BATTLE OF STEPNEY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 238, 13 February 1911, Page 7

BATTLE OF STEPNEY

EXTRAORDINARY SCENES IN LONDON. THE CROWD AND THE EICIITING. S ÜBSEQI' ENT CRIT LCISM. The London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Ilevald, writing on January ti, gives the following description of the extraordinary .scenes at Stepney, connected with the lloundsditch tragedy:— ''Who could have imagined a aceni like this in England V' said the Home Secretary, as, with his top hat on the hack of his head, and his hands tucked into I the pockets of his fur coat, he peeped round the corner of the East London ' street, whilst little spits and splashes of [ brickdust and mortar were being chipped 011 two opposite houses some way down the empty street, and a line of big grinning policemen struggled with a good-humored crowd in the far'background. In truth, one has to record this week probably the most extraordinary scene that has been bencld in London for a century. City men arriving late in London on Tuesday last met outside their railway stations, the newsboys bawling down the street, with placards such as "Siege in East End, "Battle in Progress," "Murderers at Bay." As London poured out from its ollices to lunch there were the news sheets in front of it. "Scots (juards called out," '"Battle continues." Needless to say, thousands made straight for the east without waiting for lunch, and thousands more who returned to work fidgeted for a few minutes at thendesk and then seized their hats ajjd bolted. Taxis, 'buses, trams, swarming with people, poured down the two wide thoroughfares of East London road,,.and Mile End road, which branch off like a capital V from AUlgate, until they came to a point in either road where a certain third road ran across them like the cross stroke of a capital A,.and where< the traflie was blocked in a black, struggling mass, through which a way was only being kept clear for the tram-lines. Every tram and motor 'bus brought more people. There is said to have been more than three hundred thousand people there at the end, though the figure is hardly believable. Anyway, there you left your taxi, and made the best of your way, according to your capacity for strategy, towards the end of that cross street or by a wide deviation around the by-street at the back, or even into one of the houses in the neighborhood, where people were paying the grimy, hook-nosed householder anything from half-a-erown to ten shillings for the privilege of climbing on to his tiled roof, from which all they could see—as often as not —was a forest of chimney-pots and other tiled roofs crowded with other spectators. They could see one public-house in particular, which happened to stick out a good way above most of the other roofs, and which was crowded with spectators like a dress circle. l''or there—in certain opposing houses a little way down the empty cross street below therii —were two lots of men, who for seven hours were blazing at one another with no end of rilles and pistols from the depths of opposite rooms, whilst the police, plain-clothes men, and soldiers peered and took occasional pot-shots from, every recess and corner. The struggling constables did their bust to keep the populace of London back in the two great main thoroughfares at either end, ;jnd in every little side street and alley in the district around.

SOME OF THE CRITICISM. When it is said that over a thousand policemen were called upon to deal with two anarchists, it mu.it lie remembered that very nearly tin* whole of the thousands of police there were eventually engaged, not in keeping in the anarchists, but in keeping out the people of London from at least eight separate thoroughfares, and there was not, omj man too many for the job. There was drawn up a second cordon within the first one. And, even so, it is an interesting .speculation, which 110 one lnis vet answered, to imagine what would have happened had the anarchist managed to bolt from their front door up the street, with the soldiers and police, ail tip-toe with excitement, lined across the street in front and behind them, ami a thickly-packed i London crowd making a magnilicent background at either end. After all, 11 you are going to have a 1 desperate pitched battle in the middle of I London in tile day time, in' the space ' directly between two ot the bigge.st and busiest thoroughfares in the metropolis, without materially disturbing the city of businesses, the thing needs some organising. At any rate, you can hardly err on the side of doing things too thoroughly. Jt is not a bad feat tff have finished the matter with only one unfortunately serious accident to a lireman. | There Jias been a good deal of natural criticism of the authorities for bringing up a squad of Scots Ouards, a Maxim gun, and a section of Field Artillery. At the same time, one. can't, in fairness, help imagining the cry that would have gone up had any accident happened through their erring in the opposite direction. WHAT THE LONDONERS SAY. The lirst tiling that Mr. Winston Churchill did after having a good look at the position from somewhere well out in tinstreet was to order the crowd to be cleared as far back as possible. All the actual fighting that the average Londoner, even in the most favorable position, saw was an occasional pull' of broken brickdust. Hut the crowd could hear continually the sharp repeating crack of .Mauser pistols and the answering singing of the Lec-Enficlds. It cheered each detachment of police or soldiers that came up . When, after midday, whispers of grey smoke were noticed oozing from the higher windows, and it was clear the house was on lire, tlie crowd broke into tremendous cheering. They cheered the brigade when it came up, and later on, when four firemen were carried away to the London Hospital, crushed and helpless, out of the building, which had partly lately fallen on them, the crowd, of course, jumped to the conclusion that they had been shot by the anarchists, and its temper became audibly black. That was what thousand upon thousand of Londoners said and heard last Wednesday. Perhaps the greater part of the crowd was foreign. There was a certain sprinkling in it tnat looked as if if must be quite ready to help the two anarchists, and so plain-clothes men, with pistols, are said to have been scattered through the crowd in case of the enthusiastic. P.ut the majority were inoffensive .lews, whole-heartedly siding with the police. Those nearer the dangerous street could see the whole window full of white-faced Jewish children, with their faces crammed against the glass. Several of the foreign .lews brought the police and soldiers help by way of showing them their sympathy, tine old lady stood in an open doorway, well in the zone of lire, with j her arms folded under her apron, and another crcssed the street at a critical j moment with a jug full of ammunition. I There can be no doubt about the fierceness of the firing between the windows .directly across the street, because one could afterwards see a whole crowd of l' bullet marks around the edge of those directly opposite one another. The police and soldiers in the two-storied houses op- | posite the anaix lii ~s pulled down the i blinds, and only raised the window about two inches at the bottom, nnd occasion-

ally rested a cautions muzzle on the ledge, look aim, and fired from there. The anarchists probably did not show themselves even so mucii. They crawled | k'low tlie window, raised a Mauser pistol —they hud 12 m tllem—f<> the sill, and fired in the direction in which they knew the opposite window to be. At the most they may have occasionally raised their eyes to the sill to get an idea of where the opposite windows were. One is pretty certain of this, because only two or three or the windows directly across the street have bullet marks round, about twenty marks all wide except one directly through the sash—and few, or none, of the panes appeared to be broken when seen immediately after the light. The anarchists also broke a few tiles and chimney-pots, ami one. saw on a house wall, say at the back, the mark of a shot, evidently lired obliquely from a back window.

The London papers picture the anarchists standing nring from the hack of their rooms, but, as a matter of fact, one is morally certain tfley must have remained totally hidden and crawled alon« the Iloor when they went from one storey to the other," or they could not have failed to be hit by the stream of lead which was pumped' into the room. Except at the very first, in the early morning, when two men were vaguely seen in the top window in their 'shirt sloeves firing at the party which was hauling the wounded Sergeant Leeson over the opposite roofs, and at the verv last, when the form of a man was clear- ] Iy seen by the light of the (lames lying i face downwards on a bed m the ground fioor room, the men were not seen at all. The dirty grey curtains at one window were once noticed to he pressed sharply forward by some object behind it. There was a flash and an answering volley, and the object dropped and was slowly withdrawn. On another occasion a man was thought to be seen amidst the smoke, forcing his wa\ mt of an upper window; but it turned out to be only a bellying smoke behind the curtain. In one room for some time, now obscured by the smoke now appearing again there was seen a small steady burning flame. The only explanation suggested is that a gaslight had been lit, and that they were burning papers by it, and, indeed, burnt paper came flouting out at times into the street. There appears no doubt that at the last, after they had driven gradually towards the ground floor by the flames, two final shots were tired in quick succession at the house where the bodies were afterwards found.

WAS THE ENDING SATISFACTORY ? One is not going to criticise from an arm-chair, hut there is just one point on which nobody is quite satisfied. The police, dressed as wharf-laborers, carters, pedlars, etc., had been hunting for a week the south of Commercial road, and about Sunday it came to their knowledge that two of the men wanted had been seen in a street on the other side of Commercial road. They had information of the exact house on Monday night, and at once—a little after midnight quietly knocked at tlie door, and secretly aroused all the ordinary inmates of the house, except one Russian woman, named Oershon, in whose room the police somehow appear to have known the anarchists were living. The Jewish landlady rather pluckily went upstairs—her husband refused to do so on any account—to fetch this woman. She tapped softly on the woman's door, which seems to have been locked, and then found her coming out, not from her own bedroom, but from a storeroom at the back. .She said she had gone there to put a penny in the meter. "'The landlady got her downstairs on some pretence, and the police on the ground Iloor arrested her.

It is not yet. known what this woman told the police. She may have said that tli« men upstairs lian their doors barricaded and fortified—one account savs she did. Anyway, for some reason, tne police did not rush the room then and there. Probably some detectives would have been killed. But if a rush wore to be made that seems to have been the time to make it. The police chose, perhaps rightly, to wait to find out what' the men meant to do, by throwing a brick through their window—the answer to which was un immediate vollev from behind the curtain and through the glass of the closed door on the lirst door. TO BEXIEIIE THE lIOI'SK. They offered to rush the house later. But as it wouid have been quite easy for at least 11 dozen of tliem to have been shot before they overpowered the anarchists, and as it was morally certain the two men would always keep a last shot for themselves, the Nome Xeeretiiry would not allow the attempt. He made some of the police use shotguns, in the hope of disabling the anarchists without killing them. As is known, the anarchists were almost completely successful in wiping out any evidence the house contained before they died With the extraordinarily similar events that ■surrounded (he end of the Kelly .r Ull « before one's mind one cannot criticise"the Uindou authorities too closely for tieir action in this unprecedented emergency.