THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION.
[To THE EDITOR OF MC "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—As a constant reader, I noticed in the Spectator of November 4th that you spoke of the explosion of Clerkenwell as the explosion of Pentonville. It did not at the time seem to me worth while to draw your attention to what was no more than a clerical error; but in the Spectator of November 11th, your correspondent, " Scrutator," falls into the same mistake, and also gives it a wrong date. He deliberately repeats " Pen- • tonville " three times, though nothing of the kind ever occurred there ; and he asserts that it occurred in 1867. What occurred that year was the murder of Serjeant Brett, at Manchester, by Fenians attempting to rescue one of their body from a prison. van. The Clerkenwell outrage, that knocked down a row of houses on the opposite side of the narrow street in which the prison stood, and killed a good many innocent people, must have occurred in the seventies,—probably about 1875 or 1876. Your correspondent ought to be more accurate if he pretends to instruct your readers about Mr. Gladstone and his speeches. and politics. " Scrutator " pretends that a speech made by the present Premier in 1865, about the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, cost him his seat for the University of Oxford. The real fact is, Mr. Gladstone was the rejected candi- date of Oxford, and the successful minority candidate for the then three-cornered division of South-West Lancashire in the General Election of 1861. Mr. Gladstone lost his seat for Lancashire in the General Election of 1868, and sought refuge in Greenwich.—I am, Sir, &c., MaRTINus SCRIBLESRUS.
[Our correspondent is right, of course, as to Clerkenwell, but quite wrong as to the date. Both the attack at Manches- ter on the prison-van, and the explosion at Clerkenwell took place in 1867,—the former on September 18th, the latter on December 13th of that year.—En. Spectator.]
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