Checkout
Cart: $0.00 - (0 items )

Who was Alexander Keith, Jr.?

Alexander ‘Sandy’ Keith, Jr. (1827–1875) was a criminal and Confederate undercover agent from Halifax, nova Scotia, Canada. He used a time bomb to destroy the ship Mosel therefore he could collect the insurance cash.

Keith became a undercover agent for the Confederacy of America throughout the american civil war, acting largely as a blockade runner and courier. Keith aided in serving to Confederate sympathizers escape justice within the Chesapeake Affair[citation needed]. He was conjointly involved Luke Blackburn in associate degree notorious plot to send garments infected with infectious disease to northern cities within the US

In 1865, he swindled his associates-in-crime and fled to St. Louis, Missouri, subsidence finally on the grassland. There, he married Cecelia Paris, a milliner’s girl from St. Louis.

Keith was aboard another ship in Bremerhaven at the time of the Mosel explosion, and was therefore awake to the premature detonation of his time bomb and also the large execution that ensued. He visited his suite and shot himself. He died per week later. when the tragedy was discovered as a murder/insurance scam on an outsized scale, the disappearances of different ships were investigated to check if Keith and his attainable associates were concerned. One was the disappearance of the SS town of capital of Massachusetts, that nonexistent in Gregorian calendar month 1870. The allegation was established to be false. He was putative to own been buried in associate degree unmarked grave in Bremerhaven. His cut off head was unbroken at the Bremer Police deposit and was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945. Newspapers referred to as it “The Thomas Crime.”

Keith himself wasn’t a terrorist, however his invention of the time bomb galvanized fashionable coercion, notably by the Fenians (Irish Brotherhood) and also the Russian Narodnaya Volya. Says Keith’s writer Ann Larabee: “Keith wasn’t liable for the political passion of those violent political teams, however he contend a task in showing them a way of action. For more info check this out you will learn more.

Back to top