Standing Well Back
20th Century

Suffragette Bombs, 1912 – 1914

There’s a lot of talk about the suffragette movement right now, and that’s entirely appropriate.  But there is little about the suffragette bombing and arson campaign.  On these pages I try to avoid political commentary, but just for the record here’s an outline of some of the bomb attacks by the Suffragette movement. There were also a considerable number of arson attacks. This is by no means an exhaustive list of bombing attempts but I think it’s most of them. I have commented on device construction of some of the incidents, where known.

  1. 18 July 1912. Theatre Royal Dublin. several small explosive devices exploded during an attack by suffragettes who tried to burn down the theatre.
  2. 19 February 1913. Walton on the Hill, Surrey. A house being built for Lloyd George was attacked with two crude explosive devices. Only one functioned, disrupting the second. The unexploded device had a main charge of 5lbs of gunpowder.
  3. 4 April 1913. Oxted railway station, Surrey. Bomb exploded in men’s lavatory. Clockwork mechanism and battery recovered.
  4. 14 April 1913. Bank of England, London.  Milk can attached to railings by hat pins in the street outside the Bank of England, opposite the entrance top the Stock Exchange. Relatively large charge. Timing device of a wristwatch and battery, device initiated but did not explode properly, device spotted emitting smoke, policeman carried the burning device to the Royal Exchange and immersed it in a fountain.
  5. 17 April 1913.  Aberdeen Railway Station.  Gunpowder charge, fuse was a lit candle.  A railway porter extinguished the candle.
  6. 24 April 1913. Free Trade Hall, Manchester. Bomb exploded.
  7. 24 April 1913. Crown Court, Newcastle.  Bomb exploded.  2ft long pipe bomb.
  8. 2 May 1913. Piccadilly Tube station. London. A quantity of nitroglycerine was found abandoned at the station.
  9. 5 May 1913. Borough Market Post office, London. Gunpowder and nitroglycerine recovered from a parcel.
  10. 7 May 1913. St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Ticking bomb discovered and defused. the device contained a clock, two batteries, and contained nitro-glycerine as the main charge. Nitroglycerine was a relatively rare explosive used by the Suffragettes.
  11. 10th May 1913. Cambridge. a bomb exploded in the changing rooms of the Cambridge University football ground.
  12. 10 May 1913. Lime St station, Liverpool.  A device failed to function in the waiting room. Burning fuse had gone out. The device was packed with improvised shrapnel (nuts and bolts).
  13. 10 May 1913. Empire Theatre, Dublin. A woman discovered a bomb made from 24 cartridges of gunpowder, with the fuse burning i the ladies lavatory in the theatre. She picked up the device and plunged it into water in a  sink, extinguishing the fuse.
  14. 10 May 1913. Reading Post Office. A parcel was found ticking and a postal device connected to a timer was recovered. The explosive charge consisted of gunpowder and nitroglycerine.
  15. 14 May 1913. Parcel bomb sent to Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, a magistrate, at Bow Street court, London.  Device consisted of a tin of gunpowder, and a bullet with a nail fixed to strike the percussion cap, presumably released on a  spring when the package was opened (but not that clear). Device defused. A few days later two persons attempted to push Sir Henry off a cliff near Margate as he was out walking.
  16. 15 May 1913. A small bomb planted outside the National Gallery, London. Failed to explode.
  17. 16 May 1913. a series of bombs at
    1. A library in South London
    2. A church in Hastings
    3. An hotel in Brentwood
    4. At Westbourne Park Station (device failed)
  18. 21 May 1913. Royal Observatory, Blackford Hills Edinburgh. Bomb exploded.
  19. 27 May 1913. Reading station. A bomb was thrown onto the platform from a passing train (the Bristol Express), where it exploded.
  20. 11 June 1913. Post Office, Newcastle upon Tyne. Bomb exploded.
  21. 15 June 1913. Eden Park railway station, Beckenham. Bomb recovered. A clockwork timer had failed to function.
  22. 17 June 1913. Blackfriars Bridge. Bomb thrown from the bridge, exploded on or under the water.
  23. 18 June 1913. Stratford Upon Avon Canal, Birmingham. Large explosion damaged the canal. Remains of a long burning fuse recovered.
  24. 5 July 1913. Cotton Exchange, Liverpool. Bomb exploded.
  25. 7 July 1913. Monsall Road railway siding. Manchester. Device exploded on a  train carriage parked in the sidings.
  26. 19 July 1913. Haslemere station. A bomb was discovered in a box on some steps leading to the platform. It was plunged into a pail of water bya porter. a clock, battery, “fuse” and explosives were recovered.
  27. 11 November 1913. Alexandra Park, Manchester. A large explosion of a pipe bomb, probably gunpowder. Initiation system not known
  28. 14 November 1913. Sefton Park palm House Liverpool. Bomb failed to explode.
  29. 18 December 1913. Holloway prison, London. Two large dynamite bombs below up next to the prison garden wall. The devices had been exploded by two 50ft loing burning fuses run to a nearby House.
  30. 6 January 1914. Crown Point,  Leeds. A bomb exploded at an electricity generating station.
  31. 7 January 1914. Harewod Barracks, Leeds. A dynamite bomb was thrown over the wall of the barracks which was being used by the police at the time. It exploded.
  32. 24 January 1914. Kibble Palace botanic gardens, Glasgow. Two devices were encountered in the Botanic gardens. One was rendered safe by a gardener who cut a burning fuse with his knife. The other exploded.
  33. March 1914. Church of St John the Evangelist, Smith Square, Westminster, London. Bomb exploded. (see second attack on this church on 12 July 1914)
  34. 3 April 1914. Belmont Church, Glasgow. Three small devices exploded in Belmont Church, Glasgow
  35. 5 April 1914. Trafalgar Square, London a bomb exploded at the church of St Martin-In-the Fields, starting a fire.
  36. 17 April 1914. Britannia Pier, Yarmouth. Bomb exploded causing a fire which destroyed the Pier.  On the same day a number of fires were started around the country.
  37. 3 May 1914. Upper Windledon Reservoir, Yorkshire. Large iron pipe bomb discovered at valve house, having failed to explode. Fuse was a wax taper.
  38. 10 May 1914. Metropolitan Tabernacle, Elephant and Castle, London. A bomb exploded in the gallery of the church.
  39. 22 May 1914. Glasgow.  Two large explosive devices discovered buried beside a Glasgow aqueduct. Fuses had been lit but had extinguished.
  40. 5 June 1914. Dudhope Castle, Dundee Policeman discovered a pipe bomb at the castle entrance. Burning fuse was wrapped around a candle, which had been lit but had gone out.
  41. 11 June 1914. Westminster Abbey, London. a bomb exploded beside the coronation chair, probably damaging the Stone of Scone. which is built into the chair. Iron shrapnel and been built into the bomb.
  42. 14 June 1914. St George’s Church Hannover Square, London. Bomb exploded.
  43. 15 June 1915. Olympia, London. A suffragette was arrested in possession of a bomb at a horse show.
  44. 8 July 1914. Robert Burns’s cottage , Scotland. Two people were spotted placing large explosive devices against the wall of the cottage, an historic building. One person was detained, the other escaped. two devices were recovered, each containing about 4kg of blasting powder, each with a 20ft burning fuze.
  45. 12 July 1914. A postal bomb exploded while in transit on a train between Blackpool and Manchester causing a fire. A guard was severely injured in the flames
  46. 12 July 1914. device left under a pew in the Church of St John the Evangelist, Smith Square, Westminster, London during a service. Perpetrator Annie Bell arrested as she left, having been under surveillance. device consisted of a large charge of 5.5 lbs of gunpowder with a lit candle inserted.  Device was extinguished by the congregation.
  47. 13 July 1914. Rosslyn chapel, Edinburgh. Bomb consisted a a tin of gunpowder and a long burning fuse, was set on a window ledge and exploded.
  48. 1 August 1914. Lisburn, Northern Ireland. Bomb exploded outside Christ Church Cathedral, leaving a crater 4 feet deep

Churches targeted: 11

Railway targets: 10 (including a postal device that functiond on a train)

Devices defused by passers by/first responders: 10

Devices failed to function as intended: 10

19th Century

Attacking Railway Lines with IEDs using Firearm Initiation Systems

I think I have a final piece of the jigsaw here, that links the IEDs used by Lawrence of Arabia, with IEDs used by Jack Hindon in the Boer War and now, the final piece, with a specific IED designed in the US Civil War.

My intent here is to show how a specific IED design, improvised from commonly available battlefield materials, that used the weight of a target train on a gun lock trigger mechanism to explode a charge, seems to have begun in 1864, and that design, or very close approximations of it were then seen in the Boer War decades later, and again in WW1 more than ten years after that.  It is of course possible that the design was independently invented – but my supposition is that it was not, and the concept was known by those who deal with explosives in one form or another. The attack mode proved useful in what we would call today “guerilla warfare”, often associated with a firearms firing on the resulting shocked and disorientated survivors.

In bringing these together in a historical sequence I am in part repeating earlier blog posts. In uncovering the details I worked backwards but now I’m laying this out in sequential historical sequence, covering a period from the early 1860s to WW1.  I’m specifically looking here at attacks on railways where the weight of the train causes a trigger on a gun “lock” to be initiated – components of firearms were of course used in other sorts of IEDs over many centuries and I have blogged about that here, but that’s outside the scope of this post.

1. US Civil War. Union IEDs designed to attack Confederate trains.  As I have blogged before IEDs (then called “torpedoes”) were used extensively by both sides in the US Civil War, with perhaps the Confederates making most application of them. After the end of hostilities the Chief Engineer of the US Army, Brigadier General Delafield collated numerous reports on various Torpedoes used in the conflict and put them into a historical context, examining the efficacy and appropriateness of use.  I find it intriguing that Delafield, in the decade prior to the US Civil War was one of the US Army’s observers in the Crimean War which saw extensive use by the Russians of IEDs.  In the collated reports is a letter written to Brigadier General Delafield by 1st Lieut Charles R Suter, Chief Engineer in the “Department of the South, Hilton Head, South Carolina, on 26 October, 1864. The letter reads as follows:

By direction of Major General Foster, I have this day forwarded by Adams Express, a box containing a railroad torpedo, tools and drawings showing its use.

This torpedo was devised by Charles F Smith, 3d U.S.C.T.

We have not yet been able to try them on the enemy’s railroads, but they have been thoroughly tested in experiments. The magazine holds 20 to 30 pounds of powder, and this is sufficient to blow a car off the track besides utterly destroying it. Two magazines can be used with one lock and by regulating the length of the powder train, any car of the passing train may be blown up.  The accompanying tools are simple and light. The idea of the inventor was, to send small parties of men, 3 or 4 in each, with these torpedoes and return. Each magazine is a load for a man. Another man can carry the lock and another the tools.

The manner of laying these torpedoes is as follows: –

The spikes are drawn from three consecutive ties on one side.  A hole is then dug, and the lock placed as indicated in the drawing. The rail is then sprung up and iron wedges placed on the adjacent ties to keep the rail from springing the lock by its own weight. When thus secured, the lock is cocked and capped, and the box closed. The magazine is then buried in the proper place, and the connection made. By using a little care in excavating and carrying off the superfluous earth to some little distance, the existence of the torpedo would never be suspected. The bottom of the arched rail should just touch the lever. Any shock by the bending down the rail pulls the trigger and explodes the torpedo.

In our experiments, a torpedo of 18 pounds was exploded by giving a car sufficient impetus to run over it. The car was entirely destroyed, and rails, ties and fragments of the car were thrown in every direction. One rail was projected 40 feet. 

These torpedoes can probably be used with success in some of the larger armies. Their greatest efficiency lies in destroying the locomotive, which cannot be replaced, whereas a torn up track can easily be relaid.  the magazine should be tarred before being used.

I am, General,

very respectfully,

Your obd’t serv’t

CHAS R SUTER

1st Lieut, U S Engineers & Chief Eng’r D.S.

Here’s the accompanying diagram:

 

The diagram shows a “lock” from a firearm, with a lever engaging the trigger system. This has been “pre-packaged” is a small box with the initiation mechanism causing a fuze to be lit. The fuze is then connected to two containers (“magazines”) placed under adjacent sleeper ties.

Despite much research I cannot find a report of a “gun-lock” initiated railway IED in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, five years after the end of the US Civil War.  But railway IEDs were used, initiated by the weight of a train on the fuze removed from an artillery shell and was the subject of my last blog post here.

2. The Boer War.  Gunlock initiated IEDs were used by the Boers against British Trains in the Boer war in 1901.  Here’s a diagram of the adapated Martini-Henry gun lock. The similarities of the US Civil war design of 1865 are clear.


Pictures of actual gunlocks from these devices are at this page

3. WW1 – Lawrence of Arabia and Bimbashi Garland’s attacks on Turkish trains in Arabia. Lawrence of Arabia’s campaign against the Ottoman Turks in the Arabian peninsula in WW1 often attacked the railway lines running south. The IEDs that Lawrence used were pretty much identical to the Boer devices, but had been developed by his ordnance specialist “Bimbashi Garland” and former Ordnance Corps laboratory technician who had been co-opted in the Arab Bureau because of his interest in archaeology.  I have no doubt that Garland was aware of the Boer methodology and simply used the same technique. Details are here.

In summary then I think it is clear that the use of a gunlock placed under a railway line to initiate an explosive charge began in 1865, with the invention by Charles Smith, for the Union Army.  This technique somehow found its way to the Boers in 1901, and then was copied again by Garland and Lawrence of Arabia in 1917.

20th Century

Loco-loco

Quite often in my research into historical IEDs, I’m struck by parallels with modern IED threats. Here’s a historical story with exactly that.

There is a common perception that the “first” vehicle bomb or VBIED was the 1920 Wall St bombing In New York. As readers of this blog will know by now, that isn’t even close, with vehicle bombs hundreds of years before that.  These VBIEDs described below were from around 1912/1913.

I see some parallels between the ongoing conflict in Iraq and Syria and the Mexican Revolution in terms of military activity.  Today there are conflicts between government troops and insurgents, one way or another. One common tactic in Iraq and Syria we are seeing is the government troops defending a FOB in a small town or village and insurgents launching attacks on them quite often preceded by a suicide vehicle bomb. The “shock action” of a large explosion potentially disorientates defenders as other attacks are launched. The attacks often take place in desert countryside down the the communication routes (the roads), and has been seen very frequently in the last couple of years.

There are similarities then, with the Mexican revolution and in particular in the period 1912 and 1913. This was a complex revolution and I don’t intend on getting into the detail of its causes and protagonists – you can read that here if you wish to.

There were various rebel leaders, including Zapata and Orozco who launched guerrilla warfare campaigns that today we might call insurgencies. Both government forces and the rebels moved forces and their supplies quite often by the railroad system – the only practical way of moving volumes of men and material around the country quickly.   Typically the government forces, in pursuit of rebels, would move forces along a railway line to a town which they fortified, moving with the aid of three or four trains that arrived in a given town.  Or the rebel forces did exactly the same.   On a few occasions rebels mounted attacks that were initiated sending their own or captured trains at high speed down the line, which collided with the stationary government trains and caused alarm and confusion.  It didn’t take long before the one side or the other spiced up these runaway trains with the addition of a lot of explosives on board.

One example – In the First Battle of Rellano which took place on 24 March 1912, between two opposing sides, one under under command of Pascual Orozco. Government forces arrived in Chihuahua province but their progress was stalled because Orozco had blown up railroad track and bridges with IEDs.   The government forces under General Salas had to repair the bridges and railway lines on order to move. Orozco’s troops were defending the town of Rellano and the government forces were moving up the railway line in trains to attack them.  One of Orozco’s comrades, Emilio Campa, loaded a locomotive with dynamite and sent it at high speed down the track to where government forcers were disembarking from their trains just outside the town.  Despite the fact that the government forces had removed some track (to protect themselves from such eventuality) the VBIED train, traveling at high speed, left the tracks but still collided with the troop train, and exploded killing 60 soldiers and injuring many more.  I haven’t been able to establish any fuzing mechanism.

Such tactics were used in a number of other engagements by the (various) participants and the trains were known either as “loco-locos” (crazy trains) or “maquina loca”, an adaptation of the “maquina infernale” or infernal machine which in those days was used to describe an IED.

Rodolfo Fierro, (an ex railway brake man) who commanded some of Pancho Villa’s forces used this tactic several times, most notably at the Battle of Tierra Blanca in November 1913.  Fierro’s nickname was “the Butcher” a name that apparently was quite apposite.

Here’s a picture of the aftermath of one loco-loco.


The aftermath of an exploding train

So these insurgent battles were violent, desert-bound conflicts not too dissimilar from the violent conflicts of Syria and Iraq just now.  Of course the Mexican revolution has been glamorised by Hollywood or spaghetti westerns such as the Wild Bunch, A Fistful of Dynamite and Villa Rides!    Indeed the whole film “A Fistful of Dynamite” concludes with a Loco-loco being used against an Army train.  The hero of the film is James Coburn, playing an Irish explosives expert plying his trade in Latin America (with an awful Irish accent)…and there’s another story for the future…

20th Century

Going Around and Coming Around

During World War One there was an extensive IED sabotage campaign run by German agents and diplomats in North America.  I have written in previous posts about some of these bombing incidents. See:

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/1/22/massive-explosion-in-new-jersey.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/1/17/new-yorks-ied-task-force-1905-1919.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2013/9/17/kurt-jahnke-the-legendary-german-saboteur.html

One of the protagonists, or “players” in this great game was a young aristocratic German military officer, serving as diplomat on the staff of the German Embassy in Washington., His name was Kapitan Franz von Papen.


Von Papen in 1914 (public domain)

Von Papen was a man who clearly enjoyed intrigue. As well has involvement in the German sabotage campaign in 1915, he was also involved in discussions as an intermediary to Irish revolutionaries looking for a  supply weapons for the Easter rising of 1916, and was involved in liaison with Indian nationalists as part of the Hindu German Conspiracy.   In December 1915 he was declared “persona non grata” by the US government because of alleged complicity on the Vanceboro Bridge bombing .   Travel home to Germany was challenging, but Von Papen received a diplomatic document, a Laissaiz Passer, meaning he travelled via Falmouth in England knowing he could not be detained by the British under diplomatic law.  To his horror the laissez passer did not cover his luggage and in front of him on the dockside at Falmouth the British officials opened his bags finding code books and incriminating documents.

 

Documents were found which detailed the payment of over $3Million to the German agents involved in the sabotage campaign.   Transcripts of the seized documents are available here and make fascinating reading.  His cheque stubs were annotated with significant detail such as “for the purchase of picric acid”  “for dum-dum investigation” and exposed several agents who lived in England but were offering services to the Germans.   Of note is the Germany authorities in Berlin asking him to find out details of how Mexican revolutionaries were blowing up trains in 1914, “in order to form an opinion whether, in the event of a European war, explosions of this kind would have to be reckoned with”.

One can imagine the apoplectic Prussian officer watching as the British officials simply opened his bags and took the documents out.   Further documents linking Von Papen to the Bombing Campaign in the US were discovered in a Wall Street office he rented. Other documents incriminated the Austria Ambassador who was collecting munition shipping data for the Germans.  One might have thought that Von Papen would have learned his lesson.  But no….  In a later parallel, while serving with the Ottoman Army in Palestine the following year, he left behind a suitcase in a room he was using in Nazareth as the British advanced. In it, papers were found belonging to him incriminated several agents he was running locally.  All in all then, Von Papen’s spy-craft was pretty shoddy.

In 1916, an US indictment was issued against him for plotting to blow up Canada’s Welland Canal, based on the seized documents from Falmouth.  He remained under indictment as he rose in the ranks of the German inter-war political scene, becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1932, at which point the US charges were rescinded.   There is this rather nice quote about Von Papen at the time by the French Ambassador “His appointment to Chancellor of Germany was met by incredulity. He enjoyed the peculiarity of being taken seriously by neither his friends nor his enemies. He  was reputed to be superficial, blundering, untrue, ambitious, vain, crafty and an intriguer.”   He was subsequently easily out-manouvered by the Nazis.  He was then made Ambassador to Austria, in the run up the the Anschluss.

In 1939 he was appointed as Ambassador to Turkey, where the intrigue of the war years suited his inclinations, if not his expertise. The Turks initially objected pointing out that his previous diplomatic activity had involved sabotage in the US and subversion in another (Austria). but he was appointed.  In 1942 a peculiar incident occurred, an act of intrigue against the man with so much experience of it himself.  There are conflicting version of this story but it would appear that the most convincing is this:

The Russian intelligence service , the NKVD, decided to assassinate Von Papen.  After an abortive attempt to incorporate a Czech officer, they found a Yugoslav born communist, now Turkish,  to conduct the mission. The perpetrator was told to shoot Von Papen who regularly strolled along a particular avenue with his wife, then cover their escape by triggering a “smoke bomb”.  But with NKVD subterfuge the smoke bomb wasn’t a smoke bomb at all, but contained a large amount of high explosive. The perpetrator fired one shot at Von Papen, which missed then immediately triggered the smoke bomb’ which exploded blowing the shooter to pieces.  His penis was found in a tree and a distinctive wart on the skin near an eyebrow was also recovered from the scene.   The NKVD had also , allegedly planted documentation in the device packaging suggesting the perpetrators was from the German Embassy itself. Another version suggests that this was “reported” by TASS as disinformation.   Then idea was that the assassination would occur and the perpetrator would be blown to bits to reduce the risk of the incident being compromised as an NKVD operation.

Von Papen and his wife survived the attack, shaken but largely unharmed. For what it is worth Von Papen suspected the British. The Russian embassy hinted that the Americans “knew” it was the gestapo who were responsible.  The turks arrested the “station chief” of the NKVD (officially listed as an “archivist”)  at the Russian embassy . This occurred amongst diplomatic uproar as the Turks surrounded the Russian embassy for two weeks demanding he be handed over.   Two other emigre Yugoslav communists (from the Muslim community) were also arrested.  These latter two confessed that the Soviets had ordered the assassination.   They claimed that the Russians had given the perpetrator, Omer Tokat, a revolver and the supposed smoke bomb. all defendants were found guilty. Things got complicated in subsequent appeals (too complex to explain in a short blog).

After the war Von Papen was convicted at the Nuremberg trials , released in 1949 and died 20 years after that.

20th Century

Title of this magazine article is interesting…

My old friend Panjandrum saw a military history magazine in a newsagent’s today and took this image of Page 35.

Given the title of the article in the magazine, this blog’s title, and this piece from this blog in 2012, that’s a fine coincidence!

For what it is worth I’m pretty sure that Garland didn’t serve in the Boer War as the magazine articles suggests, but I have no doubt the concept of initiation system came from there.

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