Birds-Eye View of Birmingham in 1886,
Henry William Brewer – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
In late February of 1894, a far-fetched tale appeared in the London penny dreadful newspapers. It concerned the untimely death of an anarchist, Martial Bourdin, blown up by his own bomb near the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. However, the official narrative had Bourdin making his way to Paris without luggage to detonate it there. Taking fright early on during his mission, he ended up dead on a path in Greenwich Park.
In its entirety the story sounded unlikely and disjointed and was perhaps contrived for an ulterior motive. It was almost as if something was covered up – or persons unknown were being protected. The senior investigating officer, Inspector Melville of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch, did have form.
Thus far the dark events of winter 1894 have taken the reader to Soho, Tottenham Court Road, Paris and across the Atlantic to the teeming immigrant-infested cities of the Eastern Seaboard. No matter, all eyes must now turn to Walsall. Yes, Walsall.
The story continues two years previously on the Wednesday evening of 6th January 1892. It is 9 pm. Detective Inspector Quinn of the Metropolitan Police and some other detective officers are waiting at the police station in the now familiar Tottenham Court Road. This den of Continental anarchy is a stone’s throw away from notorious Soho’s infamous Windmill Street-based ‘Club Autonomie’. A pedestrian passes by with a parcel under his arm.
The Detective Inspector stops him and, taking the parcel from him, finds it to be a cigar box containing a bottle of liquid labelled ‘chloroform.’ When challenged, the stranger says a bottle of chloroform is a thing that any man might have with him. When questioned further, he reveals himself to be a clerk in the London and North-Western Railway Company’s offices at Albion. When searched, he is found to be in possession of an Anarchist journal, a rail ticket from Walsall to London and a season ticket in the name of Joseph Thomas Deakin.
The next day, the investigation moved to Walsall. A non-descript West Midlands town lying eight miles from Birmingham may appear an odd place for an anarchist plot, but the area had a reputation. Felix Orsini, who attempted to assassinate Emporer Louis Napoleon of France in 1858, travelled to Birmingham to buy his bombs while posing as an experimenting philosopher of science to put the manufacturer he employed off his guard. Some years later, Whitehead the Fenian had his secret nitroglycerin factory in a moderate-sized house on a busy Brummy street.
For several months previous to the ostensibly chance encounter on Tottenham Court Road, the authorities suspected a plot to bomb the principal capitals of Europe. This would take place on 1st May, a day synonymous with the activism of workers and the labour movement. Then the workshop of the world, the bombs required would be manufactured in this country. The risk of discovery which would be incurred in ordering these instruments in quantities from workshops – even in different sections – was great.
The system considered safest (and which was in large measure adopted) was to entrust the work to men engaged as operatives in suitable trades or callings. Where political sympathies may have been enlisted in this way, quantities of parts of bombs and other engines of destruction were suspected to be being manufactured in the Midlands, the North of England and in the iron-producing districts of Scotland.
Only two days after the apprehension of Mr Deakins, an explosion occurred at Dublin Castle. Irish nationalists took advantage of a wall breached during building work to place explosives beneath the office apartment of Treasury official Mr Cullinane. By happenstance, Cullinane left the room just before the explosion. Although the work of nationalists in Ireland, there was an expectation of similar outrages in connection with the Continental Anarchist movement.
Joseph Deakin was to appear at Marlborough Street police court charged with being in unlawful possession of a cigar box containing a bottle of white fluid and not giving a satisfactory account of the same. The resulting investigation gathered pace when Inspector Melville of Special Branch headed to Walsall and made arrests among Deakin’s acquaintances.
Those apprehended as suspected anarchists included Frenchman Victor Cailes, 33, an engine driver, Frederick Charles, a clerk, and Mme Marie Pibelue, 36, the lady companion of M.Cailes. They were charged along with others of having in their possession certain explosive substances for suspected unlawful purposes. In a subsequent magistrate’s court hearing, the police claimed they would be able to prove that during the previous few months the suspects had under their control matrices for making bombs.
What was said to be a specimen bomb shell was shown to the magistrates along with a model of a bolt to fit an assembled device. That model being found in the possession of Charles, M. Cailes protested that he had never seen the thing except at the police station.
M. Cailes and his paramour, Mme Pibelue, lodged in the town’s Green Lane with a Mr Young, an old and worn out man who sported a long, thin, straggly beard. Happy to talk to the newspapers, Young, a chain maker, said Charles took his meals with Cailes at Green Lane and that Cailes was a member of both the Socialist Club and the Knights of Labour. Young first met Cailes soon after he arrived in Walsall. Following the discharge of Cailes from his employment at the foundry where he first worked, Young offered to take him in as he appeared destitute. While teaching him chain making, Young claimed Cailes lived on less than 9/6 a week.
The impossibility of surviving on such a small amount led to the suspicion that Cailes had other resources at his disposal. Added to this, Young’s lodger received a number of letters with foreign postmarks and while often talking with Charles, only did so in French. Further arrests followed, including John Westley, a brushmaker and active member of the Walsall Socialist Club. The last employer of the Frenchman Cailes, his arrest was due to a statement made by a youth. In the November of the previous year the youth allegeded he took a letter and parcel containing a model of a bomb to a local moulder.
Westley left Walsall after the boy came forward and could not be traced until he returned by train from Birmingham to be arrested by a Detective Sergeant Curiff who had been watching for him.
However, a question asked in parliament hinted at some disquiet over the case as it moved towards a full court hearing. Concern revolved around evidence against the prisoners derived from letters written in the cells at the instigation of the police and under the suspects’ belief that one of the others arrested had betrayed them. At the time, Home Secretary Mr Matthews declined to comment on a case still pending in the courts.
The full trial took place at April’s Stafford Spring Assizes under Mr Justice Hawkins. Six men stood in the dock; Cailes, Charles, a Mr Battolla, Deakin, Westley and a Mr Ditchfield. All were said to be members of an Anarchist club in Walsall and were charged with conspiracy under the Explosives Act. The jury found the first four men guilty and acquitted the others. Cailes, Charles and Batolla were sentenced to ten years. Recommended to mercy, Deakin received five years penal servitude. The prisoners, the next day’s newspapers reported, seemed much astonished at the sentences.
Later the same month at an extraordinary meeting of the Walsall Watch Committee letters were received from the Home Secretary and Assistant Solicitor to The Treasury Mr Cuffe. The gentlemen expressed their high appreciation of the zeal, energy and skill displayed by Chief Constable Taylor and his subordinates in proving the case against the anarchists. They intimated £50 would be granted for distribution amongst those engaged in the case. The sum of £40 was allocated to the chief constable and £10 to the chief of the detective department.
However, all was not well with all of the convictions. A question mark hung over the issue raised in the House of Commons and suspicion surrounded the motivation of the youth who took the letter and parcel to the moulders. The case was to be revisited by the legal system, but not until years after the subsequent events in Greenwich. When doing so, a light landed upon the murky methodology of Inspector Melville of the Special Branch.
To be continued…
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