Majendie, Colonel Sir Vivian Dering

Colonel Sir Vivian Dering Majendie, KCB (18 July 1836 – 25 March 1898) was a British engineer who was one of the first bomb disposal experts. He served as Chief Inspector of Explosives to Queen Victoria from 1871 until his death in 1898.

Vivian Majendie was educated at Leamington College before joining the Royal Artillery in 1854. Promoted to second lieutenant on 23 October 1854, he saw action during the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. From 1861 to 1871 Majendie served as Captain Instructor and Assistant Superintendent at the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. In 1871 he was appointed Chief Inspector of Explosives, a position he held until his death in 1898. He was the President of the Association of Mining Engineers and was one of the first bomb disposal experts.

As a major in the Royal Artillery Majendie investigated an explosion on 2 October 1874 in the Regent's Canal when the barge 'Tilbury', carrying six barrels of petroleum and five tons of gunpowder blew up, killing the crew and destroying Macclesfield Bridge and cages at nearby London Zoo. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1875 for framing a Bill which became 'The Explosives Act, 1875', and a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1895. His advice during the Fenian dynamite campaign of 1881–85 was officially recognised as having contributed to the saving of lives. After Victoria Station was bombed on 26 February 1884 he defused a bomb with a clockwork mechanism which might have gone off at any moment.

The first bomb disposal expert: Colonel Vivian Majendie and the original ‘war on terror’: 

On the last day of February 1884, the then home secretary Sir William Harcourt rose in the UK parliament to answer a question about a series of bomb attacks on two of London’s major railway stations. He read out details of an initial investigation of two bombs, one which had detonated at Victoria Station and another which had been discovered, unexploded, at Charing Cross.

The bombs, which had been deposited in the stations’ left luggage offices, were of a similar design, and resembled the remains of bombs that had detonated, Harcourt said, in Glasgow, Liverpool and elsewhere in London. The unexploded device, discovered by a vigilant ticket clerk at Charing Cross, and the remains of the bomb that had detonated at Victoria were rushed to the Woolwich Arsenal.

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Majendie was adept in the burgeoning discipline of forensics – he is regarded as the founder of today’s Forensics Explosives Lab (FEL) which – among other tasks – was at the forefront of the investigations into the Manchester bombing of 2017.

Nearly 140 years earlier, the man who laid the foundations for the FEL was tackling a different terrorist threat, namely the so-called “Fenian dynamite campaign” of 1881-1885, which involved bombs being placed in public and police buildings, tube stations and barracks, as well as onboard ships in London, Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool.

His investigations into the bomb plots of February 1884 revealed that not only were the clock parts and explosives used similar in both the bomb that went off and the unexploded device, but that they were of American make. This led Majendie to the further conclusion that the origin of the attacks could be found on the other side of the Atlantic.

Beyond unravelling the transatlantic plots of those he called “dynamite rascals”, Majendie also advised the government on all manner of security issues, from how to remodel the Tower of London so as to protect it from insurgencies, to measures for securing the proposed Channel tunnel in the event of a continental invasion. In this sense, Majendie was more than just a bomb disposal expert – even if he was the first person in history to be recognised as such. He was also what might today be loosely termed a “security consultant”.

Despite these forays into planning the bricks and mortar of national security, Majendie’s stock in trade remained forensic explosive investigation. As such, in 1894, he crowned his career by investigating an attempt by the French anarchist Martial Bourdin, a 26-year-old Frenchman with links to the anarchist Club Autonomie, to detonate a bomb at Greenwich Observatory. As always, Majendie provided a sober reality to the sensationalism that surrounded the bombing. Having examined Bourdin’s wounds and his “infernal machine”, Majendie concluded that the explosion had not been caused by the bomber tripping over his own feet (the buffoonish cause of the explosion provided by Conrad) and instead had simply mishandled the chemical components of the weapon. Majendie’s investigation of the Greenwich bombing was one of the last triumphs of his storied career – he died of a heart attack in 1898.

The sensation Bourdin's attempt created in the UK national press would later lead the novelist Joseph Conrad to pen his infamous 1907 tale of anarchist terrorism, The Secret Agent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Dering_Majendie .

https://theconversation.com/the-first-bomb-disposal-expert-colonel-vivian-majendie-and-the-original-war-on-terror-156085 .
https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/aug/05/secret-agent-greenwich-observatory-bombing-of-1894 .