Bites Off Bomb Fuse To Save Audience.

New York Times 100 years ago today, April 12, 1913:
Fireman Comes Upon Bomb Timed to Explode in Five Minutes Under Crowded Theatre.
PUT UNDER THE ORCHESTRA
Hissing of Fuse Attracted Scofield's Attention While on a Trip of Inspection of Fourteenth St. House.
    Fifteen hundred men and women were enjoying a motion picture love story in the new Jefferson Theatre at 214 East Fourteenth Street at 10:30 o'clock last evening, and the man at the piano was playing a soft accompaniment, when Fireman William Scofield of Engine Company 7, in making his tour of inspection, heard in a hall beneath the orchestra floor a whispering, sputtering sound at his feet.
    Notwithstanding the noise overhead, he heard it clearly and knew that it was something burning. Another second and he had bent down to find a bomb on the floor in the dark shadow cast by the wall. The fire was making its way along the fuse at a fairly rapid rate and had about six inches left to burn before it would reach the explosive within the bomb.
    Without making any outcry Scofield dropped to one knee, picked the bomb up in his hands, and put the fuse to his mouth. His teeth closed over the short stretch of fuse left and he bit it off clean. By so doing he checked the advance of the fire upon the explosive within and thereby probably saved the theatre from destruction and those within it from death or injury, for the bomb was of skilled workmanship and of high power. It would have exploded in another five minutes.
    Taking care not to spread alarm to the persons above, Scofield called the house manager to him, showed him what he had found, and stepped out to telephone for the police. In a few moments Lieut. Kelly, Lieut. McCarrick, and Detective Carrao, a specialist In bombs in the Police Department, were hurrying to the Jefferson Theatre to examine the missile which had been found there.
    They found that the bomb tube was wrapped in plain brown paper, such as might be found in any grocery store, and the intent of the man or men who put it underneath the audience at the Jefferson Theatre was made clear by an inscription scrawled on the paper. This was "Morte," the Italian word for "death."
    While the police were still examining the bomb. Inspector Owen Egan of the Bureau of Combustibles arrived. He was seriously injured in the examination of the bomb sent to Judge Otto Rosalsky in the Hendrick Hudson Apartments more than a year ago.
    Inside the bomb tube was a bottle that had once contained a well-known patent medicine. Filling in the space between the bottle and the tube was a quantity of black powder and a substance that looked like salt. In the bottle was a liquid chemical preparation, and although this had not been analyzed at a late hour last night, it was believed to be a high explosive.
    The fuse, which Scofield bit off when it had only a few more minutes to run, led through the cap at the end of the tube, through the cork of the bottle and into the liquid.
    This bomb was no clumsy or amateurish affair, according to the detectives. It was not one of the simple dynamite or cannon cracker bombs which the Italians on the lower east side are accustomed to use in their blackmailing work. It came from a laboratory, the police said, and had been fashioned by a man who not only knew about explosives, but was a deft mechanic.
    The hall where the missile was found begins at the bottom of a flight of steps leading down from the orchestra floor and runs to the men's wash room. It passes directly beneath the orchestra floor of the theatre where most of those in the audience sit.
    He makes such rounds every half-hour, being one of the firemen regularly detailed to theatres. He had been through the hall where the bomb was found shortly before 10 o'clock, so that the missile must have been put there sometime between 10 o'clock and 10:30 o'clock, and probably a few minutes after ten, for the fuses of such contrivances are usually made at least twenty-four inches long, and there were only six inches of it left when Scofield found it. He bit off the fuse as a surer and safer way than tearing at it, or attempting to put it out with his fingers, for it might have been dangerous for him to have tugged at the bomb in any way.
    The Jefferson Theatre is owned and operated by Moss N. Brill and has not been open long. It stands midway between Second and Third Avenues and has three floors, orchestra, balcony and gallery. It seats 2,000 persons. Mr. Brill owns two other theatres in town, one in Eighty-sixth Street and one in the Bronx.
    Mr. Brill said last night that he knew of no one who would want to destroy his theatres.