Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1879 — An Infernal Machine. [ARTICLE]

An Infernal Machine.

Philadelphia Special to Chicago Tribune. Up to midnight all efforts have failed to find the whereabouts or Robert Parrish, Jr., the attorney in whose office-desk an infernal machine was exploded to-day, causing serious, and, perhaps, fatal injury to tbe office-boy. A loud explosion was heard in the office, No. 229 South Sixth street, and a rush was made, when a volume of stifling smoke poured out of the door, and Willi am McDowell, 17 years old, was found in a corner of the office with a hand tom off at the wrist, and so shocked that he has been unable to give any account of the aflair yet. In the drawer of the desk occupied by Parrish were found three large .pistol barrels pointing directly at a chair placed iu front of the desk, with emery paper and matches so adjusted that any attempt to pull open the drawer ignite the matches and the train of powder that had been laid. They had evidently been loaded to the muzzle with inch slugs, for one of the barrels was burst all to fragments. Three slugs had gone right through the back of the hair-cloth chair placed in front

of the desk, and two more through a thick door and buried themselves in a pile of papers. The lock was buried in the chair and the desk smashed. It is persumed that the boy jumped on the desk to open the window, and the jar rent the infernal machine oft". A warrant has been issued for Parrish, under the statute making it felony, to cause the injury of any person bv explosion, but it is belie veil that Parrish had placed the machine there under the influence of insanity. He is a member of the bar, 50 years of age, but did no s practice, and very little is known of him beyond the fact that he had a claim to a large fortune in France. He served in a California regiment during the war, and has since been trying to prosecute his claim, which was for 1,I *oo,ooo francs. He believed that he was pursued by persons who were trying to wrest his hereditary rights from him, and when he lost a deed lately, he laid it to emissaries of the Frencli government. He went out of town, on Thursday, and has not since been seen.