause of occurrence unknown; contents and building insured in the Liverpool and London and Globe.
Damage – cloakroom of one floor 30 by 30ft., and the contents destroyed by explosion and fire, booking office and refreshment rooms adjoining and contents seriously damaged by explosion. William Ford, aged 27 years, and Karl Katten, aged 29 years, injured and taken to hospital. Adjoining damages – the premises of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway.
Company (Mr Harris, manager) roof damaged by fire and breakage and window glass broken; the premises of the Metropolitan District Railway Company (Limited) (Lord S A Cecil, general manager) window glass broken; and Nos. 1, 2, and 3 Victoria-buildings occupied respectively by Messrs Baker & Co., tea merchants and F Fernando, chemist, window glass broken and contents damaged by dirt.
Once the fire was out, a thorough search was made of the debris under the watchful eye of the experts. Evidence was soon unearthed, including a clock spring (which proved a valuable link), and bits of metal perhaps from a tin. As the search continued, it became clear that the bomb had emanated from the left-luggage cloakroom. The cloakroom porter remembered a man leaving a leather portmanteau, which was very heavy, and asking the porter to be ‘very careful with it’. In the light of this, searches were made in other stations. On the following evening, Wednesday 27 February, a black leather portmanteau, which had been deposited in the cloakroom of the South Eastern Railway’s Charing Cross Station, was discovered. Then, on Thursday afternoon, a small brown leather bag, which had been left in the early evening of the previous Monday (25 February), was found at Great Western Railway’s Paddington – both contained an ‘infernal machine’. It turned out that the Charing Cross bag had already been deposited at least once before.
‘The Infernal Machine’ as it was named by the newspapers of the time. Happily this one failed to function. It was found by stationmaster William Hart in a search of one of the cloak rooms (luggage) on Paddington Station in 1884. In 1937, the Great Western Railway Magazine wrote of it, ‘It is the back view of an American-made clock to which a pistol is attached by wire, and a second wire passes through the handle grip from which the woodwork had been removed and connects it to the movement. The clock when discovered was embedded in dynamite weighing 22 lbs., and packed around it were a number of iron bullets. The pistol was loaded and cocked for firing … it was intended that the trigger would gradually be pulled as the wheels of the clock revolved, a cartridge would then be fired, the dynamite exploded, and Paddington Station might have been blown sky high.’ It is believed that this was the type of bomb that exploded in Victoria Station. These metal pieces were also found inside the portmanteau. They would have become lethal missiles in the explosion – the penny is to give an indication of size.
In his evidence to the court, Major Majendie described the contents of the Charing Cross bag. He had found forty-five cakes of ‘Atlas Powder A’ – all marked the same and all wrapped in the same kind of paper. He explained that Atlas Powder A is a form of dynamite in which wood pulp is substituted for the usual absorbent kieselguhr; it is exploded by a detonator in the same way as ordinary dynamite. Atlas Powder A was not a licensed preparation in Britain and had no commercial use here; it was manufactured at a chemical factory in Philadelphia. (Analysis showed that it contained almost 72.5 per cent purified nitroglycerine.) The Times called the slabs ‘an engine of destruction of a very formidable nature’. The slabs were packed around a tin box which contained part of a clock with a portion of pistol, attached with copper wires, which were fastened to parts of the clock that would not impede the working. The pistol was a Remington or an imitation of such. There were seven detonators in one slab, with their mouths presented to the muzzle of the pistol. It had been set to go off at 12 midnight, and the hammer had fallen on the cartridge but it had failed to explode. There was a loaded bullet in the pistol, of a type made by the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA. He confirmed that he had found substantially the same contents and set-up in the bag from Paddington Station, exc
ept that the tin box was of a cash box type.
Yet another such bag was found on Saturday morning, by John Langley, cloakroom porter of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway at Ludgate Hill. This luggage room was close to the stairs where thousands of passengers passed every day. Langley found a portmanteau of the same size and ‘character’ as those already found. On opening it, the stationmaster, Mr Bowman, found yet another ‘infernal machine’, again comprising a pistol attached to a clock and cakes of the American Atlas Powder. Two American-produced handkerchiefs and old American newspapers were stuffed around to keep it in position. The bag and its contents were taken by the city police to Old Jewry Police Station and Colonel Majendie was sent for. The brave colonel then proceeded to defuse the bomb, taking care to ‘separate the pieces prepared with fulminate of mercury from the cakes of dynamite’. There were a total of forty-seven cakes about ‘the size and thickness of a man’s outstretched palm and fingers’, making a total weight of 25lb. The reason it had not exploded was, again, because of a failure of the trigger mechanism. If it had, the paper made a point of saying, it would have killed not just a great many English persons, but also many ‘Irish-labouring classes who use this station for cheap rides to the third station out – the Elephant and Castle – … where a large number of them congregate’. This was followed by further searches at other stations but nothing else was found. Colonel Majendie called for ‘more searching and unwearied examination by the police … for a great crime has beyond all doubt been planned and attempted and the terrible and intended consequences of this crime have only been escaped by a slender chain of what it would be profane to call “accidents”’. 51
Through painstaking investigations of previous incidents, undercover infiltrations and inside informants, the Special Irish Branch and City police already knew that this was part of a Fenian campaign, and had a good idea who the individuals involved in these railway bomb attempts were. They knew where they had come from (America), how and when they had arrived (Southampton and Liverpool), their names, and under which aliases they might be operating, and generally where they might be in hiding. The Home Office offered a princely award of £1,000, which the four railways involved – the Great Western, the South Eastern, the London & Brighton and the London, Chatham & Dover – promptly doubled. Descriptions of the four American Dynamitards were given.
John Daley (otherwise Denman, or Norman) was apprehended at Birkenhead Station, preparing to travel to Wolverhampton. Upon being searched he was found to have two packets of explosives and an ‘infernal machine’ hidden in his clothes. James Francis Egan, Daley’s landlord at Crafton Road, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, was also arrested and charged with ‘conspiracy to cause an explosion in the United Kingdom likely to endanger life or case serious damage to property’.52 The other two being sought were Harry Burton and James Gilbert Cunningham, who were not caught until sometime later.
A ‘Criminal Outrage by Enemies of Order’
The year 1885 started with a bang – and then many more of them. Saturday 25 January became known as ‘Dynamite Saturday’ as the Fenians attempted to blow up a number of locations around London, including London Bridge, the White Tower of the Tower of London, and the House of Commons.
On 2 January, an explosion occurred, once again, on the Underground. It was of a different nature to those that had taken place previously. It was indeed the work of a different team of Dynamitards.
The local Hammersmith train left Aldgate four minutes late at 8.57 p.m. The train, as described by Joseph Hammond, the guard on duty that day, consisted of:
… a break-van at the rear, in which I [Hammond] was, and there was an engine and six carriages – Harry Taylor was under-guard, he was next the engine – there was a break compartment and a third-class carriage next the engine, then two more third-class with what we call spear-breaks in each, then a first-class, then a composite carriage partly first and partly second class, and I rode in the rear as guard in charge – we allow passengers to ride in the spear-break with the merchandise.
It is the second third-class carriage that is of significance, and in particular, the ‘spear break van’53 in the first compartment. It was here that several witnesses said they saw James Cunningham and at least one other man. Whilst it was usual for the guards to ride in these break vans, it was not unusual for passengers to also ride along with the passengers’ luggage when the train was full, or, when passengers were trying to get on as the train was moving out of the station (a not uncommon occurrence, that and getting off before it stopped). There are four stations between Aldgate and King’s Cross: Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Aldersgate Street and Farringdon Street, after which comes King’s Cross, then Gower Street. Between the last two is the Charlton signal box, and it was at roughly 9.14 p.m., some 150 yards west of the box that a ‘violent explosion’ occurred, and a sheet of flame lit up the tunnel. So violent was it, that it smashed thirty-two windows on the train and put out all of its lights. Above the ground, the effects were also dramatic causing ‘persons crossing the Euston Road in close proximity to the gratings [to be] thrown off their feet’ and horses [pulling vehicles] having to be strongly restrained to stop them from running away. Back down below the gas lights at Kings Cross and Gower Street Station were blown out and, at the latter, several women waiting on the platform fainted.54 The train came slowly into Gower Street, whereupon the under guard called, ‘All change’ and the passengers got off. Amazingly, apart from ‘fright’ or ‘shock’ there were only minor injuries sustained.
The train was taken on to Edgware Road for inspection, and the authorities were soon on the scene – Mr Godsden, Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan railway, Superintendent Williamson of Scotland Yard, Superintendent Harris of ‘S’ Division, Superintendent Thomson of ‘E’ Division, and Inspectors Wells, Kelly and Livingstone. Investigations showed that the tunnel wall on the northern side had been struck – presumably by something that had been thrown from the train travelling to the city – some 1½ft above the ground, leaving an indentation of some inches deep for about 2ft, and some ballast had been thrown about. It was not believed to be gunpowder, as none of the tunnel walls were blackened, but rather the smoke of the previous twenty years had been cleared. Other than that there was little damage done to the tunnel.
The total effect was very local. The Hammersmith train was on the southern side going westward, but a train on the northern side passed the damaged train briefly lighting up the horrendous scene. Most reports said that the explosion came from the front of the train. Colonel Majendie believed it to be a ‘percussion bomb’ (such as that used in the assassination of the Emperor of Russia), and that the explosive was contained in an earthenware ball as, if it had been glass, there would have been some remaining evidence no matter how small the crystals.
Good gathering of evidence from passengers and railway employees, identified that James Cunningham was in the spear break van in the second carriage, before the train started and when it drew into Gower Street. People also stated that a man had gone aboard with a package and come off without it. Perhaps the most damming evidence was that of John Seward, Hyde Park Constable 11, who stated that he had, not only seen Cunningham in the van, but Cunningham had leaned out of the window and asked him for a light or a match. He had also seen a ‘workman’s flag basket on the seat’ similar to those carried by railway employees for their tools. Another policeman, Sergeant E42, Michael Crawford, stated that he had seen three men inside the spear break van, standing talking when it stopped opposite the ticket collector’s box by the stairs. He had been distracted by a lady who was bleeding from the nose, and they had made their exit. He confirmed that one of them was Cunningham. (It was believed that Burton was one of the others.)55
In May 1885, James Gilbert Cunningham and Harry Burton (believed to be the mastermind behind the 1884/5 London bombing campaign) were charged, tried and found guilty of the lesser charge of ‘Treason Felony – Act of 1848’, (this did not carry the death penalty, rath
er than ‘High Treason’ which did), in respect of the explosions in London; in particular the White Tower at the Tower of London, the Victoria Station explosion, the one at Gower Street Underground, and of the conspiracy in relation to the bombs at Charing Cross, Paddington and Ludgate Street stations. Both men declared their innocence. They were sentenced to ‘penal servitude for life’.56
The explosion that happened at Aldersgate Street Station was the work of ‘person or persons unknown’. It is believed that an ‘anarchist’ set ‘the bomb’ with a time fuse in the first-class carriage at the previous station – Farringdon Street. When the bomb exploded one man was mortally wounded and he, Harry Pitts, became the first terrorist death on British railways.
First Terrorist Death on the Railways
Whilst the Fenians’ campaign had effectively been brought to a standstill by mid-1885, the anarchists were getting into their stride. Dynamite was their weapon of choice also. There were many anarchist groups known to the police and the Intelligence Service. The Autonomie Club in Windmill Street was one, which was linked to the ‘Martin Bourdin Affair’.
On 16 February 1894, Bourdin, a believed anarchist of French origin, took ‘the South Eastern Railway … from Charing Cross to Greenwich, [he] no doubt jostled against many worthy citizens at the ticket office or on the platform and sat side by side with them in the railway carriage.’57 He did all this whilst carrying a volatile explosive device. So volatile, that he blew himself up in front of the Royal Observatory with the bomb he had carried to the park, thereby creating enormous speculation. What was his intention? Was he an anarchist bomber? Why was he carrying an explosive substance? Was it a tragic accident or did he truly die ‘for the Revolution’? No one truly knows. The anarchist press described the explosives expert, Col Majendie’s, assumption that Bourdin intended to blow up ‘the Observatory, its contents, or inmates’, as ‘utterly absurd’ and it is interesting that Bourdin was not claimed by the anarchists as a martyr to the cause. In fact, they wanted to distance themselves from the whole affair.’58 This whole episode is another ‘unknown’ in the dynamite conspiracies of that era.
Death, Dynamite and Disaster Page 11