WHO BLEW UP KING WILLIAM?
Very soon after my appointment to the police magistracy, there was a person named Jones convicted of being deeply implicated in the Ribbon system. He was not committed for trial from the Head Office, and I was not officially connected with any of the proceedings in his case. After he had been sent to another hemisphere under sentence of transportation, I heard casually from a professional man, on whose statements I placed the utmost reliance, that Jones had acknowledged to him being the person by whom the statue of King William in College Green was blown up in 1836. There was no prosecution instituted as to that extraordinary affair, and I notice it only on account of the statements subsequently made, and an incident which may be considered of an amusing character. Two women of a disreputable class were standing at the corner of Church Lane in College Green just after midnight. A man whom they had not previously observed, descended quickly from the statue, and having crossed the rails which then intervened between the pedestal and the thoroughfare, he ignited a fuse which had been previously connected with some explosive substance placed between the figures of the steed and the rider. The man rapidly decamped, the fuse burned quickly, and there was an explosion which was heard in almost every part of the city, and by which the figure of the monarch was completely separated from his horse, and thrown into the public carriage-way, several yards from the pedestal. It was reported that a respectable citizen residing in the immediate vicinity, who had been suffering for some time previous from disease of the heart, rose from his bed in hasty alarm, and almost immediately dropped lifeless. Jones, according to the statement of my informant, subsequently tried to cut the head off the prostrate figure, but was deterred by the approach of a party of police from College Street. I believe that those who examined the figures of man and horse expressed a decided opinion that the explosion had not been effected by gunpowder, and the statements of the acknowledged delinquent denied that gunpowder had been used, but without his specifying what material had effected such an extraordinary result.