The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1909-02-21
6-THE DYNAMITE TRIO.

mas ana all lonR-teiNH EoilNlCNS VI liz
province of Ontario, Canada, are con-
fined. Within its gloomy precincts, oc-
cupying separate cells, are three men
whose sentences are for life. English
law, Just but merciless, has seized them
in its iron grip, a grip never to be re-
Taxed until the angel CT death strikes
the letters from the limbs of the prison.
ers.
The crime for which these three
men are undergoing expiatiOn was no
ordinary one It involved a conspiracy
against the British government by
which, through the use OF dynamite, a
reign of terror was to be inaugurated
throughout Canada. and thousands of
innocent lives sacrificed The inter-
vention of fate, Providence-call IL
what YOU wiIl-prevented the outrage
from being successful, but the failure
of the plot was not owing to any lack
of zeal on the part of the human in
struments employed to carry out the
design. To Detective John Wilson Muir
ray is due the credit of having gathered
together the evidence which shed light
on the past careers of the dynamite
trio" Evidence which proved them to
be outside the rank of ordinary Grim
inafs who execute desperate deeds in
the hope of financial gain, placed them
in the category of men who would will
ingly wade through seas of blood to &C
oomplish their political aims.
At O'Clock on the evening of April
y, 1900, the little Canadian town of
Thorold, lying along the waterway of
the Welland canal, within easy walking
distance of the Niagara frontier, was
shaken TO its foundation by two ter
rife explosions.
Masses of solid rock were torn up by
the shock, immense spouts of water
ieaped high in the air, window panes
were shattered into minute crystals and
for a few awful seconds the firm earth
trembled as though in the throes of an
earthquake. For miles around the peo-
pie, terrOr-stricken and amazed, waited
dumbly for the aftermath, a descent
of death and destruction, which would
sweep them and their homes into the
black chaos of oblivion. But il did not
come, the blind gods of chance had
averted a calamity almost too horrible
to contemplate.
The Welland canal is the Domin-
ions channel of commerce between
Lakes Erie and Ontario. Lock No. q
is located at Thorold. Above it, in the
canal. is a level about one mile long,
forty feet wide and twenty deep. with
a second level, No. %, beyond it. There
is drop of sixteen feet in the lock, and
from il on TO Lake Ontario, there is a
series of drops, each level being lower.
like series of steps, down which the
waters make their way. The gates of
the ThorOld lock hold in check ~ O0O, 900
cubic feet of water, and the sudden
smashing Of the gates would have re-
leased this miniature sea and trans
formed it from an unruffled expanse of
still water to a rushing, roaring, furi-
Gus torrent, surging I'm a deadly deluge
she l..
obliterating their gates, freeing their
floods of waters, raging over the
Grand Trunk railroad tracks and
spreading out into the valley of Ten
Mile creek, wiping out homes, running
lands, devastating property and, ghast-
Hest of all, completely destroying the
town. of Merriton and sacrificing hun
dreds upon hundreds of human lives 1t
would have paralyzed Canada's great
waterway, prostrating her water trade
from the Great Lakes.
One of the eyewitnesses to the ex-
plosion was Miss Euphemia Constable
d 16-year-old girl who lived with her
parents about 800 yards from the lock
No. "a. She was going to see a friend
across the canal about 500 o'clock. and
when nearing the bridge, which is by
the lock, caught sight of two men. One
was walking down by the tool house
to the far end of the lock. The other
was standing at the end of the bridge
and then stepped over TO the swing
bridge. He laid down valise he was
carrying and got off the bridge just as
the girl passed within five feet of him
He had one hand on the valise and the
other covering his face. but sudder
motion on his part revealed his feature.
and she obtained q good view of him
He stepped through the side of tn,
bridge and of from the middle, and
carried the valise to the end Of the lock
Thus. at each end of the lock stood
one of the men, and each had a valise
AS Miss Constable walked past sh,
heard the man furthest away cry
Hurry on, Jack, OF it will go OFF,
ara he ran down the road leading I,
the falls. Turning her head. the cir
saw that the second man was tying
rope to the end of his valise. When i
was secured ne dropped the valise int,
the lock, sprang up onto the bridge an,
ran after the first man on the road t,
the falls.
Then came the thundeTOus roar of tn
first eXl lOding charge. After the frs
shock Miss Constable lost consciousness
and knew nothing of the second expIo
sion. Both of the valises lowered int
the lock contained dynamite. Thel
were fired by fuses. and the explosion
were not quite simultaneous. The,
broke the castings on the head gate
tore up the banks on both sides of tn
lock, knocked people over who wer
sufficiently near, smashed windows ant
shook the country roundabout Wate
surged upward in huge volumes, but tn
gates held. The dynamiters had blum
dered by lowering the dynamite into tn
gate pits instead of into the gate boies
Experts later showed that there wa
not sufficient resistance to the explo
sive matter and this fact alone pre-
vented the dire disaster that wouli
have followed if the dynamite had don
the WORK planned for it and ha,
smashed the gates
After lowering the satchels into In
lock. the two men ran and were abou
loo feet from the lock when the frs
explosion occurred, followed immediate
~ by the second. They reached tn
Stone road. or public Highway, leadin,
20 Niagara Falls, and hurried along /
toward the border. The mayor O
Thorold and others, after the first ter
ror and excitement had passed. fol
lowed in buggies along the Stone road
other citizens taking other roads Tn
mayor passed the two men on tn
Stone road and arrived at the fall
ahead of them. The two men reache,
the falls on the Canada side about S:4