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It was further submitted by Counsel for the prisoners that it had not been shown by the Crown that any of the prisoners had possession or control of any explosive substance or material for the manufacture of an explosive bomb, and that all that was produced against them was a rough sketch of a bomb sent from London, a leaden pattern, a brass screw, some lead and plaster castings, and a small bit of time fuse commonly used by minders in the locality for blasting.
²²

The Walsall ‘plotters' got ten years' hard labour, except for Deakin who got five.

The panic about anarchism had been exacerbated by another bomb from Ravachol in Paris in March. When Ravachol was caught at the Café Véry after a tip-off from a waiter, his capture was quickly avenged by a bomb at the café which killed its proprietor and a couple of customers. Two men, Meunier and François, were wanted for questioning after the revenge attack.

Majendie began circulating a note recommending international preventative laws.
²³

All this was going on during the Walsall trial, but English anarchism had barely existed until it was identified as such during that very trial, and now the sentencing of Deakin and the others met withindignation in a small-circulation journal called
Commonweal.
In May the publisher, C.J. Mowbray, and the editor, David Nicoll, were charged at the Old Bailey with ‘maliciously soliciting and encouraging certain persons unknown to murder the Right Hon. Henry Matthews, Secretary of State for the Home Department, Sir Henry Hawkins of the Judges of the High Court of Justice, and William Melville, an inspector of the Metropolitan Police'. Nicoll had written that these people were ‘not fit to live' and Sweeney and another policeman claimed, not very convincingly, to have heard him inciting murder in a speech in Hyde Park. In his defence Nicoll

…denied that this article was intended by him as an incitement to anyone to commit murder; it was written in hot blood, when the news of the issue of the infamous Walsall police plot reached him, and with a similar provocation he should probably write as hotly again. His opinion of the conduct of the persons he had denounced was in no way changed, and he suspected that this charge against him was brought to get him out of the way, because the police knew that he was collecting evidence of the vile means they had used in concocting their Walsall plot in conjunction with the provoking-agent Coulon.
²⁴

Observers agreed that Chief Justice Coleridge was fair, but Nicoll got sent down anyway.

Eighteen months later, Zéro numéro 6 wrote a full report on the whole affair. It is not accurate in every respect; he seems to think that Mowbray, the publisher of
Commonweal,
was somehow involved; but he does say that the plot

…is universally admitted to have been set up by Melville and by Coulon who in my view was his unwitting accomplice. Coulon is a knowing fellow who speaks English and French but he is a bit off his head. He enjoyed the confidence of all.

On the pretext of having
fourneaux
[casings for combustible substances] to make, he sent several anarchists to Walsall… They [including Battolla, a shoemaker and ‘a very nice man'] were condemned on simple presumptions. A mock-up of a bomb was found at the home of one of them and drawings at the home of another and at the home of another, the issue of
Internationale
in which Molasse describes the easiest way of blowing up the Opéra.

…On the advice of Delbecque, Thompson who was Battola's lawyer asked why letters from Coulon had been found at the homes of all those accused, and why he was not being searched. Melville replied that he didn't have to reveal the names of anarchists who worked for him. This reply gave Coulon's enemies more reason to accuse him. Coulon defended himself, accusing Nicoll, Capt and others of being narks, but up to now this hasn't done him any good.
²⁵

According to this report, Coulon had no friends left; his former friends wouldn't speak to him, and two of them wanted to sack him from the general store they had set up in Balham.

Patrick McIntyre worked on the case for Melville and three years later had cause to resent him after Melville took disciplinary action that led to his resignation. McIntyre published a sensational memoir over successive weeks of 1895 in
Reynolds' Newspaper
which included the following:

Some time previous to what was known as the Walsall bomb conspiracy, Coulon wrote a letter to ScotlandYard offering his services to the police. Now, the police generally take advantage of any offer of this kind, in view of the necessity of keeping secret political agitations under surveillance….

It is not my desire to round on my former colleagues and it would be especially unbecoming of me to say anything to the disparagement of Inspector Melville, with whom I have been acquainted since I joined the force. Certainly it was he who carried out the inquiries that resulted in my own reduction, but I found no fault with him on that account, for he had to perform his duties. I am obliged, however, to allude to his connection with the Walsall business. At the time that Coulon wrote to the Yard, Melville was senior officer, and the letter was handed over to him, and it fell to him consequently to go and see Coulon. And Coulon afterwards became his ‘property' – that is to say, all information that Coulon supplied was taken possession of by Melville, who submitted it to Mr Anderson, the Assistant Commissioner of Police. Anderson would direct what action was to be taken in the matter. A police officer of any grade, from superintendent to constable, has to act under the orders of his superiors. In serious cases every iota of information has to be reported to the Assistant Commissioner…

It is noteworthy that Coulon was constantly in London in the days and weeks following the trial. The last time I heard of him he was living in the neighbourhood of Brixton in a style that favourably contrasted with his humble circumstances when I first knew him as a resident of the Italian quarter, near Hatton Garden. Anyhow, the Walsall business appears to have enabled him to migrate to a semi-fashionable neighbourhood.
²⁶

Melville did not lie in court. He simply ‘took refuge' in McIntyre's words

behind the usual excuse that on public grounds he was not called upon to answer the questions. In this he was upheld by the Judge.

Coulon never admitted to being a
provocateur
although he conceded, in a letter published in
Reynolds' Newspaper
on 21 April 1895, that he had been paid. The extent of his role is only now apparent. Special Branch ‘special accounts' show that he received his first payment from Melville as early as 18 July 1890. From 1891 onwards he was on the payroll (under the alias Pyatt). He got extra money in the spring of 1892 during the Walsall case, and briefly in April 1894; after that he received a regular income until his final £10 pay-off in 1904.
²⁷

The archives show how excited the French were by all this. The arrests of Cails and Charles were reported back and cuttings from English and American newspapers were sent to Paris. Dynamite terror continued in the French capital and Kropotkin, the elderly theoretician exiled in England, predicted that the workers were about to arise. As far away as San Francisco, newspaper reports thrillingly described the arrest in Paris of a friend of the dynamitard Ravachol ‘suspected author of the Boulevard St Germain dynamite outrage'.

The full-time spies returned a stream of incidental intelligence to the Préfecture which has great immediacy. It must have been sent by diplomatic bag. On 11 February 1892, for instance, one wrote that he hoped to be admitted as a member of the International Club next Sunday and in consequence, to ‘facilitate research'. He was more and more certain that Meunier and François lived nearby, which could not be better for them, as the
quartier
was crowded and there were a lot of ‘French Jews' and ‘everything that was most
crapule
in London'. It would have been this agent's business to track them down; Meunier (this is before the Café Véry outrage) was wanted for the bombing of a barracks.

The International Socialist Club was at 40 Berners Street off the Commercial Road in the East End, and was of interest to foreign police, although generally disregarded by the English. The anarchist network was largely based in the West End, specifically in Fitzrovia. This was a seedy, lively, Bohemian place, notorious at the time for the Cleveland Street affair of the previous summer.
²⁸
It was a straggling grid of ill-maintained, third-rate Georgian terraced houses fronting the street and a few picturesque squares, with a bookshop or a pub, a tobacconist's or a restaurant, on every corner and cramped rented rooms occupying the three or four bug-ridden floors above. A fugitive new to London could find friends in the back room of Victor Richard's grocer's shop in Charlotte Street, or at the Autonomie Club and library which occupied three storeys at 6 Windmill Street, or at Lapie's bookshop at 30 Goodge Street.

Typical reports describe, in cursive handwriting, who has been seen and what is being said.

Last night, for instance (10 February) there was a meeting at the Autonomie Club, in German, about whether or not meetings should generally be multi-lingual; no conclusion was reached. On 18 February the socialists will hold a demonstration, but none of the anarchists will bother to turn up. The attempt to raise money for Meunier and François hasn't raised much, and some of the comrades (Delbecque being one) think that François should look after himself, but Meunier should be helped to get away as soon as possible.
²⁹

In July, agent Black reported from London that the gang with Schouppe in it had gone to Paris to steal and blow things up; some of the booty would be distributed among out-of-work comrades and some would be kept by Schouppe and a few others with the aim of getting Pini out of jail…

Here, [i.e. in London] the anarchists are very pleased with themselves. When you mention the arrests to them, they say so what – we're organised now, and everything's working out.

The police here know François' wife's address.

François and Meunier are here and François will soon be tracked down – there's a new lead. Meunier was in hiding with a M. Magret when he lived at 30 Fitzroy St. The Melnotte woman, who lived almost opposite, came often with her lover to see the Teron woman who lived in the same house as Magret. Last Saturday Melnotte and Magret moved away…
³⁰

Agent Black had airily suggested about a month before that Meunier and François, once they were found, might well be kidnapped with paid assistance from the English police. The cost and tactics of this coup had obviously been the subject of animated conspiracy over a bottle of wine.

According to a conversation with an informer here, the police will co-operate if the price is right and you could have the two of them in the bag within a week. Would the Government be inclined to donate a certain sum to be divided among those who took part? Because it would mean special surveillance and there'd be a certain number of men to organise.
³¹

Nothing more of this master plan remains in the files, although both Meunier and François were eventually nabbed – by Melville.

In August of 1892 agent Zéro numéro 2 reports that he has spoken to comrades Delbecque and Gardrat, who are fed up with having to keep François & Meunier, who would never have had any trouble if they'd kept their mouths shut and not boasted to all comers; the explosion at the Café Véry would have been just as effective. Jourdan, ‘of whom much has been said of late', corresponds with someone called
‘l'éveillé'
(‘wide-awake') who's written to him. He has shown the letter around and the agent encloses a copy he has managed to make.
³²
In September, the same agent sends a useful recipe (recently passed to him by a named visitor) for a bomb made of nitro-glycerine and coal which can be detonated from a distance, and asks for a password ‘so that if Monsieur F comes to London we can arrange a meeting without risk'.
³³
Meanwhile agent Zéro is keeping abreast of plans to publish. It seems Gardrat (who prints
L'Autonomie)
will print a new paper with the financial backing of Malatesta, Delbecque, Bordes and others. And so it goes on; accumulated in the archives is the small change, the va-et-vient of intrigue, every passing argument and infidelity, dream and boast, itemised, year after year, until the agent has formed opinions about who is dangerous, who is treacherous, and who is merely huddling together with his compatriots for warmth.

One of the agents contributes a cutting from an unnamed French journal of 20 September headed La Bande à Melvil – ‘
Melvi
lle's gang'. It complains that Delbecque was hounded ‘as far as the homes of his clients' and nearly lost his livelihood because of it. His wife, with the five-month-old baby, was interrupted by the police bringing false information about her husband, worrying her, trying to drag a confession out of her – and as a result her milk went bad and the little girl died. She emerged from the house of mourning to the hearse outside, and there stood police on the corner of Charlotte Street. They were responsible for the death of her child.

The leader is called Melville, and within his trade he has the rank of Inspector. He is a nice-looking, kindly-spoken gentleman. As for his henchmen, anybody in London's French quarter could point them out: a big devil, like a squaddie, with a rough red moustache and boxer's fists, and a portly fellow with brown side-whiskers and greying hair who looks like a retired shopkeeper. These two are always together [The first is believed to be McIntyre and the second Sweeney]…Then there is the attendant rabble of pimps and boot-lickers who swell their coffers with the small change that narks always get. We all know who they are.

One Monday, 1st August in the afternoon, while Delbecque was in his workshop, the Inspector did get in to see his wife and told her, with all the slyness of his trade, ‘Look here, you're not well, your little one is very sick. For heaven's sake be reasonable! Aren't you tired of this endless struggle? I can get you out of the hole you're in. Listen to me. You need rest and a quiet life. You can have it. Just tell me that Meunier lived here, tell me where he is now and I'll leave you alone. You, and your six children and your husband. Can I say fairer than that? And don't worry. No one will know. It's between you and me.