London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City (40 page)

The first blow in this war had been struck in 1867 when an explosion at Clerkenwell Prison had shocked the English authorities. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) had been established in 1858 with the Fenian Brotherhood (FB) (named for the legendary prehistoric Irish army, the Fianna) being founded in New York City in the same year. The Clerkenwell outrage forced the English government to act - not to address the issue of Irish independence - but to tighten up security and create a secret service department to combat the threat posed by Irish terrorism.23 Sir Robert Anderson, who was later to become involved in the Ripper investigation, was given a key role in counter terrorist measures. Over the next 17 years the Dynamite War unfolded with fundraising in the United States providing the means for a series of attempts on British interests at home and abroad. To counter this, the intelligence agencies tried to cultivate informers and stay one step ahead of the bombers. In Ireland coercive measures were in force, restricting the activities of political radicals; but no such measures were, or could be, applied in Britain or the USA, and both countries had very large Irish populations living among them.

On 6 May 1882, Lord Cavendish (the reluctant chief secretary to Ireland in waiting) and the permanent secretary, Thomas Burke, were assassinated as they walked through Phoenix Park in Dublin. Their killers left black-edged calling cards with a local newspaper office, claiming the murders were the work of the `Irish Invincibles'.24 The men of the FB had sworn an oath to `labor with earnest zeal for the liberation of Ireland from the yoke of England and for the establishment of an independent government on the Irish soil'.25 The Phoenix Park killings sent a chilling message to the British government and the politics of Ireland were to dominate home affairs throughout the last decades of the nineteenth century. May 1882 also saw an abortive attack on the Lord Mayor's residence at Mansion House in the heart of the City of London, while in June an IRB arms ring was uncovered by the secret service. The year 1883 saw dynamite attacks in Glasgow, London (including an attempt on the offices of The Times), attacks on the underground and the discovery of a bomb factory in Birmingham. Several bombers were arrested and Thomas Gallagher and others sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the war was not over, as the attacks in London in 1884 and 1885 confirmed.

It is clear from the work of the late K. R. M. Short that as English society was increasingly threatened by Irish terror tactics the quality and quantity of information that reached the security services was drying up: `Fenian informers were becoming scarce as anti-English feeling steadily grew along with nationalist and Fenian certainty of eventual success'. The home secretary, Sir William Harcourt, was `deeply depressed about the situation' as was the `spymaster, Sir Edward Jenkinson.26 Both men feared that without good and reliable information the bombers would be able to strike as and when they wished. Their worst fears were soon to be realized.

Despite the close attentions of the City of London police, Cunningham and Burton had managed to explode a bomb on the Metropolitan Line and had built three other devices that they planned to use to send another powerful message to the English ruling elite. On Saturday, 24 January 1885 they struck, choosing two symbolic targets of British rule: the Houses of Parliament and the Tower of London. Two bombers, probably disguised as man and wife, had smuggled their dynamite packages under their clothes and had split up on entering the Palace of Westminster. The female bomber had deposited her device in the crypt where it drew the attention of a couple of visitors. A Miss Davis spotted a parcel close to the first landing. According to the newspaper report on the Monday the parcel was `about a foot square, a couple of inches thick, and was wrapped up in a piece of brown cloth, not unlike the material used for workmen's Miss Davis `noticed that some steam or smoke was emanating from the bundle, but, unsuspicious of harm, would have passed on. Her brother-in-law, however, had observed the package, and at once cried "This is dynamite, This brought the on duty policeman, PC Cole, running to the scene. Cole seized the lethal package and ran up the stairs, only for it to explode in his face.

The Daily News reported that `in an instant the scene was one which even those who were there, through the bewildering terror which possessed them, find it impossible to describe. Cole was knocked down and had several ribs broken, and Police-constable Cox, who was close by, was also knocked down, severely shaken, and sustained a contusion on the head'29 Cox had run to the sound of the blast, abandoning his position in the lobby thus allowing the second bomber to drop his parcel in the chamber of the House of Commons where it went off a few minutes later causing considerable damage but no fatalities.

Over at the Tower, Cunningham had placed his device behind a screen in the White Tower where thousands of visitors regularly gathered to view the suits of armour and medieval weaponry. The bomb ignited at 2 p.m. just as those at parliament were set off, but apart from the associated terror and confusion there were few injuries. Elizabeth Balaan was knocked unconscious and was taken to the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road, and two boys suffered slight cuts. The Pall Mall Gazette reported that'[ a] 11 the visitors, except the injured were detained and closely questioned. One of these, a young man of twenty-one years, described as an Irish-American, was taken into custody and carried first to Leman-street policestation, and subsequently to Scotland Yard ... He gave the name of Cunningham, with the aliases Gilbert and Dalton'.30 One of the bombers was in custody and `careful police work' soon led to the arrest of Thomas Burton who had been seen in conversation with Cunningham earlier in the month in Whitechapel.31

The newspaper reaction was generally, and understandably, one of outrage that the `dynamitards' had struck again. The Times condemned the `indiscriminate slaughter of holiday makers and working people' (despite the fact that no one had died) and argued that it was `imperatively necessary to adopt vigorous measures, both offensive and defensive, against an insidious, unscrupulous, and implacable, though, in point of numbers as well as character, a thoroughly contemptible, enemy'.32 The Morning Advertiser was quick to condemn the perpetrators as monsters: `These dynamitards are in the fullest sense hostes humani generis [the `enemies of mankind'], and should be treated as vermin outside the pale of ordinary law, before reminding their readers that it was the writers of inflammatory pamphlets that were really to blame. `Englishmen may well ask' it continued, `How long is this state of things to continue?'33 In a similar vein the Daily Chronicle asked `What is to be done towards stamping out this horror of horrors? We know the cause - the teaching of a demoralized and seditious press - the revilings [sic] of a villainous and ribald platform - both tolerated to an extent which has produced in our community the superlative degree of crime;34 while the Standard demonstrated its failure to grasp the reality of the situation in Ireland by noting that: `To the great body of the Irish it cannot, we are sure, be useless to address some words of warning and remonstrance. Let them consider what they have received from England during the last sixteen years, and then ask themselves whether they ought to make it evident to the whole world that they have no sympathy whatever with these atrocious schemes'. This echoed the comments of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper in the wake of the underground attack that it was `probably of little use to point out once more to their authors the utterly stupid criminality involved in these continued attempts on private property, which re-act on the Irish people as a whole; as is shown by the distrust with which many employers regard Irishmen, and their increased difficulty in obtaining work in many leading firms"' The Daily Telegraph again used the bombings to criticize the police and their `failure to catch even a single dynamitard in the fact, although the arrest of Cunningham would seem to have passed them by on this occasion.37

Figure 9 The Graphic's dramatic illustration of the Fenian attack on the Palace of Westminster, January 1885, from Miss Davies' report.35

In Austria the Allgemeine Zeitung urged caution and a sense of perspective: `Modern civilization is not to be frightened into fits because at the utmost a thousand madmen wage war against it. Nor will two entire continents place themselves under martial law and dictatorship because a few insane persons have succeeded in ruining some stonework and perhaps causing the death of one or two innocent persons"' The Warsaw Official Gazette, perhaps unsurprisingly, called for international solidarity against a `murderous alliance' of anarchists: `To that league of destruction a league of defence must be opposed' - an international `War on Terror' in nineteenth-century language perhaps.39 One of these `international anarchists' was asked his opinion on the London bombings: he was scathing. `Stepniak, supposedly a Russian nihilist, dismissed the bombings as `Mere baby work; any child could do as much. Stupid, objectless, directed against no particular individual, furthering no great cause' The Pall Mall Gazette added,

On the whole, £20,000 represents the outside damage done by the three carefully planned explosions about which all the world is talking this morning. No one was killed; about a score of men, women, and children were slightly injured; two policemen have lost their hearing; and that is all. A wretched twopenny halfpenny affair it is to be sure, and one which ought to be most reassuring and even comforting to all those who have watched the progress of the struggle between society and the demons of dynamite ... [for] what have they done? Altogether they have not [in two years of the bombing campaign] done more damage than £100,000 would make good. They have not killed a creature, blocked a railway, destroyed a building, or in any way checked for a moment the even flow of English life.

It then ridiculed the conservative press for overreacting and calling for clampdowns on political protest and writings.4o

Cunningham was charged at Bow Street Police Court with causing explosions and another detective who was to feature prominently in the Whitechapel murders, Frederick Abberline, appeared to insist the alleged bomber was detained in custody until his trial.41 Burton and Cunningham went for trial at the Old Bailey in May 1885 and the court sat in judgement on them for a week before they were both found guilty (the later for the bombing of the Tower and the underground in January, and Burton for planting bombs at Charing Cross and Paddington stations in 1884). The evidence against them was considerable, with an army of expert witnesses and many who could identify the two men as having travelled from the United States to Liverpool. In response Cunningham called two single Irish women to make statements on his behalf and Burton's legal representative read a prepared statement of denial. They received life sentences. PC Cole became something of a hero, having been hospitalized until late March as a result of his actions in Westminster Hall. The judge, Mr Justice Hawkins, `called attention to a presentment by the Grand Jury, expressing their strong approval of the conduct of the Police in this case'; this must have been a welcome endorsement of the Met in trying times.42

HEADLESS AND CLUELESS? THE HUNT FOR THE RIPPER

Unfortunately for the force this feeling of goodwill was not to last very long. Within a year of the successful conviction of the two Fenian dynamitards the windows of the Carlton Club on Pall Mall were being smashed and within two years Warren's handling of the demonstration of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square was being roundly condemned in the popular press. Things could have been very different: the Pall Mall Gazette identified Warren as a real Victorian boys' own hero - a man cut from the same pattern as Lord Gordon of Khartoum. However, Sir Charles' approach to policing was to concentrate on drill and marching and discipline, and he made no apologies for favouring the uniformed over the plainclothed branch of the force. He clashed notably with his putative boss, the Home Secretary Matthews, and his own subordinate, Assistant Commissioner CID James Monro. Politics played their part here as Monro enjoyed the confidence of the secretary of state while Warren was largely sidelined. At the end of August 1887 the relationship between Warren and Monro had deteriorated to such an extent that the latter resigned his position as head of CID. He was replaced by Sir Robert Anderson, whose role in countering terrorism has already been discussed. However, Anderson was not a well man and went on convalescent leave to Switzerland, something the Pall Mall Gazette was quick to highlight in the wake of the `double event':

In his [Anderson's] absence the Criminal Investigation Department is delivered over to anarchy plus the incessant interference of Sir Charles Warren. Now Sir Charles Warren is a very able General and a very excellent man, but Sir Charles Warren presiding over the Criminal Investigation Department is like a hen attempting to suckle kittens. He does not know the A B C of the business.43

Anderson had been absent from his desk before the death of Mary Nichols opened the official file into the Whitechapel murders and so, in effect, the CID was leaderless in the face of the most difficult inquiry in its short history. Indeed it was this rather than any other failing of the detective department that the paper chose to dwell upon: