CHAPTER VI. THE FENIAN TROUBLES.
My year of office as Mayor was made very anxious by the aggressive tactics of the Fenian agitators. A bomb was placed at the side door of the Town Hall, and exploded, breaking in the door, destroying the ceiling and window of the mayor's dressing-room and doing considerable damage to the furniture. The bomb consisted of a piece of iron gas piping about 3 inches in diameter and 18 inches long, filled with explosives and iron nails. The miscreants, after lighting the fuse, ran away; but the Town Hall was watched by a double cordon of police; the first took up the chase, the second joined in, and the two men eventually jumped into a canal boat filled with manure, and were then secured. They were tried, and sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. They were two Irish stokers, mere tools in the hands of an Irish-American, who had planned the blowing up of all our public buildings, but managed to get away. An attempt was also made on the Custom House, but failed.
The Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, was much exercised by the position of things in Liverpool, and telegraphed to me enquiring how many troops were available in Liverpool. I replied fifty, of whom twenty-five were raw recruits. Next morning the General in command at York called at the Town Hall, and stated that he had been instructed to send 2,000 infantry, and two squadrons of cavalry, and wished me to arrange for their accommodation. He startled me by adding, "I should like to send you a Gatling gun; they are grand things for clearing the streets." I felt this was getting serious. I assured him that we did not apprehend any grave trouble, or disturbances, and if it was known that I had consented to a Gatling gun being sent for the purpose he mentioned, I should make myself most unpopular, and that I hoped that the troops would be sent down gradually so as not to cause alarm. We arranged to place some of the troops at Rupert Lane, and some in volunteer drillsheds, but several hundred had to be quartered in the guard ship on the Mersey. All this was carried out so quietly that no notice of it appeared in the newspapers. We were congratulating ourselves upon the success of our scheme, when I received a note from Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, then presiding at the assizes, requiring my presence at St. George's Hall. I immediately obeyed the summons, and was ushered into the judge's private room. The Chief Justice at once stated that he was informed that a large number of troops had been brought into the town, without his sanction as the Judge of Assize. In vain I pleaded my ignorance that his Lordship's permission was necessary, that the troops had not been requisitioned by me, but had been sent by orders of the Home Secretary. His Lordship was much annoyed and said I ought to have known that a Judge of Assize was the Queen's representative, and no troops could be moved during an assize without the judge's sanction. His anger was however short-lived; he came to dine with me at the Town Hall the same evening, and made a capital speech, as he always did, and the morning's episode was not again mentioned.
Things in Liverpool continued very unsettled and anxious, and to add to the difficulty a strike began. We were obliged to show the troops; the cavalry paraded the line of docks for two or three days, producing an excellent effect.
The Home Secretary was very anxious, and wrote to me long letters. The chief constable, Major Greig, was away ill, and this threw much responsibility upon the mayor. We were able to collect much information, which led to the arrest of many notable Fenians, and we stopped the importation of several consignments of infernal machines. An amusing incident occurred in connection with one of these. We were informed that a consignment of thirty-one barrels of cement was coming from New York by a Cunard steamer, each barrel containing an infernal machine. We placed a plain clothes officer in the Cunard office to arrest whoever might claim the cement, which, however, no one did, and we took charge of the casks as they were landed. Several casks were sent up to the police office and were there opened and the machines taken out. I was asked to go down to see the machines, and found them lying on a table in the detective office, several police officers being gathered round. I lifted the cover of one; a rolled spill of paper was inserted in the clock work; this I withdrew, and immediately the works started in motion, and with equal rapidity the police vanished from the room. I simply placed my hand on the works and stopped them, and invited the police to return. On unrolling the spill of paper I found it to be one of O'Donovan Rossa's billheads; he was at that time the leader of the Fenian brotherhood in America.
The machines were neatly made; on the top were the clock works, which could be regulated to explode at a given time the six dynamite cartridges enclosed in the chamber below.
Having taken all the machines out of the casks of cement, the difficulty arose what to do with them, and eventually we chartered a tug and threw them overboard in one of the sea channels.
An amusing incident occurred showing how excited public feeling was at the time. I was sitting one morning at the table in the Mayor's parlour in the Town Hall, when I heard a crash of broken glass, and a large, black, ugly-looking object fell on the floor opposite to me. I rang the bell and the hall porter came in; I said, "What is that?" "A bomb!" he exclaimed, and immediately darted out of the room, but he had no sooner done so than he returned with a policeman, who exclaimed, "Don't be alarmed, sir, it's only an old pensioner's cork leg." A crowd had collected in the street outside, in the centre of which was the old pensioner, who was violently expostulating. On ordering the police to bring him inside, he said he was very sorry if he had done wrong, but he was so angry at the many holes in the street pavements, in which he caught his wooden leg, that he had adopted this rather alarming method of bringing his complaint under the notice of the Mayor and the authorities. The cork leg, both in form and colour, much resembled a bomb made out of a gas pipe, of which we had seen several at the Town Hall.
At the end of my year of office I received the thanks of the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, for my assistance and, at his request, I pursued enquiries in America which had an important bearing in checking the Fenian movement at that time.
Liverpool Town Hall.