BOMBING GANG

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 April 1939, Page 5

BOMBING GANG

TOUR OF LONDON STREETS BY NIGHT

I.R.A. TERRORISTS CAUSE EXTENSIVE DAMAGE.

SEVERAL SHOPFRONTS BLOWN OUT.

By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.

LONDON, April 1

An Irish republican gang, touring London in a powerful car loaded with bombs, subjected the city to a night of terror as a reprisal for the convictions at, the Old Bailey in connection with previous bomb outrages a few hours earlier.

Five outrages between midnight and dawn caused extensive damage, chiefly to shopfronts, but there were no casualties. The police detained one man.

A loud explosion occurred in Fleet Street at 12.45 a.m., the window of the advertisement offices of the “News Chronicle” being blown out. A bomb apparently was deposited on the pavement beneath the windows. The driver of a passing car saw a man running from the spot.

Glass was hurled across the street and a hole caused in the masonry. The explosion shook the “Daily Telegraph.” “Daily Express” and Australian Associated Press buildings. Firefighters and police rushed to the scene. The big crowd which gathered included printers and women in dance frocks. Firemen found pieces of newspaper and tattered fibre. It is believed that the bomb, with a short time fuse, was contained in a fibre attache case.

A second explosion occurred at 1.30 a.m. at a dress shop in Park Lane, where glass was scattered and frocks strewn on the pavement. At 3 a.m. hundreds of people were brought from their beds by an explosion in Tottenham Court Road, where five large windows of Heals Limited, furnishers, were blown out and the masonry of the shop front shattered. Luxury furniture was scattered over a wide area. A pedestrian told the ptolice that two men rushed from the spot before the explosion and jumped into a car. By this, time Scotland Yard had marshalled every available car in order to intercept the terrorists’ car. Thames River police patrolled the tow path of the river by launch all through the night in order to forestall an attempt to interfere with the boat race. A constable in Edgeware Road at 4 a.m. picked up a live bomb thrown from a passing car. He removed the fuse. A few minutes later another exploded, wrecking the front of a shoe shop and rocking blocks of flats, from which hundreds rushed in their night attire. Coutts’ Bank in the Strand was damaged at 5 a.m. by an explosion when a bomb was thrown into the basement through a window grille at street level. Several charwomen were treated for shock.