Bombers, Rioters and Police Killers by Simon Webb

Author:Simon Webb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRUE CRIME / General
ISBN: 9781473878488
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2015-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

There is no doubt that there is a system of organised incendiarism afloat, and we credibly hear of men coming from America, who are to take empty houses in various parts of London, and set them on fire, probably simultaneously.

Having raised the spectre of a second Great Fire of London, Disraeli went on to propose draconian measures for dealing with the supposed threat. His letter continued, ‘Many of the miscreants who are to perpetrate these crimes are now here, and are known – and we can’t touch them. I think Habeus Corpus ought to be suspended.’

It is quite impossible, 150 years later, to know whether or not Disraeli, who was soon to become Prime Minister himself, really believed what he was telling Lord Derby, or if he was exaggerating the threat in order to acquire special powers. He said in another letter that a plot had been uncovered, which involved gunpowder being introduced into the Houses of Parliament via the gas pipes; so enabling terrorists to blow the place up. In another letter to the Prime Minister on 17 December, he claimed to have received information that a band of thirty Fenians had set sail from America who had sworn a solemn oath to assassinate the queen and every member of the cabinet. Disraeli’s suggested course of action was to send the Royal Navy to intercept the ship in international waters, board it and remove the men. There was, as Disraeli himself freely admitted, a slight drawback to this plan, which was that stopping a ship on the high seas in this way was tantamount to an act of war. As he admitted in another letter to Lord Derby, ‘If stopped on the high seas, we may be involved in a war with America.’

Whether Disraeli was making a play for power or perhaps genuinely did not appreciate the risks that he was running, his actions were dangerous and we may, in retrospect, be grateful that he was granted neither the emergency powers he wished for, nor permission to start a war with the United States. When all was said and done, the terrible explosion in Clerkenwell was not the opening shot in an attempt to destroy London or overthrow the government; it was simply a tragic miscalculation. Those who had set off the barrel of gunpowder had no idea how much damage a quarter of a ton of explosives would cause in a built up area.

It was not hard for the police to round up the Irishmen who had rented the room overlooking the prison yard. Anne Justice was arrested at the same time and she tried to hang herself that very night. Over the next few days, both Justice and the two Irishmen who had been living in the room which had been used as an observation post, began trying to save themselves from the shadow of the gallows by informing on the man who had carried out the attack. It appeared that a Fenian called Michael Barrett had arrived in London from Glasgow and that the whole operation had been his work.

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.