BOMBS SENT BY POST

Taranaki Daily News, 29 April 1931, Page 9

BOMBS SENT BY POST

DEED OF A SECRET SOCIETY? SYDNEY MEN’S LIVES ATTEMPTED. RECIPIENTS WARNED BY POLICE. By Telegraph—Prese Assn. —Copyright. Roe. 7 p.m. Sydney, April 23. The Sun newspaper discloses to-day the discovery and frustration of a sensational attempt to injure five wellknown city men in Sydney last week. Crude bombs, composed of gunpowder in small tins and arranged to explode when opened, were sent through the post to Sir Adrian Knox, a former Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Samuel Hordern, Sir Alfred Meeks, a Legislative Councillor, Mr. A. C. Davidson, manager of the Bank of New South Wales, and Mr. Warwick Fairfax, managing proprietor of the Sydney Morning Herald. A hint to the police enabled all the recipients to be warned not to touch their mail on Thursday mOrning and officers intercepted the deadly The strictest secrecy was maintained in the meantime, while the police endeavoured to ascertain the origin of the bombs.

Hints were given that the outrage was the work of an international organisation but though it is not known whether the affair is the outcome of political plotting or the act of a criminal of unbalanced mind the police believe it will prove to be nothing very fantastic.

It is stated a man called at the Herald on Wednesday to warn Mr. Fairfax. When interrogated by the police he declared he had been asked by the representative of a secret society, which he had joined abroad, to deliver documents to give to the men named. When he discovered the documents were bonihs he refused and was assaulted for threatening to tell the police. A later message says the police now regard the affair as a rather clumsy attempt at blackmail.