MELBOURNE OUTRAGES

Taranaki Daily News, 12 October 1928, Page 2

MELBOURNE OUTRAGES

JAM-TIN BOMBS THROWN MOTHER'S NIGHT OF TERROR. CHILDREN IN WRECKED .ROOM. Sydney, Oct. 4. The men who planned the bomb outrages in Melbourne last week as part of the watersiders’ strike campaign must be creatures without any sense of justice or fair play, for their vengeance was directed at the little children of certain foremen who had done no more than carry out their instructions in the engagement of free labour. This one act alone will prove costly to the strikers, and is bound to alienate a great deal of public sympathy. Of course, the outrages have been condemned by union officials, but the fact remains that bombs were thrown, and that little children suffered, and in the light of such things protestations, no matter how genuine, can have little effect on public opinion, except to make the public more determined than ever that the strikers will not rule, and that law and order must prevail. MANY THREATS RECEIVED. In the first instance a bomb completely wrecked a bedroom in the home of Charles Otto Eichorn. During the week Eichorn and his wife had received many threats that their homo would be attacked. Eichorn thought that the attempt would be confined to his motorcar, and he decided on the day before the outrage to move it from his home garage to a place of safety. lie also cautioned his wife to use extreme care in her movements when he was away at the wharves, and every night she sat at the rear of the house with the blinds drawn. She had even taken the precaution to shade the bedroom light.

The house was a semi-detached cottage in a thickly populated part of South Melbourne, and the front bedroom was a few yards from the street frontage. It was evident that the bombers planned their attack very carefully, for Eichorn was absent when it took place. He was engaged on the steamer Marella which, at the time, was being worked with free labour. Two men were seen by neighbours to leave a motor-ear, and one of them carried a small newspaper parcel, which, it is now supposed, contained the bomb.

Investigations subsequently showed that the explosives had been placed in a jam tin, and bad a fuse attached. It was while Mrs. Eichorn was in, the rear of the house that the explosion occurred. The bomb was thrown through the window and landed in the room about 2ft away from the bed usually occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Eichorn. The children had been put to bed in this room, and they had a narrow escape from serious injury, and even death. SLEEPING- BABY INJURED. . The explosion smashed the end of 1 the double bed, and tore a hole in the I floor. At first Mrs. Eichorn was stun- ! ned. She soon recovered, only to find ; that tlie house was in darkness and reeking with gunpowder. She groped about in the darkness for some minutes before she found a candle. The electrical installation had been fused, but Mrs. Eichorn lost no time in reaching the bedroom. There she found het daughter standing in the middle of the ruined bedroom, dazed and unable to speak. Climbing over tlie broken bedstead she reached her baby son, lying in his tumbled cot with blood streaming down the side of his face. She thought that the child had been killed, but in the midst of her distress the child began to cry lustily. Its injury was a deep cut on the bridge of the nose. By tlio explosion the front window was blown completely out of its frame, and glass was splintered all over the room. The plaster of the ceiling had been blown down, and the gaping hole in the floor of the room w-as further evidence of the force of the explosion. While a large body of police were investigating the first explosion they heard a second, which proved to be at the home of Edward O’Connor, another foreman stevedore, who lived about half a mile from Eichorn. In this case O’Connor and his wife and five children were asleep. Mrs. O'Connor and the children were in the front room, and they were thrown out of bed by the force of the explosion. The bomb used appeared to be similar to that used | at Eichorn’s. It was thrown on to a galvanised iron roof, in which a. large hole was torn. Bricks from the chimney, which were dislodged, fell on the adjoining property. O'Connor’s mother, who lived next door, actually saw the bomb thrown. Although the explosion was sufficient to awake the whole of the neighbourhood, the damage it did was remarkably slight. This, it is considered, was due to the primitive nature of its manufacture.