Three Good Questions (and some answers) about Martial Bourdin and the Greenwich Park Explosion
Last month I invited you to imagine that while doing some historical research you’d found a piece in the Illustrated London News from 24th February 1894 about an explosion in Greenwich Park. What could you learn from it? How many research rabbit holes would it lead you down? In what new directions might it take your writing? And, if you interrogated the words and images closely, what Three Good Questions would you want answers to first?
You can refer back to the full transcript of the article here.
My own Three Good Questions to get things started were:
- What had Martial Bourdin intended to achieve?
- Did the Autonomie Club have British members as well?
- Were there any accomplices? (and was Henri Bourdin among them?)
To which my newsletter subscribers and social media followers added the following:
- Was London unique in its attractiveness to so many groups of conspirators? If so, why was this?
- Why was Bourdin carrying a ball ticket, and such a large sum of money?
- Who were the “Anarchists” and what did they stand for?
- How easy would it have been for the general public to gain access to the chemical constituents of such explosives, or even the instructions for making explosives?
Introduction
As 21st-century consumers of global news we’re all too accustomed to reports about ideologically-motivated acts of terrorism and the individuals who perpetrate them. Reading about Martial Bourdin and the explosion in Greenwich Park 130 years after the event might not therefore strike you as being particularly unusual or shocking.
However, it’s turned out to be a fascinating story, with some intriguing twists, as well as an excellent example of the importance in historical research of asking good questions and thinking critically about the answers. It’s certainly pulled me into the far reaches of a convoluted warren of sources.
Underlying the headlines are themes that still echo loudly today about the immigration into Britain of political refugees and the prejudice and racism they encountered. There is also the complex and unpredictable nature of sibling and extended family relationships.
The use of bold emphasis below is intended as a reading aid and was not present in the original sources.
Anarchists and Anarchism
To give everything that follows some context, it may be helpful to begin by answering the question about who the “Anarchists” were and what they stood for.
According to David Goodway, writing for History & Policy in 2012, “…anarchists disdain the customary use of “anarchy” to mean “chaos” or “complete disorder”: for them it signifies the absence of rulers in a self-managed society, more highly organized than the disorganization and chaos of the present. The historic anarchist movement of the late-nineteenth century was therefore distinguished from the rest of the international movement of organised labour by its rejection of state intervention from above in favour of self-organisation from below, as well as by its rejection of constitutional protest in favour of direct action. In the industrializing societies… trade unionists and revolutionaries at times countered with unrestrained retaliation the brutal intimidation and suppression their strikes and insurrections provoked. From the late 1870s the anarchists added to the traditional ‘propaganda by the word’ – agitation utilizing the spoken and written word – ‘propaganda by the deed‘, acts of revolt such as violent strikes, riots, assassinations and bombings intended to ignite popular uprisings. This phase degenerated in France at the beginning of the 1890s into terrorism and the cult of dynamite, although care was normally taken to ensure that the victims would be class enemies, not members of the labouring masses.” (1)
The February 1894 edition of the Strand Magazine quoted Colonel Vivian Majendie, New Scotland Yard’s explosives expert, describing how a total of 86 “important dynamitic efforts” had been made by “dynamiters” on British soil between 1881 and 1892 (not including “minor explosions.”)
On 9th December 1893 in Paris, 20 people were injured when an Anarchist called Auguste Vaillant exploded a bomb at the Chamber of Deputies. The French government responded by passing repressive laws that restricted the freedom of the press, and Vaillant was put to death by guillotine on 5th February 1894. Ten days later (only three days before Martial Bourdin walked into Greenwich Park) Émile Henry retaliated by detonating a device at the Café Terminus in the Gare Saint-Lazare. One person died and another 20 were injured. Henry met the same fate as Vaillant on 21st May 1894.
Initial Press Coverage
To recap, a French man called Martial Bourdin exploded a bomb near the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park, London, at dusk on Thursday, 15th February 1894. The incident would later come to be known as the “Greenwich Outrage.”
The Illustrated London News took nine days to report the story, because the paper was published every Saturday and its pictorial content had first to be sketched and then rendered as the wood cut engravings used in the printing process. It would have been impossible to prepare everything in time for the 17th February edition. Other newspapers, however, those without such production complications, were able to report much more quickly and in greater detail.
On page five of The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, 17th February 1894, for instance, coverage of the story took up most of four full columns. It claimed that Martial Bourdin, “had been known to the police for some time as the leader of the most advanced of the foreign Anarchists who meet in the neighbourhood of Tottenham-court-road,” and that he was, “believed to have formed the design to damage the Observatory buildings…”
“Careful examination has been made [on Friday, 16th February, the day after the explosion] of the documents and pocket articles found on the deceased… which confirm the knowledge which the Special Branch of the New Scotland-yard Criminal Investigation Department had obtained of him. Chief-Inspector Melville… at once recognised Martial Bourdin as a man whom he has had reason to keep under observation for a long time. He was a leading Anarchist and the secretary of a group at the Autonomie Club in Windmill-street. Martial, it is believed, was in a position to know intimately every prominent Anarchist in London.”
“In the outer pocket of his great-coat, on the left hand side, were the remains of a glass phial the neck and shoulders of which remained intact… It can only be conjectured that it originally contained some explosive, with or without a detonator…”
“On Bourdin’s body there were a bunch of keys and a purse, which contained £12 in English gold, 19s 6d in silver, and 3 1/2d in bronze [totalling an equivalent of approximately £1,400 today]. Several tickets of entertainments and restaurant bills were found. The tickets include a membership card, stamped with the india-rubber seal, of the Autonomie Club, February, 1894, with a name “M. H. Bourdin” in the left-hand corner. There was also a double admission ticket, for a lady and gentleman, available for the masquerade ball to be held on Feb. 26, at the Athenaeum, Tottenham-court-road. Portions of recent editions of two evening papers were also in his possession, one fragment containing an article on “Anarchists in London.” In an inner vest-pocket there were discovered several recipes in French and English for making explosive mixtures, and a British Museum Reading Room slip have the title of a book which was written by Colonel Cundill, who was formerly a Home Office Inspector of Explosives. On the slip the numbers of the pages were marked for easy reference to passages describing the manufacture of bombs.” “Amongst the articles taken from the pockets of the deceased was a lump of sugar, which can be used as a detonator.”
The Athenaeum mentioned was the Athenaeum Hall, a small venue at 73 Tottenham Court Road for events ranging from radical political meetings to plays, musical recitals and dance classes. It opened in 1885 and was eventually knocked down to make way for the building in 1907 of what became Goodge Street station. The Athenaeum had a reputation for hosting “radicals who lived in large numbers around Tottenham Court Road.” It is perhaps best known for putting on music and poetry recitals involving socialist activists Eleanor Marx (Karl Marx’s daughter) and her partner, Edward Aveling. William Morris’s play, The Tables Turned, or Nupkins Awakened, was also performed there in October 1887. The satire was popular with “leftists” who were described by George Bernard Shaw as, “a motley sea of rolling, wallowing, guffawing Socialists,” in an essay for the Saturday Review in 1896. The radical trend of activities at the Athenaeum continued through the 1890s. The Hall features on a poster advertising a talk on “The Philosophy of Anarchism”, part of a course of anarchist lectures taking place in July 1897. (2)
Investigation and Theories
The Daily Telegraph article of 17th February continued with a summary of the investigation conducted at the scene and how, “the opinion was entertained that [Bourdin’s] real object was to throw the bomb into the Observatory and probably demolish the dome,” which was a recent addition to the building at the time and which would, “be certain to have aroused universal interest.” The favoured theory, proposed by Colonel Majendie, was that Bourdin, “caused the explosion whilst he was meddling with the phial… probably in preparing to use it.” More specifically, he was thought to have poured the contents of the phial (concluded to have been sulphuric acid) onto a cotton wool plug in the neck of the bomb that was intended to act as a slow fuse, but the acid penetrated immediately and detonated the main explosive charge in his hand.
The idea seems to have been put forward, presumably by Chief-Inspector Melville, that the motive for the attempted bombing was retaliation for the British government extraditing François Ravachol (born François Claudius Koenigstein) back to France after he’d fled to England for sanctuary. Ravachol was an anarchist who, amongst other activities, had bombed the Restaurant Véry in Paris on 30th March 1892. On his return to France he was sentenced to life in prison for the bombing, but subsequently condemned to the guillotine in July 1892 for an unrelated murder. When his death sentence was handed down, he responded with, “Vive l’anarchie!” (3)
As does much of The Daily Telegraph‘s article, the following section sounds rather like it was dictated word-for-word by a Special Branch officer: “…Bourdin, in common with all other Anarchists in London, has been under a general supervision on the part of the Scotland-yard special branch officers for some time. No offence is alleged against him; but his associations were well known. His journeys to America and to France [the report later mentions that he last returned from Paris about four months previously] have been from time to time noted and recorded. The name which his acquaintances gave to him was that of “the Adonis,” because he was regarded as a handsome man. He is unmarried, and is believed to have earned large wages as a ladies’ tailor in the employ of his brother…. Bourdin has been regarded as a very dangerous propagandist of Anarchism in this country, and he was familiar with the English group, but, although he had been present at Trafalgar-square demonstrations, he never publicly figured as a speaker.”
I’ve not found a source that explains why Martial Bourdin went to the USA or how he spent his time there, other than that he visited New York and Chicago. However, it’s perhaps no coincidence that Anarchism was also strong in the United States within immigrant communities. (4)
Trafalgar Square became a popular site for political protests during the 1880s, with one particular riot on 13th November 1887 becoming known at the time as “Bloody Sunday” because of its scale and violence. (5)
Martial Bourdin (The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, 24th February 1894)
Martial Bourdin‘s unnamed housekeeper is quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying he regarded Bourdin, “as a steady, well-conducted man…” about whom he, “never noticed any suspicious behaviour…” and that Bourdin, “left some clothes, but no letter or documents,” in his room at the front of the house on the third floor. Meanwhile, the landlady (neither named nor quoted) is reported to have said that Bourdin only worked there. “For a long time his brother [Henri] had rented a shop at the back of the house, where he had carried on the business of a lady’s tailor and habit-maker. It appeared that [Henri] had a large connection among “the fashionable class.” Until the end of the year [Henri] conducted the business alone, and then, as the landlady believed, he seemed to find the work too much for him, and sent to Paris for the deceased.”
Henri Bourdin and his wife, Emmeline Kate Bourdin (née Sullivan, who seems to have gone by her middle name as was common at the time), were interviewed by a journalist at their home on the afternoon of Friday, 16th February. The Daily Telegraph doesn’t quote Kate, but reports that she said, “her husband had no idea that his brother Martial was connected with any Anarchist organisation, and he could not account for explosives being in his possession,” and that she, “denied that it was well known among Martial’s friends that he was an Anarchist.”
Henri himself is quoted as saying that his brother, “was a quiet and reserved man, and never conversed with me on aught except the most trifling things. His private affairs he always kept to himself… He has been in this country on and off for about six years.” Henri had been in England for about four years longer than Martial. He denied having any knowledge of his brother being associated with any, “societies holding extreme political views,” but did acknowledge that Martial, “occasionally attended political gatherings… and that he sometimes listened to political lectures. He never said anything to me to lead me to suppose that he held Anarchist views. I don’t think he believed much in politics, but he was very reticent.”
There are many contradictions and likely falsehoods in the characterisation of Martial Bourdin by his family and the police. He was the “secretary of a group at the Autonomie Club” and a “very dangerous propagandist” yet “never publicly figured as a speaker” at demonstrations. He “attended political gatherings” and “sometimes listened to political lectures” but simultaneously wasn’t thought to believe “much in politics” (though how Henri might know that if Martial only spoke to him about “the most trifling things” is questionable.) As will become apparent, although it’s possible they were kept in the dark about the bomb, it’s almost inconceivable that Henri Bourdin and his wife didn’t know about Martial’s involvement with Anarchism.
An intelligence report dated 19th February 1894, discovered by Constance Bantman during the research for her book The French Anarchists in London, 1880-1914, noted that, “Bourdin was not regarded here as a serious man, and it is certain that he was alone.” (6)
Contradicting the landlady’s statement, Henri Bourdin went on to say that Martial had been out of work. “Occasionally he visited me for the purpose of obtaining work, but latterly business has been very slack… He asked if I could help him [at about noon on the day of the explosion] “and I said, “I cannot, for at present I have nothing to do myself.””
Raids and Searches
The Autonomie Club in Windmill Street, off Tottenham Court Road, was one of a number of Anarchist clubs in London. It was raided by a large force of armed police at about 9pm on Friday, 16th February (the day after the explosion.) Members continued to arrive throughout the evening and were detained for questioning by Chief-Inspector Melville. “By a quarter to eleven there were close upon eighty persons caged up in the club hall in the basement of the building.” “They included nearly every European nationality,” reported The Daily Telegraph, but, “perhaps the majority were Germans.” All the members were released without charge shortly before midnight.
The Autonomie Club’s plain wooden walls and mismatched furniture led to it being described as a “very ramshackle place… a few rough benches, chairs, and tables was the only accommodation afforded to the regular frequenters or the casual visitor.” For anarchists, it was as though the destruction of appearances in spaces might in some way enable the destruction of appearances between people. (7)
The Daily Telegraph then describes a search of Martial Bourdin‘s room being carried out by police officers while Chief-Inspector Melville was still interrogating people at the Autonomie Club. “Explosives were found concealed in the room [at the bottom of a wardrobe under a pile of newspapers (8)], and, more significant still, a glass bottle of the exact shape and dimensions of that which undoubtedly contained the explosive liquid the possession of which ended so disastrously for the Anarchist.”
The Coroner’s Inquest
An inquest into the death of Martial Bourdin began on Monday, 19th February 1894, four days after the explosion. The Daily Telegraph reported the next morning that a couple of hundred people had attended the initial hearing, including members of the Autonomie Club, and Detective Inspector Gummer and Major Gilbert of the South London Division of the Metropolitan Police. Henri Bourdin, accompanied by Kate and her brother-in-law, Henry Benjamin “H.B.” Samuels, confirmed his address in Kilburn, his trade as a master tailor, and that his deceased brother was 26 years old and had worked for him as a journeyman ladies’ tailor. In relation to the explosion, he stated that he knew, “nothing about it.”
Five schoolboys, one of the park keepers, and a porter from the Royal Observatory all gave testimony about hearing an explosion at 4.50pm, seeing dark smoke, and finding a mortally injured man on the zig-zag path leading up the knoll towards the Observatory. They described his injuries, how a doctor was called, and the man being taken on a stretcher to the Seamen’s Hospital at 5.15pm via a brief stop at St. Mary’s Gate where he was given brandy. The boys had been passing the park on their way home from school and were the first to reach Martial Bourdin as the smoke cleared. They all said he’d asked them to fetch a cab. To the park keeper, he said, “Take me home.”
When the coroner and the rest of the assembly walked up Observatory Hill to inspect the site of the explosion, “a dark, respectably-dressed young man, who, as they jurymen passed him, had shouted “Vive l’Anarchie!” climbed the railings and began to address the crowd upon the wrongs of poverty…” before being persuaded to stop by the park keeper, Patrick Sullivan. “It was stated that this individual was an Anarchist and was not a resident in Greenwich, although he was recognised as one of the spectators who spent some time in the park at the scene…” the day after the explosion.
Henri Bourdin requested from the police the money found in his brother’s possession (as was normal practice) for the purposes of arranging a private funeral. He added that he, “could not answer for what the friends of Martial Bourdin might elect to do.” He also said that he was unwilling, “to permit the Anarchists at large to make a great parade.” However, the police declined to hand over the money on the grounds that it was “part of Bourdin’s equipment for an unlawful exercise,” and the Anarchists took over the expense and management of the funeral. (9)
Assuming Henri’s claim about not being able to pay for the funeral was genuine, it would give credibility to his previous statement regarding business being “very slack” and not having been able to offer Martial any work when he visited on the day of the explosion. Which then begs the obvious question: if both brothers were strapped for cash at the time, where did the large sum of money found on Martial Bourdin come from?
The 10th March 1894 edition of The Lancet included photographs from the autopsy of Martial Bourdin, which show the catastrophic nature of his injuries. Be warned that you may find the images disturbing. A copy of the report is available here if you wish to view it.
Martial Bourdin’s Funeral
In contrast to The Daily Telegraph‘s establishment stance, Reynolds’s Newspaper was a left-wing Sunday paper that advocated for social and economic reform. Its 25th February 1894 edition included a street-by-street, blow-by-blow account of the protests that followed Martial Bourdin’s funeral cortege from an undertaker’s premises in Chapel Street, Marylebone, to the cemetery in Finchley during the afternoon of Friday, 23rd February.
“By a quarter-past one [Chapel Street] was so crowded [with curious and disgruntled members of the public] that it was closed entirely. A line of police was drawn up at either end. Then came a most unseemly scramble. Absurd orders were given to clear the road of all those who had sought a coign of vantage either in doorways or on railings. This was done with much unnecessary violence. The road having been cleared, the hearse and mourning coach, which had been waiting in the vicinity, drew up to the door of the undertaker’s establishment.”
Moments later, “…round the bend of the road, borne aloft by a foreigner, came a red flag, heavily draped with crape. The bearer was followed by several men, one of whom carried a smaller flag. The party halted at the police barricade, and were apparently about to form a procession… there was a skirmish, the flag was hauled down, and the Anarchist party was hustled out of the street.”
Once the coffin had been laid in the hearse, Henri Bourdin and three others took seats in the mourning coach. One of them was reported to be, “a foreigner who is said to represent a section of the European branch of Anarchists…” The cortege moved off, “precisely at twenty minutes to two amid a perfect storm of hisses, groans, and hooting… pursued by a hostile crowd.”
On Marylebone Road the cortege was jeered at and spat upon, with cries of, “Back to your own country,” and, “Down with the Anarchists!” The police formed a double line to hold the crowd back, but it was broken multiple times.
Several more scuffles occurred on the way to the cemetery, with up to eighteen mounted constables being deployed to control the crowd. From North Street onwards, “the windows of the houses en route to Finchley were filled with eager lookers-on, but beyond an occasional hiss or groan no further manifestation of public opinion was made.”
“About twenty minutes past two intimation was given to those around the grave that the procession was very near. This was followed by a rush of people to the selected spot. They, however, were not allowed to approach within several yards of the grave, being kept back by a cordon of police…”
“…the coffin was taken from the hearse and carried to the grave… The occupants [of the mourning coach] then alighted, and walked to the side of the grave. Then without service or speech of any kind, the coffin was lowered. While this was being done a bunch of white flowers was placed on the lid.”
“At this point [Henri Bourdin] looked round, as though to see if anyone was going to speak, and a man named [Carl] Quinn attempted to deliver an address. He commenced with the words, “Friends and Anarchists,” but no sooner had he got thus far than a police-inspector rushed forward and arrested him. He was told that speaking could not be allowed. Quinn was surrounded by about half a dozen constables and marched off the ground. A rush was then made by the spectators, who numbered about 500, to follow, no respect being shown for the graves, but the relatives remained.”
Carl Quinn was released by the police near the cemetery gates. When the mourning coach containing Henri Bourdin and others went to leave some minutes later, Quinn followed on foot, “being beckoned by one of the occupants to get in. The carriage, however, was driven at a good round pace, and Quinn only managed to catch it after a sharp run. As he left the gates, he was loudly hissed and hooted.”
The “three others” in the mourning coach with Henri Bourdin aren’t identified, but if one was “a foreigner” then the other two were most likely Kate Bourdin and her brother-in-law, H.B. Samuels. The “foreigner” and Carl Quinn aren’t likely to be one and the same since Quinn led the London-based “Associated Anarchists” group. He was also involved with the London Socialist League’s journal, Commonweal, which was edited at the time by none other than H.B. Samuels and had been known to hold conferences at the Autonomie Club.
In August 1894, Liberty: A Journal of Anarchist Communism reported that Carl Quinn and another man had been sentenced to six months’ “hard labor” after being convicted on four separate charges related to Anarchist activity and bomb making. (10)
There are many possible explanations for Henri Bourdin’s reticence about speaking at his brother’s graveside. He could simply have been overwhelmed by grief and/or the presence of a rowdy mob; maybe, as he’d previously stated, Henri and Martial really didn’t have a close relationship and he had nothing to say; or perhaps he felt a begrudging obligation to the Anarchists to let them have the opportunity to address the crowd.
Martial Bourdin’s funeral (The Penny Illustrated, 3rd March 1894) depicting Henri Bourdin and H.B. Samuels (with presumably Kate Bourdin in between them), and Carl Quinn being arrested
The day after the funeral, and a little behind the chronology of events, The Spectator reported that the Home Secretary, “Mr. Asquith… has forbidden the Anarchists to turn the funeral of Bourdin, which ought to be a melancholy and silent burial, into a triumphant glorification. The designed procession was prohibited, and no orations permitted at the grave. This is wise, as the rough population of the neighbourhood — Finchley — might have made a counter-demonstration, which would have been fatal to the public peace.”
Anarchist ‘Propaganda By The Deed’ Continues
During the same week as Martial Bourdin’s funeral, a woman was killed and several other people were injured by an explosion in an apartment building in Paris. A man by the name of Etienne Rabardy was suspected, and a second bomb was discovered in a hotel. Five anarchists were quickly arrested, although Rabardy wasn’t among them. Meanwhile in London, Charles Louis Joseph Gallon (or Gallau) was in court at Bow Street for extradition back to France on charges of wounding, attempted robbery, and burglary. According to Reynolds’s Newspaper, “it was rumoured that he was an Anarchist, as some Anarchist literature and a portrait of Ravachol were found in his possession.”
Eight weeks later, on 21st April 1894, the Illustrated London News reported:
“The arrest in London, on Saturday evening, April 14, of an Italian Anarchist named Francesco Polti, with a bomb wrapped in brown paper, which he was carrying from the Borough over Blackfriars Bridge to Clerkenwell, has excited fresh uneasiness with regard to such atrocious plots. The bomb, an iron cylinder, 5 in. broad and 7 in. long, manufactured to his order, was not charged with any explosive substance; but in his lodgings were found some powders and bottles of chemical liquids, and papers which prove him to have been engaged in the Anarchist conspiracy. It is said that he was an associate of Bourdin, who was killed in Greenwich Park.”
On Thursday 3rd May 1894, 18-year-old Francesco Polti was tried at the Old Bailey in London along with his accomplice, Giuseppe Farnara, known as Carnot, a 44-year-old blacksmith. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph the next morning, Polti hailed from Northern Italy, had married an English girl in 1893, and had been in England for three years. Both prisoners spoke through an interpreter, Carnot saying, “I am guilty. I wanted to kill the capitalists,” and adding, “I had the intention to blow up the capitalists and all the middle classes.” Polti pleaded not guilty, but the jury were not convinced. Carnot was later sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, and Polti to 10 years. When his sentence was passed, Carnot shouted the familiar, “Vive l’Anarchie!”
Melville, Special Branch and the Walsall Plot
William Melville is a key figure throughout this story. Originally from County Kerry in the south-west of Ireland, he was 43 years old at the time of the Greenwich Park incident.
He joined the Metropolitan Police in September 1872, at the age of 22, and by 1879 had been promoted from Constable to Detective Sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), stationed in south London. In February of that year he married Kate Reilly from County Mayo in St. George’s Catholic Church in Southwark. In March 1883 he was one of twelve officers recruited into a new section, known as the Special Irish Branch, to combat the ‘Dynamite War’ being waged in London by teams of Irish American Fenian bombers, who were financed from the United States. In 1884 Melville was posted to Le Havre as part of a port surveillance effort. He stayed in France for the next four years, became fluent in French, and in November 1888 pursued an American suspect in the ‘Jack the Ripper’ case. William, Kate and their four children returned to London a month later, but Kate caught pneumonia and died in March 1889. William married again in 1891 to Amelia Foy, the widow of one of his colleagues. The Special Irish Branch was then re-organised and Melville was moved to a new, very small and secret section, called simply the Special Branch where he was promoted to the rank of Inspector. Special Branch had a brief that included social revolutionaries and anarchists as well as Fenians. At this period Britain was the only European country that did not restrict immigration, and it had become a refuge for many foreign anarchists. In 1903 the War Office set up a Directorate of Military Operations. Melville was head-hunted to act as a general controller for War Office agents abroad as well as to undertake a number of secret missions of his own at home and abroad. He reported to Captain Francis Davies under the alias of ‘M’. In 1909 the Secret Service Bureau was set up to co-ordinate intelligence work under two sections: the ‘home’ section, charged with protecting Britain’s secrets (later known as MI5); and the ‘foreign’ section responsible for discovering enemy secrets (later known as MI6). As chief detective of the Secret Service Bureau, Melville investigated suspicious foreigners and set up a register of aliens. (11)
According to Andrew Cook, William Melville was the inspiration for the character ‘M’ in Ian Fleming’s James Bond. (12) However, there are a number of other potential candidates. (13)
Chief-Inspector William Melville (The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, 24th February 1894)
Throughout the 1890s, spies’ reports and newspapers abounded with rumoured conspiracies of terrorist attacks in Britain or on the Continent. This obsession with terrorism derived from a misunderstanding of the political views of most anarchists and the functioning of the movement, whose prevalent individualism precluded the imagined conspiracies. The 1892-93 “Walsall plot” originated in a Birmingham anarchist club and… resulted in arrests and long prison sentences for the comrades involved, but the bomb plot was quickly exposed as having been instigated by British secret services through the French agent provocateur Auguste Coulon. (14)
On 6th January 1892 Joe Deakin, an Anarchist living in his native town of Walsall and secretary of the Walsall Socialist Club, was arrested in Tottenham Court Road on his way to the Autonomie Club. He was remanded in custody at Marlborough Street Court the following day on a charge of manufacturing bombs. Immediately after the court appearance Inspector Melville went to Walsall by train and on the evening of the same day Victor Cailes, a Frenchman, and Fred Charles were arrested at the Socialist Club in Goodall Street, Walsall. Later William Ditchfield and John Westley were arrested in Walsall and Jean Battola, an Italian, was arrested in London. Deakin and Battola were transported up to Walsall to stand trial. They were all jointly charged with what amounted to manufacturing bombs. Deakin made a number of confessions and mentioned the name of one co-conspirator who had not been arrested — Auguste Coulon. The French Anarchist contributed to the ‘International Notes’ section of the Commonweal on the subject of dynamite and organised bomb-making classes. At the end of the previous October, Coulon moved into Fitzroy Square in London, taking a highly respectable dwelling for a man “with no visible means of subsistence”. At the Sunday meeting at the Autonomie Club on 10th January 1892 — the Sunday following the arrest of Deakin — he was openly charged with betraying the Walsall men and accused of being a police spy. Evidence that Coulon was a police agent was at first circumstantial — his various instigating activities combined with a surprising freedom from interference by the police. More solid evidence was to emerge when the friend of a wealthy French Anarchist had an interview on a matter of business with Coulon’s brother, who told him that Auguste Coulon had been in the employment of Melville for two years. At Walsall police court, William Melville would not swear that he had not paid Coulon money, because he said he had paid lots of Anarchists money. (15)
David Nicoll, the editor of the Commonweal since 1890, published a pamphlet in April 1892 entitled “The Walsall Anarchists” in which he openly accused Coulon of being a spy and Chief-Inspector Melville of manufacturing the Walsall plot. In the 9th April 1892 edition of the Commonweal (which preceded the pamphlet) Nicoll advised workmen contemplating violent revenge on their oppressors to avoid conspiracies and act alone. He blamed the savage sentences given to the Walsall men on a police plot constructed by Mathews (the Home Secretary) and Inspector Melville, carried out by Coulon and connived at by justice Hawkins. He then asked if the men named were “fit to live”, which led to him being found guilty of incitement to murder and sentenced to 18 months with hard labour. (16)
In April 1895, a little over a year after the Greenwich bomb, Special Branch Detective Patrick McIntyre published his memoirs in Reynolds’s Newspaper. He owned up to the use of Coulon as a provocateur by Chief-Inspector Melville in the Walsall case. He claimed that mouchards (informants) in the pay of continental police forces represented up to a third of the Autonomie Club‘s patrons, so that “the wisest of the foreign refugees” in London “never went near the Autonomie.” (17) He also wrote that he was, “certain that although the Anarchists talked wildly and advocated schemes that seemed utterly impracticable to the ordinary observer, they were all quiet and peaceful men, and well disposed to their fellow creatures in general… According to my observation, in spite of their tenets, they were a good-hearted and sympathetic class of the community. Nearly all of them were foreigners who were being sweated in workshops. There was, however, a small sprinkling of English working men who had mostly suffered somewhat at the hands of the capitalists.” (18)
The claims about Auguste Coulon having worked for William Melville were substantiated by Special Branch records, declassified nearly 80 years later, which informed research conducted by Andrew Cook: “Coulon never admitted to being a provocateur although he conceded, in a letter published in Reynolds’ Newspaper on 21 April 1895, that he had been paid. The extent of his role is only now apparent. Special Branch ‘special accounts’ show that he received his first payment from Melville as early as 18 July 1890. From 1891 onwards he was on the payroll (under the alias Pyatt). He got extra money in the spring of 1892 during the Walsall case, and briefly in April 1894; after that he received a regular income until his final pay-off in 1904.” (19)
If Chief-Inspector Melville orchestrated the Walsall plot with an agent provocateur in order to expose and discredit an Anarchist group, did he do something similar two years later in the case of Martial Bourdin?
Melville waited until the day after the Greenwich explosion to visit the scene and mortuary, and until that evening to raid the Autonomie Club (where H.B. Samuels was present, but not questioned) and Martial Bourdin’s residence.
David Nicoll said later that Bourdin’s landlord had told him that after Bourdin’s death and before the police raids, one of Bourdin’s friends had warned him of the likelihood of police activity, and the landlord had destroyed Bourdin’s personal papers. (20)
H.B. Samuels
Like the Bourdins, H.B. Samuels was a tailor by trade. As we’ve already seen, he was Kate Bourdin’s brother-in-law and attended both the coroner’s inquest and Martial Bourdin’s funeral.
He’d been playing an active part in the Socialist League since 1888, including speaking at various open-air pitches, and restarted the Commonweal as its editor in May 1893 while David Nicoll was still in prison. By May 1894 he had already displayed noticeable political ambitions. In 1895 he joined the Kilburn branch of the Independent Labour Party and was almost immediately adopted as their delegate to the Newcastle conference. (21)
On the afternoon of the Greenwich explosion, Martial Bourdin “was observed in company with another man, in the neighbourhood of Hanover Square and later on the two parted company in Whitehall, Bourdin then walking over Westminster Bridge and taking the tram to Greenwich.” This ‘other man’ was Samuels. In a statement to the Central News, Samuels “admitted that he had been in Bourdin’s company on the day of the explosion at two o’clock and had remained in his company a considerable time.” He also displayed some knowledge which might have encouraged the police to interview him. He said, “had this unfortunate accident not occurred, the consequences I feel certain would have been terrible. I don’t mean that Bourdin intended to commit any outrage on Thursday, but I do think that it was the commencement of an extensive plot. I have an idea, but I have no proof of its being correct, that the manufacture of bombs for Continental purposes has been going on here for some time.” In later statements, Samuels said that he had been followed to Whitehall by detectives when he had been with Bourdin. (22)
In the 10th March 1894 issue of the Commonweal, Samuels wrote that Bourdin, “undertook the conveyance of dangerous explosive compounds to a secluded spot, where none could have been injured, in order to put to the test a new weapon of destruction that would have furnished the revolutionary army with another means of terrorising those who consciously or unconsciously consign so many innocent lives to destitution and despair.” (23)
A Final Twist
It already seems rather obvious that Martial Bourdin was neither the “leader of the most advanced of the foreign Anarchists” nor the “secretary of a group at the Autonomie Club” as had been reported.
On 27th August 1894, anarchist poet and essayist Louisa Sarah Bevington wrote a letter to David Nicoll in which she said: (24)
“DEAR COMRADE, You have got the Bourdin history wrong. The facts were that Samuels having, as it is said on good authority, supplied him with the new compound suggested to him to take it somewhere for the purpose of experiment. Well, Bourdin, in all good faith, thought ‘experiment’ meant experiment ; and hit on Epping Forest as a place where he would have a good chance of exploding his compound against a big tree without great danger of its being heard, or him seen before he could get away. This would, however, have obviously been of little use to the police ; quite obviously a mere experiment — or else a mere bit of foolish mischief in the eyes of the public ; and affording small pretext for a big lucrative scare and scandal. Well, as the fates had it, Samuels met him just as he was starting with his ingredients. ‘I’m going,’ says Bourdin, touching his pockets significantly, ‘Where to?’ ‘Epping Forest.’ ‘Oh, don’t go there, go to Greenwich Park.’ ‘All right,’ and they went together as far as Westminster, and were seen ; and one of them accordingly was made the butt of the police. How do I know Samuels told him where to go? Because Mrs. Samuels [Kate Bourdin‘s sister, Mary], whom I used to see very often at that time, told me. Why do I report that conversation above? Because Samuels himself, before he was suspected by the Group, and while he was still desirous of seeming an important character in the eyes of sundry gaping comrades, boastingly related it. His money has been, so far as we know, got chiefly from the Central News. After one of his reporting escapades, he himself told me he had got £4 10s. for interviewing himself from the Central News …. Samuels came to my house at the end of May (long after he had taken to writing as a politician and aspired after ballooning), and, without more ado, sat down, and proceeded to give minute instructions for making and charging bombs. He described all the ingredients and quantities, where to get them, what pretext to give on buying them, everything about the latest (and simplest materials) used — and, after an elaborate lesson, he said, ‘I am telling this to everybody ; there are soon going to be English acts, too ; it is high time there should be.’ I asked Mrs. Samuels what she thought of all this!! ‘Oh, it is all right,’ she said; ‘I should have objected only a little while ago ; but not now I understand the question better.’ …. I think Samuels is about the most rubbishy character possible ; he is not even a clever traitor or trickster. …. The keynotes of his character are vanity and vindictiveness. …. One thing is certain — Martial Bourdin was a honest little fellow and a dupe.”
Reviewing the Questions and Answers
Since this has become such a lengthy post, let me summarise the answers to the original questions:
What had Martial Bourdin intended to achieve?
In all likelihood he intended to only test a new explosive compound somewhere quiet and out of the way, and without causing harm to any people or buildings. The Royal Observatory building doesn’t seem to have been a target.
Did the Autonomie Club have British members as well?
Yes, and there were home-grown Anarchist groups based in various towns and cities across Britain.
Were there any accomplices? (and was Henri Bourdin among them?)
H.B. Samuels is clearly implicated in providing the explosive materials and instructions in their use, as well as directing Martial Bourdin to Greenwich Park. Other members of the Autonomie Club may have been involved indirectly. Henri Bourdin likely knew more about his brother’s Anarchist activities than he let on, but there’s no suggestion that he was in any way involved himself.
Was London unique in its attractiveness to so many groups of conspirators? If so, why was this?
London wasn’t unique in that respect. Continental Anarchists also sought sanctuary in Brussels and Geneva. (25) However, Britain was the only European country at the time that did not restrict immigration, and it had become a refuge for many foreign anarchists. (26)
Why was Bourdin carrying a ball ticket, and such a large sum of money?
The ticket was to an Anarchists’ masquerade ball, which Martial presumably planned to attend with a lady friend. It’s not certain where the money came from, or why he was carrying it at the time. It can be speculated that the money, and perhaps also the ticket and other items, were given to Martial by H.B. Samuels or subsequently planted at the mortuary by Special Branch.
How easy would it have been for the general public to gain access to the chemical constituents of such explosives, or even the instructions for making explosives?
Unlike today many of the components were readily available on the high street, although chemicals such as sulphuric acid were harder to come by. Bomb-making instructions could be found in the Reading Room at the British Museum, and experience-based knowledge on the subject was actively shared between Anarchist groups.
Joseph Conrad and The Secret Agent
Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel, The Secret Agent, was partly inspired by case of Martial Bourdin and the Greenwich Park explosion. In 1920, reflecting on where the ideas for the book came from, Conrad wrote that, “…the tale – came to me in the shape of a few words uttered by a friend in a casual conversation about anarchists or rather anarchist activities… we recalled the already old story of the attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory; a blood-stained inanity of so fatuous a kind that it was impossible to fathom its origin by any reasonable or even unreasonable process of thought.”
It’s noteworthy that at the time, only a dozen or so years after the event, the notion that Martial Bourdin intended to blow up the Observatory had succeeded in passing into accepted common knowledge.
I am Spartacus
Although Henri Bourdin must have been well aware of his brother’s interest in the Anarchist movement before February 1894, at the very least via Kate Bourdin’s brother-in-law, H.B. Samuels, Henri himself has been portrayed as something of a neutral outsider, neither sympathetic to the Anarchists’ cause nor directly involved with their activities.
In 1890, however, about two years after Martial Bourdin first arrived in London and between three and four years before Greenwich, Henri and Kate named their third child Spartacus Martial Bourdin.
One might reasonably question if someone with no interest in revolutionary politics would name their son after the leader of a famous slave uprising. There is also plenty of scope for speculation about the family dynamics that motivated the choice of middle name.
Spartacus Bourdin served in the Bedfordshire Regiment’s Machine Gun Corps during the First World War, and in 1920 married the daughter of a Polish immigrant. He died in 1969.
Present Day Resonance
Coinciding with the 130th anniversary of the “Greenwich Outrage”, a two-day series of events and workshops took place at various locations around London in February 2024. Co-organised by Megan McInerney, a PhD student at the University of Surrey, and Thomas C. Jones, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Buckingham, On Direct Action explored, “the culture and topography of late 19th century anarchism and the resonances of that history in the present day, when the politics of migration and asylum have become so exceptionally volatile and when groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have put practices of direct action under the political spotlight.”
If you know or discover any more about any of the people and events mentioned in this post, or if you’d like to suggest further questions, please do tell me via the comments below.
Sources:
1. David Goodway, Not protest but direct action: anarchism past and present History & Policy, 2012.
2. Ann Basu, “True Variety at lost theatre,” Fitzrovia News, Issue 151, Winter 2018.
3. Wikipedia (with references), Ravachol.
4. David Goodway, Not protest but direct action: anarchism past and present History & Policy, 2012.
5. Helen Groth, Bloody Sundays: Radical Rewriting and the Trafalgar Riot of 1887, in Jumana Bayeh, Helen Groth, and Julian Murphet (eds), Writing the Global Riot: Literature in a Time of Crisis (Oxford, 2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Nov. 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192862594.003.0004
5. Constance Bantman, Bombs in Britain? Realities and Rumours, The French Anarchists in London, 1880-1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation, Liverpool University Press, 2013, https://doi.org/10.5949/liverpool/9781846318801.003.0005
6. Constance Bantman, page 106, The French Anarchists in London, 1880-1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation, Liverpool University Press, 2013.
7. Jonathan Moses, Texture of Politics: London’s Anarchist Clubs, The RIBA Journal, 2016.
8. John Quail, Chapter 8: The Greenwich Park Explosion, The Slow Burning Fuse, Paladin Books, 1978 (also available here)
9. John Quail, Chapter 8: The Greenwich Park Explosion, The Slow Burning Fuse, Paladin Books, 1978 (also available here)
10. Liberty: A Journal Of Anarchist Communism, Between Ourselves, August 1894, page 60.
11. Helen O’Carroll, William Melville – Spymaster. An Exhibition at Kerry County Museum 2007.
12. Andrew Cook, M: MI5’s First Spymaster, inside cover, Tempus, 2004.
13. Wikipedia (with references), M (James Bond)
14. Constance Bantman, Bombs in Britain? Realities and Rumours, The French Anarchists in London, 1880-1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation, Liverpool University Press, 2013, https://doi.org/10.5949/liverpool/9781846318801.003.0005
15. John Quail, Chapter 6: The Walsall Anarchists, The Slow Burning Fuse, Paladin Books, 1978 (also available here)
16. John Quail, Chapter 6: The Walsall Anarchists, The Slow Burning Fuse, Paladin Books, 1978 (also available here)
17. Constance Bantman, page 106, The French Anarchists in London, 1880-1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation, Liverpool University Press, 2013.
18. Sarah Wise, Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent (1907), Literary London Society, 2016.
19. Andrew Cook, M: MI5’s First Spymaster, page 93, Tempus, 2004.
20. John Quail, Chapter 8: The Greenwich Park Explosion, The Slow Burning Fuse, Paladin Books, 1978 (also available here)
21. John Quail, Chapter 7: H.B. Samuels and the Commonweal, The Slow Burning Fuse, Paladin Books, 1978 (also available here)
22. John Quail, Chapter 8: The Greenwich Park Explosion, The Slow Burning Fuse, Paladin Books, 1978 (also available here)
23. John Quail, Chapter 8: The Greenwich Park Explosion, The Slow Burning Fuse, Paladin Books, 1978 (also available here)
24. David Nicoll, The Greenwich Mystery: Letters From The Dead, 1898.
25. John Quail, Chapter 6: The Walsall Anarchists, The Slow Burning Fuse, Paladin Books, 1978 (also available here)
26. Helen O’Carroll, William Melville – Spymaster. An Exhibition at Kerry County Museum 2007.
