FALSE ALARM
EXCITEMENT AT ABBEY NO MARAUDERS FOUND LONDON, July 6. Police flying squads rushed to Westminster Abbey at 2.30 a.m. yesterday when a passerby reported that he had heard a bell ringing. They surrounded the Abbey and entered cautiously, expecting to iind Irish Republican Army terrorists in the act of planting a bomb in the British Empire's "Holy of Holies." They found no signs of any intruder. They did not even find any evidence that an alarm bell had rung. The chapel of Edward the Confessor in the Abbey was recently fitted with a pholo-cleetric tyoe burglar alarm as a result of I.R.A. threats. In the chapel is the famous Coronation Chair, in which is incorporated the Stone of. Scone, on which every British monarch has been crowned since Edward I. The alarm is switched on as soon as the Abbey is closed each day, m case an I.R.A. agent may foe hiding in the gloomy recesses of the vast church. Should anyone approach the Coronation Chair, a ray of the "electric eve" would be broken and set ringing a powerful bell over the mam doorway of the Abbey, and that was what the police informant thought he had heard.
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Bibliographic details
Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20012, 10 August 1939, Page 7
Word Count
201FALSE ALARM Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20012, 10 August 1939, Page 7
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