Like Victorian London,
Torley – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
Ruffians, alone or in groups of two or three, descend from different directions along gloomy London streets on a sharp winter’s weekday night in February 1894. Amongst them is a figure in a top hat as if a gentleman d’affaires slipping between West End liaisons. But these are no metropolitan nere-do-goods engaged in the twilight vices usually expected of the lower classes. Rather, plain clothes coppers with an urgent briefing still ringing in their ears. In the misty air, adrenaline seeps into every sinew, heightening senses already drawn taut with news of an explosion that afternoon outside the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
In the blast, a foreign-looking man with a suspicious accent and an even more suspicious-looking parcel lost a hand and died. After he had breathed his last in the nearby Seaman’s Hospital, Constable Tangeney from Blackheath Hill station inspected the stranger’s clothing and various objects handed in by witnesses. Amongst the bric-a-brac, he finds a large sum of money, tickets to a masquerade ball, a hob-watch stopped the time of the detonation and a membership of the Club Autonomie.
Five hours later, officers’ paths converge on Windmill Street. Some arrive east from Tottenham Court Road, at the other side of which lies respectable Bloomsberry. Others from the west, from deeper within the swarming den of foreign refugees (many of them anarchists) that is late-Victorian Soho. They pause outside the door of number six. It is now 9 pm, an hour when the address is expected to be least crowded. In an act of cunning, bravado and carefully applied force, the men are about to take possession of the premises. As if themselves entitled to enter, the plan begins with the application of a peculiar knock upon the front door.
For these are no ordinary peelers. Their senior officer (wearing a top hat appropriate to his rank) and his colleagues are members of the nascent Metropolitan Police Special Branch, founded less than a decade previously on the order of Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt as the world’s first-ever counter-terrorism unit. As for the knock, it is the secret signal allowing those in the know to enter the down-at-heel townhouse used as a meeting place for the Club Autonomie.
Having tricked their way inside, the inspector and two of his subordinates non-too gently relieve the club’s doorman of his responsibilities. Replaced with one of their own, a Sergeant Micheal Walsh, the full body of detectives can assemble in a well-lit hallway. As further proof that fortune favours the brave, the men overhear those in an adjoining room – in the egregious and loud manner typical of the Continental political agitator – engaging in a stormy discussion. The topic? The method and causes of the sudden and violent demise that very afternoon of a certain M. Martial Bourdin.
Upon which, Inspector William Melville (for it is he) bursts into the anarchists’ hive to discover a bar-room containing eight or nine startled faces. Overpowered, the suspects are examined for arms on the spot and then taken downstairs to a basement hall ordinarily used for Autonomie meetings. With Sargeant Walsh on the door, a trap has been set to capture other members. As comrades arrive in all innocence, Walsh welcomes the newcomers with a whispered ‘in there, please’ accompanied, if necessary, by a well-placed hand and a push. Thence, they fall into Melville’s hands.
Upon passing through the threshold and now on the other side of a subterfuge, suspects are directed to the bar where they are apprehended. Many come quietly. Those who resist are restrained, even manhandled. An uncooperative few must be forced to the ground and handcuffed. Pockets are searched before a lining-up and a close interrogation from another sergeant. Those who arouse the greatest suspicion are taken to Melville for careful questioning.
Altogether, between seventy and eighty men are captured. A detective sergeant in the basement hall takes details and probes biographies. As the intelligence being gathered accumulates, other officers slip away to follow up leads and search lodgings. Among the suspects, not one English name is found. All are refugees. A good many German, a good many French, a sprinkling of other nationalities.
Every nook and cranny of the club is investigated. Night lanterns illuminate incriminating documents. While rummaging through cellars, cupboards and small rooms, numerous papers are collected to be taken away for closer inspection. However, frustration mounts. Although an impressive quantity of material is recovered, at first glance, the Autonomie keep incomplete records disguising the identities and intentions of their members.
Likewise, in the interrogations. It is conceded that Bourdin was an enthusiastic anarchist, but it is also claimed – fortuitously when facing the Special Branch – he belonged to the club’s Individual Action Section. Their motto? ‘Propaganda by Deed’! For the safety of all members, the IAS act on their own initiative, with no others knowing what is aimed. Plans are ‘lodged within their own breasts’, thus providing protection from informers and from police investigators who may uncover culpability towards other anarchists. As for the question of means. Money is provided from ‘some source’ never ascertained to comrades.
However, one of those detectives slipping away into the night carries with him both an address and name. Rapping on the entrance to a small and dingy workshop in Great Titchfield Street, a brisk seven-minute walk through gas-lit cobbled streets in the general direction of Regents Park, it is by now the uncomfortable side of midnight. Inside, an unsuspecting artisan thought to be able to provide much enlightenment regarding the mysterious M. Boudin shuffles by candlelight towards a pounding door.
To be continued…
© Always Worth Saying 2024
