The Book
The dynamite outrages of the past year cost the country a pretty large sum. The amount, as shown by the recently prepared Civil Service Estimates, is close upon £50,000 … In the previous year only £12,000 was expended under this head.
These figures, published in the Pall Mall Gazette of 4 March 1886, give us today an idea of the escalation of dynamite terrorism over the preceding two years. A graph of this expenditure rise would show a slope of four in one. This does not mean that the risk of being blown sky high in England, or even in London, was four times greater in 1885 than in 1884: part of the extra expenditure went to reinforce the police, and on other preventive measures. Even the new technology of electricity was enlisted. At a time when street illumination was still by gaslight, measures were taken to light up possible targets more effectively so as to make the work of the dynamitard less easy. Under the title ‘Electric Light versus Dynamite’ the same newspaper published a report of the precautions taken by the authorities for the protection of the Houses of Parliament which involved a constant watch kept from the river:
… an interesting series of experiments was conducted last night to ascertain the applicability of the electric light generated by the Skrivanow battery to the service required … The power developed is very great, for when the battery was attached to an arc lamp of 600 candles nominal a beam of light was thrown from the police steam-launch…
Probably this beam of light playing over the Houses of Parliament from a boat in the river was one of the very first searchlights ever to be used.
Much of the expenditure went, however, to the repair of public buildings, of which an unprecedented number had been damaged in 1884-5. There was a fresh wave of explosions, although less dramatic in its results, in the early 1890s, but we have to turn to the 1970s and to our own days to find anything comparable to what happened in England, and particularly in London, in what I would call the year of the dynamitards.
Pall Mall Gazette, 11 Feb. 1885 (henceforth PMG).
Terrorism In The Late Victorian Novel
by Arnett Barbara
La critica letteraria pp. 241 Dim.: 1444 kb. downloads: 173
Not all of these novels are high literature, nor do all of them take a committed line on the outrages they describe. Many are mere romances which use the stock figure of the chemist, the secret society and the assassination as elements of their melodrama. Nevertheless even these took over uncritically the assumption evolved by their greater contemporaries, that terrorism and social protest were virtually synonymous. This book aims to explain how such a view could come to be held in the context of Victorian society, and is not without significant resonances for our own day.
Today, in the twenty-first century, I wish only to add that the theme of terrorism is still very much in the foreground and that a consideration of the works of nineteenth century dynamite novelists, based as they were on contemporary reports and analyses by the journalists of the day, may help us to comprehend the growing threat which (every time we are required to remove our coats and even our shoes at an airport) we have come to regard as normal.
Download book jacket- Related books
Arnett Barbara
Cerveteri
Melchiori Giorgio
Verso i funamboli
Arnett Barbara - Melchiori Giorgio
The Taste of Henry James
What can you do next?
Send us your manuscript in a modifiable format (MSWord, rtf, OpenOffice) and begin your adventure.
If you are not a writer
if you are a reader and you download files from our site, please share us on your social network.
