Here are some details of a letter bomb sent to the Earl of Oxford in November 1712. The device was defuzed by the author of “Gulliver’s Travels”, Jonathan Swift. There was much misreporting of the incident in the newspapers of the time but I have found a reference to what actually happened with some significant detail of the device in a book by Swift which refers to this report as being correct. In this report, the “gentleman in the room” is Swift. A bandbox is a box used for storing hats. I believe the “wild-fire” referred to is some sort of flammable oil.
