HOW MR. FORSTER ESCAPED ASSASSIN A TION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9166, 22 September 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW MR. FORSTER ESCAPED ASSASSIN A TION.

The following extract is from the life of

Mr. W. E. Forster:—"Mr. Forster had

arranged to leave Dublin by the mail train from Westland Row to Kingstown on the night of April It), and his intention to do so had been publicly announced. 4 While he was eating a sandwich for luncheon,' says Mr. Jephson, 'I asked him if he would not come down to Kingstown by an earlier train, and dine at the Royal Sr. George Yacht Club, of which he was an honorary member, as it would be much pleasanter there than in Dublin. The club being scarcely a couple of hundred yards from the pier whence the mail steamer started, we could dine quietly there and walk to the steamer, thus avoiding the racket and worry of cabs, stations, and trains in Dublin. He hesitated, but said, " We'll see how work goes, and whether we can get away in time." At about four o'clock I went to him with the last batch of letters to be dealt with. When he had finished his instructions on them, I said, "Now, sir, that's the last, and we can go to Kingstown if you like." "Capital," he replied, " let us go," and accordingly we left Westland Row Station by the quarter to six train for Kingstown, dined at the club there, and walked on board the steamer, where we met Mrs. Forster and her daughter, who had come by the quarter to seven mail train, little knowing at the time how dreadful a tragedy had been avoided. At a quarter to seven o'clock, on tho platform at Westland Row, there was waiting the gang of desperate men known later as the Invincibles, determined at all hazards to assassinate him; and if he had left Dublin by that train instead of the earlier one, no earthly power could have saved him.' In the evidence given at the trial of the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke, it was stated that the wretches carefully examined every carriage more than once in their search for the man they had marked out as their victim, but who was destined to be so marvellously preserved from their hands."