DISCOVERY OF ARMS AT CLERKENWELL.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1131, 26 August 1882, Page 2

DISCOVERY OF ARMS AT CLERKENWELL.

London was somewhat disquieted, if not alarmed, by an announcement the other day that a large number of arms and amunition had been discovered clandestinely stored away in a stable in Clerkenwell. The wildest rumors followed upon this discovery, and the air was charged with alarming reports of Fenian conspiracies. The details of the discovery are brief. A few weeks since some stables in St. John’s Street, Clerkenwell, were hired by a man as a depot for “hard goods,” which term, he explained to the landlord, meant “ glass and crockery, and a few guns.” lu what appeared at first to be the usual course of business, a number of crates, such as are used for the transport of glass and earthenware, arrived, marked conspicuously with the word “ fragile.” The evident weight of the packages, the absence of any apparent legitimate business, the mysterious behaviour of the persons engaged, and especially the piling of several stands of arms upon the •premises, aroused the suspicions of the neighbors. The police were communicated with, and, having made a raid upon the premises while the tenant was away, succeeded in finding and removing a very large number of rifles, Colt’s revolvers, cartridges, and bayonets, the latter sharpened to the finest possible point. The fact that the arms were packed away in such a manner as to conceal their real nature in itself suggests that they were intended for an unlawful purpose. Questioned upon the subject in the House, the Home Secretary, who was extremely reticent, declined to give any information beyond stating that the accounts which had appeared in the papers were on the whole correct. An Irishman, named Thomas Walsh, who hired the stable, has been examined at the Clerkenwell Police Court, and remanded on a charge of being in the unlawful possession of armsandamunition. The prisoner avers that he has a sufficient answer to the charge, but the public are suspicions that the illicit storage of arms and amunition in such large quantities is allied to treasonable intentions.