The Incendiary by Jessica Warner

Author:Jessica Warner [Warner, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-575-5
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2006-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

The letters, much as their author or authors had intended, helped prolong the crisis by several weeks. When, for example, a fire was discovered and quickly extinguished in a cooperage near the famous church of Saint Mary Redcliffe, Felix Farley took the occasion to warn his readers that “this city is not in such perfect security, as to justify the least abatement of that vigilance which the inhabitants have every night observed, since the late dreadful alarm.”61 “The incendiaries,” it was reported elsewhere, “did their business with skill and industry.”62 There was another fire in Well’s Sugar House, and yet another in a hay loft, and in both places investigators reportedly found a candle, lit at both ends and nestled among highly flammable shavings.63

Soon another and even more sinister rumor gained credence. According to a letter posted on 19 February, someone had attempted to poison the city’s water supply, and had very nearly succeeded. The culprit was a “stranger” who had reportedly broken into a shop and stolen a vial of arsenic; this he then gave to a boy, telling him to empty it into a reservoir or conduit. The plot (if that is what it was) fell apart when the boy began to suspect that something was amiss.64

For the city’s Tories, the fires were a godsend. Seizing the moment, the mayor and his allies let it be known that the fires were the work of “persons deputed by the Congress in America to distress England”; by implication, anyone who sympathized with America was complicit in the fires that had terrorized the city’s inhabitants.65 This applied equally to those who had opposed signing the petition urging the king to stand firm. Hence the sly disclaimer, published while the city was still in an uproar: “It was an ill-judged thing to present an address to his Majesty on the success of his arms at this critical time, for we have a number of Americans amongst us, men of capital fortunes, who strongly opposed the address; it has bred more mischief amongst us, than ever Wilkes did in the City of London, and of much more fatal consequence.…”66 The contentious petition was approved. When one man dared to oppose it, “he was turned out by some near him, and it was then unanimously agreed to and signed.”67

* * *

The same day that Aitken first struck in Bristol, another of his incendiary devices was discovered by accident in Portsmouth. It was the canister made by William Teach. Its discovery came about when workers were removing defective hemp from the south hemp house. James Russell was present, as were John Major, a master ropemaker, and John Thomas, a representative of the company that had sold the hemp.68 It was Russell who first spotted the object. At first they thought that it was a canister of tea, but all three quickly realized that it was in fact an incendiary device. This sent them digging among the surrounding hemp, where they quickly unearthed the canister’s wooden

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.