MURDER BY BOMB

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23970, 20 November 1939, Page 11

MURDER BY BOMB

THE COVENTRY TRAGEDY FIVE PEOPLE KILLED FIVE POUNDS OF HIGH EXPLOSIVE THREE MEN AND TWO WOMEN CHARGED 'From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON. Oct. 10. Three men and a woman and her daughter have been committed for trial, charged with the murder of five people killed by an explosion at Coventry. Counsel, Mr Maurice Crump, said it did not matter in law if the accused were miles away from Coventry when the. bomb exploded. In law they were accessaries' before the fact, and were therefore chargeable with the principal felony. The accused are Joseph Hewitt, aged 34. labourer; James Richards, aged 29. labourer; Mary Hewitt, aged 22, housewife; Brigid O’Hara, aged 49, widow, all of Clara street, Coventry; and Peter Barnes, aged 32, clerk, of no fixed abode. They were jointly charged with the murdes: at Coventry on August 25 of Gwilym Rowlands, Elsie Ansell, James Clay. Rex Gentle and John Corbett Arnott. A further charge against all five was of conspiring to cause an explosion of a nature likely to endanger life. Only authorised persons were allowed in court. Mr Crump said Joseph and Mary Hewitt 'were man and wife. O’Hara was Mary Hewitt’s mother. In the explpsion to which the charge referred, in'addition to the five people killed, 45 were treated for injury, and 40 shops were considerably damaged. Rooms in London Searched The bomb exploded in the carrier of a tradesman’s cycle, the purchaser of which had been traced, the prosecution alleged, to Barnes, a London man. who had”been identified by a shop assistant as the man who paid £5 deposit on the cycle three days before the explosion. It was collected by another man on the day of the explosion. When police officers searched Barnes’s rooms in London on August 25 they found three packets of white powder. F'- said they were shampoos, but. said Mr Crump, “so far from being shampoos, the white powder was potassium chlorate.” Mr Crump said that in a long statement Brigid O’Hara, referring to what was alleged to be the attitude of Richards after the explosion, said. “He looked at the latest newspaper and said, ‘lt must have gone off very quick.’ I said. ‘My God, it is terrible to think of those people killed and wounded; that is the bomb you made.’ He did not say anything in reply, but went on reading. I said. ‘The police will soon be here.’ He said, ‘The police will never find us here.’ ” She said that she was anxious to do all she could to help the police. Counsel added that Mary Hewitt, in a statement, said. “If I had known where the bomb was to be placed I would surely have told the police.” Giving evidence. Alfred Joseph Mazengarb. of Furber street, Crewe, said a man he saw riding a tradesman’s cycle near the scene of the explosion later was not one of the accuscdi A number of witnesses who were in iured in the explosion gave evidence. Mrs O’Hara and Mrs Hewitt broke down when details of the injuries received by those killed were given in court. Twice Mrs O’Hara appeared to swoon. , , ft was stated that Miss Ansell’s body was identified by clothing and an engagement ring. Pieces of Bicycle

Evidence of the violence of the explosion was given by Mr A. W. Gibbons, storeman at the Coventry Central A.R.P. store, 200 yards from the place where the explosion occurred. He said that the windows of the store, although covered with wire mesh, were broken, as was the mesh itself. A piece of metal, which was still warm when he felt it, struck the window. Twisted portions of a bicycle, including spokes, torn tyres, and half a handlebar were produced as exhibits. These were swept up from Broadgate, Coventry. Captain C. W. Ede, inspector of explosives at the Home Office, who examined the scene of the explosion on the following day, said that the site of the explosion must have been near the kerb and above ground level. “ Obviously,” he said, “ a large amount of explosive was used, and if it had been on the ground it would have caused a crater.” He added that there

was a small indentation on the pavement, which was caused by the blast. Judging by the damage, about 51b of high explosive or possibly more, was used. Mr F. Andrews, assistant at a Coventry shop, said he identified Barnes as the man who called at the shop and paid £5 deposit for a tradesman's cycle on August 22, and Richards as the man who called three days later—the day of the explosion—and took delivery of the machine. Identification in London Mrs E. Grose, who lives opposite the house occmied by the Hewitts, Richards, and Mrs O’Hara, said that at an identification parade at _ Bow street, London, on September 15, she picked out Barnes as being a man she had seen visiting the Hewitts on the day before the explosion. She also stated that one ni.ght in July there was a loud report, which appeared to come from the back of the Hewitts’ house. Miss Sarah Anne Keane, of Warwick avenue, London, W„ was called to give evidence against Barnes. “ I have known Barnes since we were children,” she said. “He comes from my home in Ireland.” She identified two receipts which had figured in earlier evidence as having been given to her by Barnes. She also said that on August 24, the night before the explosion, Barnes was later than usual calling for her. Detective Sergeant Hughes, of the Special Branch, Scotland Yard, said that when he saw Barnes at his room in Westbourne terrace, London, on the night of August 25. he told him that the police suspected him of possessing explosives and of being concerned in causing explosions in Coventry. Barnes replied: “ Yes, I have been to Coventry, but coincidences can happen, can’t they? ”

Alleged Police Finds

Detective Inspector Sydney Barnes, of the Special Branch, who, with Chief Inspector Boneham, of Coventry City Police, and Detective Sergeant Arthur Cain, of Scotland Yard, had had charge of the investigations, told how he and the other officers swooped on the house in Clara street three days after the explosion and of the finds they made. “In the front room downstairs, on top of a sideboard,” said Inspector Barnes, “ I found a handbag belonging to Mary Hewitt and containing a pamphlet and a card bearing an inscription, ‘Hearty congratulations and best wishes from followed, in Gaelic, by the name of the women’s section of the I.R.A. “The words of an I.R.A. song were written on a sheet of paper which I found in a bedroom, and in a scullery cupboard were a quantity of tools, insulating tape, paper torn from small electric batteries, and a brass windingkey from the back of an alarm clock. There was no clock in the house which the key would fit.” In a coalhouse in the garden Chief Inspector Boneham found a suitcase, and Dr A. G. R. Whitehouse, staff chemist at the West Midland Forensic Science Laboratory, said that this contained particles of potassium chlorate. A trench-coat which, according to the police, Hewitt said was his, had, Dr

Whitehouse declared, three small lumps of potassium chlorate in the cloth of one pocket. Mr Duprez, the Home Office explosives expert, described how homemade time-bombs of the alarm clock type could be constructed. He added that everything require to make such a bomb was to be found among the tools which were said by the police to have ben taken from the Clara street house. “ The insulating tape, pieces of copper sheeting, brass winding key, and other articles which I have examined at the request of the police, are just what should expect to be left over after a bomb had been made,” declared Mr Duprez. Whtii sent for trial, all five pleaded not guilty and reserved their defence.