These bombs were cleverly constructed: they consisted of the clockworks, parts easy to charge and explode with reasonable precision, and six dynamite cartridges wrapped and placed below that mechanism.

Two years later, in 1883, a man called James McDermott, known as Red Jim, sailed from New York to Liverpool, using the name of Peter Guigley. When he arrived he stayed at the Railway Hotel in Birkenhead, but the spy network for Britain had him in its sights and a man called Jenkinson met him and took him to London, remaining in the guise of a Fenian sympathiser. After Red Jim had continued his travels and was being observed, word was spread that he had been behind some of the bombings, with a centre in Cork, and with operations directed at Liverpool. When McDermott returned to Liverpool, on board the SS City of Montreal, disguised as Quigley again, he was met on arrival in Liverpool dock and taken off to Walton Gaol. This was not, though, what it seemed.

This had all been a ruse to have a ‘plant’ in the Fenian ranks; the man was eventually released without trial. It gives us that element of farce so often found in bomb stories and spy stories from that period. Farce and black comedy were never far away in this story. Red Jim had been working for the British secret service for many years, selling his information to the British Consul in New York.

Perhaps the most bizarre tale of the time is that of a morning when an artificial leg crashed through the window of Liverpool town hall. In the panic. Someone asked what had happened, asking if this were a bomb. A calm policeman explained: ‘Don’t be alarmed … it’s only an old pensioner’s cork leg.’ There was a row outside, but no Fenians. The panic came from the fact that the cork leg was just the right size and colour to be mistaken for a gas-pipe bomb.