LONDON’S NIGHT OF TERROR

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22676, 3 April 1939, Page 10

LONDON’S NIGHT OF TERROR

Series of Bomb Outrages

SERIOUS DAMAGE CAUSED

Terrorists Tour Streets

In Car

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT.)

(Received April 2, 9 p.m.)

LONDON, April 1

An Irish Republican Army gang, touring London in a powerful car loaded with bombs, subjected the city to a night of terror as a reprisal for convictions of some of its members at the Old Bailey a few hours earlier.

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

loud explosion occurred in Fleet street at 12.45 a.m., a window in the advertisement offices of the “NewsChronicle” being blown out. The 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” and the “Daily Express” and the Australian Associated Press buildings.

Fire-fighters and police rushed up. The big crowd included printers and women in dance frocks. Firemen found pieces of newspaper and tattered fibre. It is believed that a bomb with a short-time fuse was contained in a fibre attache case.

A second explosion occurred at 1.30 a.m. at a lock-up dress shop in Park lane, where glass was scattered and frocks strewn on the pavement. At 3 a.m, hundreds were brought from their beds by an explosion in Tottenham Court road, where five large windows of Heals, Ltd., furnishers, were blown out and the masonry shop front shattered. Luxury furniture was scattered over a wide area.

A pedestrian told the police 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 so as to intercept the terrorists’ car. The Thames river police patrolled the tow path and the river by launch all through the night to forestall an attempt to interfere with the boat race.

Live Bomb Picked Up

A constable in Edgware road at 4 a.m. picked up a live bomb thrown from a passing car. He removed the fuse.

A few minutes Jater, another bomb exploded, wrecking the front of a shoe shop and rocking blocks of flats, from which hundreds rushed in their night attire.

Goutts’s Bank in the Strand was damaged at 5 a.m. by an explosion. A bomb was thrown into the basement through a window grille at street level. Several charwomen were treated for shock.

An earlier message stated fhat after the hearing of Irish Republican Army charges at the Old Bailey Charles and Thomas McCarthy were found not guilty of conspiracy and being in possession of explosives. Six others, including a father and son, were found guilty of conspiracy and remanded for sentence.