67 Dudley Street

Intended Victims Not In Danger.

The bomb which was flung inside the door of Antonio Barbaro’s house in Dudley street, West Melbourne, at 1.10 a.m. today, and which, apparently, was intended to injure two free laborers living there, only succeeded in doing harm to innocent people.

Today the front of Barunro’s house is wrecked, his wife and children suffering from shock, and the intended victims are ‘unscathed. Only Barbara’s family was endangered by the bomb, because the free laborers, with other Italians, were sleeping up

stairs, well out of roach of the. explosion.

Mrs Barbara and the children, Carmelo, aged 5, whose head was cut by falling plaster, and Carmino, eight months, are in the care of Barbaro’s brother in Richmond. Barbaro who is about 25 said today: “I have never done anybody any harm in Australia, and neither has anybody else who was in -the house last night. If fight is wanted, ‘ why do they not come out into the open. Why should my wife and children run the risk of being injured.

“Whoever threw the bomb knew the key was left In the door. He will pay. We will find out who it was,”

Only yesterday afternoon Barbaro’s left hand was operated on for an injury.

An examination made today of the fragments of the bomb showed the police that it was not a Mills hand grenade, as at first supposed: The fragment resembled those from a gas pipe, about one inch in diameter, which had apparently been sealed at both ends after having been filled with gelignite. Senior Detective Grieve and Detective Sloan are in charge of the investigations, and this afternoon made

a detailed survey of the damaged building with experts from the explosives department. The bomb fragments found today wore jagged and of uneven length, and on two of them there wore threads.

The theft of 20lb, of gelignite and 300 detonators from the Coburg City Council has been reported to the police, and while they do not think that this has any connection with the outrage, they will consider it in their inquiries.

Barbara has been in Australia six years, and has lived in Dudley street for the past 13 months, he and his wife went to bed at 11

o’clock last night, their two children being in the same room, the girl in a cot in the corner and the baby boy in a pram near the side of the bed. In bedrooms upstairs were ten men, two of them volunteers, and six others who had arrived yesterday from Bendigo and were to continue on to Bairnsdale. All were in the house before midnight.

At 1.10 there was a loud explosion, which shook the whole building. The front door was blown up onto the electric light wires in front of the house, glass was scattered 70 feet across the road way, the door of Mr and Mrs Barbaro’s bedroom was splintered and wrecked, and plaster and pieces of the ceiling fell in all directions. A hole six foot long and 18 inches wide was blown in the floor. Smoke and dust obscured the view, and neighbors were awakened by the explosion and the cries of the Italians.

Police on patrol duty and tho patrols were at the house within three minutes, but found no traces of the bomb-throwers. When the patrol arrived the plaster was still falling in solid lumps. Barbaro’s bedroom, which opens out on to the hall, where the bomb was placed, was very badly damaged. On the wail can he seen the marks where flying fragments struck it. One passed through the top railing at the bottom of the bed, and two others passed through other parts of it. Solid ornamental railings on the bed were blown out of their sockets.

The whole of the plaster in the hall has boon blown off the wall for a distance of 6ft. from the floor, and there none of the ceiling is left.

The flooring was splintered and blown away, and, to enable people to walk along it, parts of the splintered door of the bedroom have had to be laid down. In parts the debris is eighteen inches deep. A gas pipe was smashed. Adjoining the bedroom is another bedroom which had all its windows blown out, and other minor damage caused.

Immediately above Mr and Mrs Barbaro’s bedroom is another, in which three men were sleeping, one of the beds, on which Antonio was sleeping, being directly over where the bomb exploded. Three fragments of the bomb smashed through lite plaster, through some wood, and through the wooden floor above. One then cut through the wire mattress, forced its way through the kapok mattress, and finally lodged in the ceiling, eight feet above.