Pray for Bourdin Blown to Pieces: The Greenwich Outrage of February 15, 1894 History's First Act of International Terrorism

 February 15, 1894 was a brisk winter’s day in late-Victorian Era London. At around 5 o'clock in the afternoon a cold hazy setting sun still hung in the sky and glowed--a dull orange orb suspended in air--like the light of a flickering candle about to be extinguished over Greenwich Park just outside the city center and home to the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

The Royal Observatory was located on a prominent hill southeast of downtown London in the affluent suburb of Greenwich and overlooked the bustling River Thames--the lifeline of the late 19th century British Empire.  The Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) founded by King Charles II in 1675 literally split the known world in half.  It is the Prime Meridian; the spot on the planet earth from which longitude and the passing of time are measured and which to this very day gives us Greenwich Mean Time and the dates on our calendars.

Today, the RGO is a tourist attraction located in an urban parklike setting that attracts visitors from around the world and scientific curiosity seekers alike by the thousands.  It is still the center of the world by which time is measured and it is also home to some of the most powerful astronomical instruments, used for observing the heavens and charting stars in deep space that are known to man.  

In 1894, however, the Royal Greenwich Observatory was a symbol--a symbol of science and technology and of the modern world itself which stool on the cusp of the 20th century--to many, at that time, it represented the pinnacle of human progress and advancement, but to many others, those marginalized and living on the edges of modern industrial society the Royal Greenwich Observatory was the symbol of economic  oppression, class struggle and the all too powerful nation state.

Royal Greenwich Observatory photo from 1894

As that cold sun set slowly over Greenwich Park on February 15, 1894 French immigrant and self-proclaimed anarchist Martial Bourdin walked slowly up a concrete path on a grass covered hill and past a few iron benches toward the stone wall of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.  In his hand he carried a cast iron bomb with a burning fuse.

Martial Bourdin was not even twenty-six years old.  He had been born in poverty in Paris in 1868.  Seeking a better life, when Bourdin came of age, he immigrated like many of his countrymen to the United States and found himself living in a slum, unable to find work in Detroit, Michigan.   He moved again, this time to London, England to live with his brother where he was able to find work and a subsistence living as a tailor mending women’s clothing.  While in London, Bourdin, under the tutelage of his older brother, met many foreign anarchists and became a member of something called The Club of Autonomy, home to many of Europe’s most radical individuals who called for the abolishment of nation states and the downfall of national governments.  In the late 19th century anarchists like Bourdin and his brother believed that if the masses rose up and overthrew the governments of the world then humanity would enter into a golden age of human cooperation and economic abundance.

This radicalization among immigrants in the anarchist movement--what many historians today call history’s first modern terrorist movement--led twenty-five year old Martial Bourdin to that fateful moment with a bomb in his hand standing in Greenwich Park outside the Royal Observatory on the cold sunny afternoon of February 15, 1894.

At the exact moment that Martial Bourdin stood outside in the park, inside the observatory itself  sat two scientists working in the observatory’s basement a Mr. Thackeray and Mr. Hollis who were just  then busily engaged in mathematical computations related to the position of celestial bodies in our solar system.  Suddenly, the two men inside the observatory were startled and jumped up out of their seats because of a noise that Mr. Hollis--who was a veteran of the Crimean War--told the press sounded like, “A sharp and clear detonation, followed by a noise, that sounded like an artillery shell going through the air.”

Outside, the bomb had unexpectedly gone off in Marial Bourdin’s hands.  It ripped his left arm clean off at the shoulder and tore an enormous gash in his stomach.  Bourdin crumpled to his knees in a bloody pool and bits of his flesh were scattered atop nearby trees located over fifty feet away from where he knelt.

Hollis and Thackeray ran up the steps of the Observatory to find a window and observe what was going on outside.  They saw a nearby park warden--followed by a group of schoolboys who had been walking home from school through Greenwich Park--sprinting up the hill; up the zig-zagging concrete path towards the spot where a writhing one-armed Martial Bourdin--history’s first international terrorist--lay doubled over in pain and with his intestines pouring out onto the ground.

Remarkably, when the Park Warden and the school-children reached him Bourdin was still alive--just barely.  Cryptically, he told the warden, “Take me home.”

Bourdin’s bloodied body was carried to the newly built Greenwich Seamen’s Hospital which sits a few hundred yards away on the outside of Greenwich Park in the shadow of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.  Martial Bourdin would live in the hospital for thirty more minutes.  He was said to be conscious the whole time and able to speak in a faint whisper, but he refused to answer any questions about himself, his would-be act of terror, or to even state his name before he died in agony. 

Bourdin in agony on the path to the RGO from 1894 newspaper

Later, based on a train ticket found in his shredded blood-soaked clothing, authorities were able to identify Bourdin and trace his home back to a one room apartment on Fitzroy Street in the Westminster neighborhood of central London.  The police determined that sometime on the afternoon of February 15, 1894 Bourdin had left his apartment in Westminster and travelled by train to the Royal Greenwich Observatory with a homemade bomb hidden inside his coat.

 The London Police report then went on to rather obviously conclude that, “Some mischance or some clumsy bungling had unexpectedly caused the bomb to explode in Bourdin’s hand.”  In addition to the investigative conclusion that the bomb had gone off by accident, police also speculated that because Bourdin had a large amount of money in his possession at the time of the explosion that he most likely planned to immediately flee back to his native France after the attack.

Surprisingly, though the authorities knew of Martial Bourdin’s anarchist connections almost from the outset of their investigations no arrests were made in the immediate aftermath of what the British public and press would call “The Greenwich Outrage”.

In fact, on February 23, 1894 as what remained of Martial Bourdin’s body was laid to rest in London’s Finchley Road Cemetery--his funeral was attended by hundreds of known anarchists--and Louis Michel a would-be school teacher and perhaps France’s most well-known and most outspoken proponent of anarchism gave a speech which reports said lasted for hours!

But, as the British Press got hold of the story, the ire of the public and their anger at the anarchist movement increased.  The people of Great Britain demanded that the authorities do all that they could to keep them safe from what they perceived to be a foreign-born terror threat.

By 1894 anarchist attacks were nothing new in either Europe or the United States.  Only days prior to Bourdin’s failed attack on the Royal Observatory a bomb, attributed to anarchists had exploded in a busy Paris cafe, even an American President, James Garfield, had been assassinated in September of 1881 by a deranged gunman claiming links to the anarchist movement. 

Newspaper engraving of 25 year old Martial Bourdin

However, what made Bourdin’s attack so different from all the other so-called anarchist bombings and assassinations in the last quarter of the 19th century--at least in the eyes of the British public and press--was that Bourdin’s terrorist attack could be directly traced back to a radical group of immigrants and foreign source of financing ie. anarchist groups in France and mainland Europe.

Up until the time of the Greenwich Outrage in 1894--since 1826 in fact--there were no laws of any consequence on the books in British jurisprudence that dealt with foreign immigration.  Also, any laws from the past which may have prohibited immigration from abroad to England dealt primarily with either Jews, Catholics or Irish--groups which had, up until the twentieth century at least, had a second-class status in most western societies.  Therefore, up until Martial Bourdin committed the Greenwich Outrage on February 15, 1894 Great Britain, and most specifically the urban center of London, had been a hotbed of radical political activity led by an influx of anarchists from abroad exactly like Martial Bourdin and his older brother.

The Greenwich Outrage directly led to changes in the law that enforced extradition treaties; deported foreign born nationals with anarchist leanings and made immigration standards more stringent.  So, that, ironically enough, Martial Bourdin’s attack on what he perceived to be a symbol of scientific progress and the nation-state, actually directly led to the diminishment of the anarchist movement at least in Great Britain in the years leading up to the First World War.  The Greenwich Outrage of 1894--like all terrorist attacks--was nothing more than an evil and outrageous failure.

Many have speculated in the more than 130 years since the bomb accidently went off in his hand and Martial Bourdin committed one of history’s most senseless and ill-fated terror attacks about what his possible motives really were.  Bourdin, though he had attended many anarchist meetings, was not known to say much and he had very few personal acquaintances.  He left behind no written records and even as he lay dying he refused to say a word about the attack.

The mystery surrounding the Greenwich Outrage of 1894 has captured the imagination of writers, artists and even Hollywood for over a century.  T.S. Eliot  famously wrote in his poem Ash Wednesday--a work about spiritual revelation and Eliot’s own conversion to Catholicism--”Prayy…/for Bourdin blown pieces.”

At the time, conspiracy theories as to who, or what exactly, put Bourdin up to committing the outrage flourished in the press.  Author Joseph Conrad, most famously, based his 1905 novel The Secret Agent and specifically his most sympathetic character, around Martial Bourdin and his ill-fated bombing.  Today, it’s difficult to overstate how deeply ingrained the Greenwich Outrage of 1894 became in the public imagination.  As late as 1936 famed director and producer Alfred Hitchcock made a hit Hollywood movie called Sabotage that was loosely based on the life of Martial Bourdin and the events of February 15, 1894.

Tabloid London Newspaper from Spring 1894

But, in the end all poetry, novels and movies aside--the one lesson that we today can take from the history behind the Greenwich Outrage of 1894--perhaps, history’s first deliberate act of international terrorism-- is simply how random, senseless and stupid all acts of political violence and international terrorism are and always have been.