Il Libro
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
di Arnett Barbara
La critica letteraria pp. 241 Dim.: 1444 kb. downloads: 173
Non tutti questi romanzi sono letteratura di qualità, e non tutti prendono una posizione decisa nel giudicare gli attentati che descrivono. In molti casi i racconti utilizzano il personaggio-tipo del chimico, la società segreta e l’assassinio come espedienti melodrammatici. Ma anche gli scrittori minori, come i loro contemporanei più famosi, hanno accettato ciecamente l’assunto che il terrorismo e la protesta sociale fossero praticamente la stessa cosa. Questo libro vuole spiegare come fosse possibile che questa fosse l’opinione diffusa nel contesto della società Vittoriana, e come ai nostri giorni essa continui ad avere una risonanza notevole.
Oggi, nel Ventunesimo secolo, vorrei solo aggiungere che il tema del terrorismo è ancora di grande attualità, e che uno studio delle opere dei romanzieri della dinamite del Diciannovesimo secolo, che erano basate sui resoconti e le analisi dei giornalisti dell’epoca, potrebbe aiutarci a capire la minaccia crescente che, ogni volta che dobbiamo toglierci le giacche e perfino le scarpe in un aeroporto, consideriamo ormai una cosa normale.
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