Take Care Lest We Blow Ur House Up

It was the darkest part of an early May night in 1883, most people had been asleep for hours and were hoping to sleep for many more. Without warning, an enormous explosion ripped through the eastern end of Priestgate. It was chance alone that no one was killed, such was the force. Local correspondence fed the story across the country, retelling it in detail. Paving slabs had been cracked in half or shattered, others had been flung into the air landing on the roofs of nearby properties. All the windows in the vicinity were smashed, including on Narrow (Bridge) Street, allowing the contents of the sewer – the focus of the explosion – to find their way into the buildings. This included the entire rat population of the sewer too.

It is still a mystery as to how the sewer came to explode, with the finger pointed at both coal gas and brewery gas mixing with the sewer and potentially a discarded cigarette. What is perhaps more intriguing is the story that did not make the national press but was reported in the local press – the locals thought the cathedral had been blown up.

Their fear was not due to the size of the explosion or indeed the location, but because a threat to blow up the cathedral had already been made by activists. According to a London paper, a letter had been received by Dean Perowne from the South of England Fenian Society, an Irish Republican group, which stated ‘Sir, Take care lest we blow ur house up. We have the dynamite ready.’ The police were quick to dismiss it as a hoax once they realised it had been sent from a neighbouring village, or so it was reported in the Aberdeen Evening Press.

It was curious that the story was difficult to find in the local press, but I finally found quite a different record in the Stamford Mercury. According to the Mercury the Dean had indeed received a letter, but the writing was so bad it was thought to have been written by a child and had been sent from Market Deeping. The house referred to was presumed to be the deanery (a fine building that would be a crime to destroy) and not the cathedral as stated.

However, despite the Mercury’s statement that the story had been grossly exaggerated and likely nothing more than a prank, the news rumbled on. The same paper reported a week later that Scotland Yard had informed the local police to take a thorough inspection of both the Post Office and the cathedral, perhaps in search of a bomb. Again, this was said to have been nothing more than a rumour, but it does at least tell you that it was on the minds of the local population. After such a fear that the city’s finest building would be destroyed, there was probably a sense of relief that the explosion was in the sewers, despite the stomach-churning clean-up necessary!

 

References

Aberdeen Evening Press, 5 April 1883, p.2.

Alleged Threat to Blow Up the Cathedral, Stamford Mercury, 6 April 1883, p.4.

Stamford Mercury, 13 April 1883, p.4.

Priestgate Explosion, Our Journey Peterborough, City Culture Peterborough

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