Back to previous page October 16, 2005  Dynamite fiend’s tale uncovered Deadly bomber Sandy Keith was nephew of Halifax beer baron By Susan Bradley When American historian Ann Larabee began researching a scholarly work about bomb-making techniques, she had no idea the result would be The Dynamite Fiend, a thriller about an infamous 19th-century mass murderer who was nurtured in the bosom of one of Halifax’s most powerful families. Larabee, an associate professor of American thought and language at Michigan State University, uncovered the tale of Alexander “Sandy” Keith Jr., nephew of beloved brewer and statesman Alexander Keith by accident. "It was a side trip for me. I was working on a technology history of the spread of bomb-making techniques through three centuries of U.S. history," she said during a visit to Halifax earlier this month. References to Keith, also known as William King Thomas or Thompson, popped up in documents involving Confederate blockade runners who used Halifax as a base during the U.S. Civil War, 1860-1865, and were involved in various plots during that time. As it turned out, the Halifax native was a master clockwork bomber who influenced a generation of bombers, including Irish-American Fenian groups. In her book, Larabee traces Keith’s life; he began as a pampered scion of the rich and powerful Keith family, living at Keith Hall and working for his uncle, and ended as a suicide in Bremen, Germany, in December, 1875. He shot himself aboard the steamship Mosel after dynamiting the vessel and killing 81 people, mostly emigrants to North America. He survived his suicide attempt but died later in police custody. The motive for his crime was to collect marine insurance. For that incident, he earned the moniker, "dynamite fiend," bestowed on him by the international press. While the book is non-fiction, Larabee weaves a tale that rivals any mystery novel. It grabs the reader in chapter one with a description of the panic and terror felt by the innocent travellers on the Mosel. She brings Keith to life with descriptions of his attempts to achieve social grandeur, doomed to failure by his buffoonish behavior. Even the ending provides a ghoulish tingle, as Keith’s corpse is decapitated so his head and brains can be studied for clues to explain his nefarious acts. The reader learns Keith was suspected in an 1857 arson that blew up a Halifax gunpowder magazine, owned by his uncle, destroying a north-end neighbourhood and killing one person. Although he was never convicted, it was believed he committed the crime to cover up evidence that he had been stealing from the warehouse. He is also thought to have played a role in another ship explosion in City Point, Virginia, in 1864 that killed some 200 people, also part of an insurance fraud. Throughout his life, Keith devised a myriad of criminal schemes and was eventually forced to flee Canada for the United States and finally Germany, re-inventing himself along the way as a prosperous businessman. His relentless ambition and a fascination with explosives, which led him to refine the use of dynamite-based clockwork bombs, made a lethal combination. "He would be called a sociopath today," Larabee said. Her book also makes the connection between Keith’s bomb-making technology and other saboteurs of the day. "For example, newspaper coverage in Germany included intricate descriptions of the bombs and his modus operandi which was to target ships," Larabee said. "However, Sandy wasn’t driven by political passion. For him, it was all about money." Keith’s wife, Cecilia, the illegitimate daughter of an Ohio milliner, provides another fascinating aspect of the story. Was she another dupe, or willfully blind to her husband’s schemes? "They met each other at a particular time of their lives when they shared an idea about attaining wealth and status. They were both aspirants," Larabee said. Unfortunately, the trail of Keith’s descendents runs cold after he died and Cecilia returned to Halifax with their three children. "They just disappeared without a trace," Larabee said. For local readers, the reason why Sandy Keith is relatively unknown here is nearly as intriguing as the book itself. His anonymity today is a testament to the power of Halifax society in the late 1800s. News of "the crime of the century," as it was called in international circles, was simply never allowed to penetrate the tightly closed ranks of rich Haligonians, who also controlled the then-British colony’s newspapers, Larabee said. "It is really astonishing and it's fascinating. People have said to me, 'this is very scandalous,' to learn about him now, since Alexander Keith is such a well-known and beloved figure in this town," said Larabee. "Because he was from such a powerful family, Halifax society simply closed around and protected these prosperous, wealthy business people. Nobody wanted to remember Alexander Keith Junior. He wasn’t a romantic sort of criminal; he killed 81 people — that we know of." In fact, Larabee was only able to find one newspaper mention about Keith’s role in the steamship bombing. "There was one newspaper article, published anonymously, probably by a friend of the Keiths, that said Sandy Keith had been dead for years and there was simply no way that he could be William Thomas, the dynamite fiend. So they denied the story and that was really the end of it in Halifax," she said. Keith devised a myriad of criminal schemes and was eventually forced to flee Canada for the U.S. and finally Germany. Copyright 2005 The Halifax Herald Limited Back to previous page

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