The Clerkenwell Outrage
The first Irish Republican bomb detonated on English soil was not intended as an act of terrorism, but its impact – and death toll – sent shockwaves through Victorian London.
On the afternoon of 13 December 1867 a large explosion rocked Corporation Lane in Clerkenwell, London. The Irish Republican Brotherhood sought to liberate Ricard O’Sullivan Burke and Joseph Casey, two of its members who had been arrested in London on 28 November and were being held in Clerkenwell House of Detention. Their attempt had gone badly wrong: the Brotherhood significantly overestimated the quantity of gunpowder required to breach the prison wall, resulting instead in a detonation of such force that entire houses were destroyed and hundreds injured. Reporting on the devastation the next day, The Times described the event, which came to be known as the ‘Clerkenwell Outrage’, as a ‘crime of unexampled atrocity’.
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