A telephone message received at Rickmansworth Police Station to the effect that a bomb had been placed on the railway line led to excitement in the town late on Sunday evening.

The message came from a woman resident on the Cedars Estate who, in great alarm, averred she had seen suspicious characters placing what appeared to be a bomb on the railway line near the old cattle bridge.

Sergeant Perkins, accompanied by six constables, immediately rushed to the spot but an extensive and prolonged search proved fruitless. No bomb was found nor any suspicious characters.

A few days previously another scare was caused when it was reported that a bomb had been found in Rectory Road, Rickmansworth, over which the railway line passes.

It proved to be an old German hand grenade, a harmless relic of the last war, which someone had evidently thrown away as being so much junk. It is now used at the police station as a paperweight.

[From the Watford Observer of October 27, 1939]

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