27 APRIL 1985, Page 24

One hundred years ago

On Thursday morning, at 10.45 a.m., a room in the Admiralty, occupied by the Asistant Secretary, Mr. E. W. Swain- son, was blown up from the inside. Mr Swainson sustained a severe concussion of the brain, the room was wrecked, and the windows were blown out. It was, of course, assumed that the out- rage was Fenian, and the material dyna- mite; but by the latest accounts much doubt has been thrown upon this view. The walls were not injured as they would have been by dynamite, and fragments of the clockwork of an infer- nal machine have been discovered. . . . It is even possible that Mr. Swainson was examining some model of a torpedo submitted to the Admiralty by an in- ventor. Spectator, 25 April 1885