1973 Old Bailey bombing

1973 Old Bailey Bombing
Part of the Troubles
Entrance door to the Old Bailey
Location	London, United Kingdom
Coordinates	51°30′57″N 0°06′06″W / 51.5158°N 0.1018°W / 51.5158; -0.1018
Date	8 March 1973 14:49 (UTC)
Target	Old Bailey Courthouse
Attack type	Car bomb
Deaths	1 British civilian (heart attack)
Injured	243 [1]
Perpetrator	Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade
Assailants	Hugh Feeney, Gerry Kelly, Dolours Price, Marian Price, Robert Walsh, and other IRA volunteers
Convicted	all but McNearney (acquitted for providing information)
Verdict	life in prison (later reduced to 20 years)

The 1973 Old Bailey bombing (dubbed as Bloody Thursday by newspapers in Britain^[2]) was a car bomb attack carried out by the Provisional IRA (IRA) which took place outside the Old Bailey Courthouse on 8 March 1973. The attack was carried out by an 11-person active service unit (ASU) from the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade. The unit also exploded a second bomb which went off outside the Ministry of Agriculture near Whitehall in London at around the same time the bomb at the Old Bailey went off.

This was the Provisional IRA's first major attack in England since the Troubles began in the late 1960s. One British civilian died of a heart attack attributed to the bombing. Estimates of the injured range from 180 to 220 from the two bombings. Two additional bombs were found and defused. Nine people from Belfast were convicted six months later for the bombing, one person managed to escape and one was acquitted for providing information to the police.^[3]