The Express.
London, England, 1867-12-14 00:00:00

[STAMPED. ld. ADDITIOILI14)

pressed herself to that effect to some person in the
room, who simply said " Nonsense." ' But I
am sure it's treacle, Polly," said the girl. I
With that she saw a man who was near
i the cask stoop down, and then the explosion oc-
curred.
Two or three other of the injured persons
also speak to the matter of the cask. The manner
in which its contents were exploded appears to be
pretty clear, judging from the forgoing testimony. 1
If, however, the man who applied the light was, as
the boy Abbott describes, in appearance a gentle-
man,l
with light hair and whiskers, be is not in 1
custody. Two men and a woman were seized on
the spot, and last night, up to nine o'clock, were
locked up in the Clerlmnwell House of Detention.
One of them gives the name of Jeremiah
Allen, and says he is a bootimaker, and 36
years of age. The other states that his name
is Timothy Desmond, and that he is a tailor,
and 46 rears of age. Both are shabbily dressed,
and forbidding in their aspect. Both have dark
hair, and dirty skin, and Desmond wears a rather
large beard. The woman's name is Ann Justice,
I i and her age s 30. The eye of one of the men—
Desmond—is injured. One man and the woman
were captured by an officer in plain clothes, whose
name we have not been able to ascertain, but it is
i understood that the movements of four persons—
! three men and one woman—caused him to suspect
!their object, and he rushed forward to seise them,
but at the moment was knocked down by the explo-
sion. He fortunately was not much injured, and
. .
ring again to his feet, he seized one of the men
' and the woman, whom be took in custody ; another
of the men was seized by some other officer, while
the third man—and the man who did the deed—
managed to escape.
I The woman Justice has been in the daily habit
' of visiting the Fenian. prisoner Casey at the prison ;
and only yesterday morning visited him. At 2
o'clock, after she had left the prison, one of the offi-
cers on duty outside the prison inquired of Mr.
Moore, one of the prison officials, her address, and
at the same time made a communication to
Mr. Moore, the effect of which was that he had
seen her conversing with a fellow who had
for days been hanging about the prison.
The constable said it was impossible to
get the man away ; he persisted in staying about
the place. Mr. Moore immediately spoke to the
governor, Captain Codd, on the subject, and two or
three officers wore distributed about in order to give
an alarm if anything occurred. Shortly afterwards
one of the warders called Mr. Moore's attention to
a man answering the description given of the one
! who had been seen by the constable loitering about
being on the top of a house overlooking the prison
yard. When Mr. Moore got to the window at
which the warder was watching the man had
vanished. But shortly afterwards the same man,
according to the description, was with the woman
near the front gates of the prison, and presently
they were joined by a second man. The same
• warder afterwards called Mr. Moose's attention
to a window overlooking the yard, from which a
woman was leaning with a jug in her band, while
behind her were certainly five men, but Mr. Moore
thinks the room was packed with men, who ap-
I peered to be stretching their necks towards the
; window, as though desirous of seeing something
that was going to happen in the street below. The
explosion occurred simultaneously. The house in
question was gutted by the explosion, but what
became of the persons is a mystery. They are
either amongst the injured -at the hospital or ran
the gauntlet of the polio, numbers whom
were immediately after the explosion.qp spot.
thAn
There are no fewer than 'Moe ho dered,
tenantless and uninhabitable by of the
explosion. Those directly opposite the breach in
the wall were completely gutted. One was almost
entirely destroyed, and under the difbris it is feared
there are some dead bodies. One old woman and
two children are said to be missing. She was the
II mother of Hannah Roberts, who is one of the poor
creatures lying at the hospital. At the time of the
explosion she was sitting at the window which was
in the first floor front room of the house utterly
destroyed.
The breach in the orison wall is over sixty feet
broad at the top, and gradually tapers towards the
base. The skylights of the prison are very much
broken ; indeed there is not a perfect light left.
The houses in the vicinity for some distance were
very much shaken and injured. A prisoner in the
gaol was injured by a brick which entered the win-
-1 dow of a cell.

ilmmediately on the occurrence of the event
assistance was summoned, and in the course of a
very short time there were between 500 and 600 of
the metropolitan police force on the spot. They
were stationed across all the approaches to the pri-
' son, where they had to contend forhours with unruly
mobs of persons who were eager to know particulars.
They were under the direction of Captain Label-
mondiere, Inspector Gurnon, and Mr. Thompson,
the head of the detective force. One hundred
Scots Fusilier Guards were stationed inside the
' prison, and were heavily armed. The officers in
command of them were Colonel Moncrieff, Captain
Gosling, Lieutenant Moray, and Lieutenant
Inigo Jones. The following county magistrates
were also in speedy attendance at the gaol :—Mr.
Pownall (chairman), Mr. Laurie, Mr. H. White,
Mr. Fish Pownall, Mr. Bodkin, and Lord Rane-
high, and the county surveyor, Mr. Fredk. Pow-
nail, likewise was present