Clerkenwell explosion

On December 13, 1867, a massive explosion tore through Corporation Lane, now known as Corporation Row, in an attempt by the Irish Republican Brotherhood to free their comrades from the Clerkenwell House of Detention. Fenian conspirators wheeled a barrow holding over five hundred pounds of gunpowder against the prison wall and ignited it, intending to breach the exercise yard where they believed their leaders were held. The authorities had been warned of the plot and had already moved the prisoners elsewhere, meaning the blast was entirely futile in its objective. The sheer force of the explosion demolished sixty feet of the prison wall and leveled the tenement houses directly opposite, killing twelve innocent civilians and injuring over one hundred others. Continue