A raid made by the London police early yesterday morning on a house in Stepney Ñ 100, Sidney-street Ñ in which two of the gang that murdered the three police officers in Houndsditch last month were believed to be hiding, developed into a pitched battle or siege. 

At the outset the police were received with pistol shots, and they summoned reinforcements. For several hours the police and a party of Scots Guards poured a heavy fire upon the windows of the desperadoesÕ refuge. The men within fired back with revolvers. Altogether one police officer was seriously wounded and several other persons, including some spectators, were slightly wounded. 

Soon after one oÕclock the house was seen to be in flames, having been set on fire either by the fusillade or by the desperadoes themselves. The building was gutted. In the ruins were found the remains of two men, one of whom is believed to be ÒFritzÓ and the other another member of the gang.

The police engaged were reinforced till they reached the number of at least 1,500. The majority of these were employed in keeping well away from the firing the vast crowd which gathered in the neighbourhood, and which at one oÕclock was estimated to number two or three hundred thousand. Mr. Churchill, the Home Secretary, was on the spot for some hours.
While exploring the ruins of the burnt house, several firemen were injured by a fall of wreckage.

IN THE FIRING-LINE. - THE TRAPPED MENÕS FATE.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
It was nearly noon when I pierced the police barrier at the end of one of the dingy little streets leading into Sidney-street. The little street was almost empty. Some women were hanging out of the open upper windows listening with dull faces to the sound of firing and looking towards it. As I went along there was a sharp cracking of revolver shots. At the top of the street, where it runs into Sidney-street, there were a knot of policemen and a few loungers. I went past them and was at once called back. ÒA man was shot there this morning,Ó one said, and this was sufficiently startling, although the truth, as I learned afterwards, was that a journalistÕs walking-stick had been broken by a bullet.

Not a soul was to be seen along Sidney-street. At all the openings was an impassive line of police, and behind them a glimpse of scared faces. Nor was there at first anything to show where the duel was going on. Looking down the line of buildings I saw the tall, newish block of brick houses with the surgery at the corner, and next to the surgery the windows of the assassinsÕ fortress. As I watched there was a report, and a puff of smoke blew away from the first floor window, and then at once came a furious volley from the other side of the street. The duel was in full swing, and the policemen round me heard it and grinned: ÒThatÕs a pretty one,Ó they said.

THE SCENE FROM ABOVE.
Just at the corner is the Rising Sun public-house, its Sidney-street side about 40 yards away from the firing. I made my way through its tumultuous bar, where men were excitedly drinking, and out upon the roof, and there I found a score or so of pressmen looking down into that pit of death. This was a post of some danger, and if the murderers had cared to risk exposure they could have easily sent bullets amongst us. Bullets had been flying about the street all the morning, ricocheting off from the walls in a highly unpleasant manner.
Looking down obliquely through the chimney pots I could all but see into the ground floor room of the murderersÕ house. The soldiers could not be seen; they were, we knew, lying flat in the shelter of the opposite windows pouring their lead into the house. There was dead silence but for the reports; everybody watched and waited leisurely. Away on the roof of a brewery at the other end of the street there was another small crowd, and it was a curious thing to see in the upstairs windows along the street itself men and women sitting with their children on their knees. With the whole area spread out below like a map, one could see that the block of buildings where the murderers were is an island, and at the end of every opening there was the same police barrier and a grey wedge of people stretching away behind it. The stage was clear, and of the actors nothing could be seen.

THE HOME SECRETARY.
The firing came in spurts. The murderers would shoot first from the ground floor, then from the window above, the shot sometimes followed by a tinkle of falling glass. Then there would be a barking of rifles in reply. Then again silence for minutes. Immediately below us in the street lay scattered the dirty newspaper boards on which the Guards had lain to fire earlier in the day.
At the further end of the block from us a group of officers sheltered. Now and then we saw someone in a tall hat and heavy coat come daringly out and take a look at the house. This was Mr. Winston Churchill. ÒHeÕs a cool one,Ó someone said. But this was nothing to the risk he ran a little later on in the day. He seemed to be commanding all the operations.

THE BURNING OF THE TRAP.
Close on one oÕclock an especially sharp fusillade rattled like a growl of exasperation. In a few minutes some sharp-eyed watcher on our roof saw a little feather of smoke curling out of the window below the point of attack. We thought at first it was gun smoke, and then with a thrill we saw that the house was on fire. The smoke grew, and soon it was rolling thick out of the windows. ÒNow they are done for,Ó we said; Òthis is the beginning of the end.Ó But the soldiers had no mercy. They showered their lead into the smoke.
It was a strange sensation to be standing there and watching the fire eat up the house. A youth of the neighbourhood chuckled in unholy exultation. ÒTheyÕll be fried like rats in an oven,Ó he said. It was awful, but there was in that moment no thought of pity for the wretches about to give up their lives between the rifle muzzles and the flame. Slowly, very slowly the fire increased. Once we thought the murderers had put it out, but then it went with a rush, and soon the whole of the house above the ground floor was hidden in smoke. Through the broken windows at the bottom the air was fanning the fire. Suddenly a long tongue of flame licked out from the second storey window, and then we knew, indeed, that all was up.

SHOTS BENEATH THE FLAMES.
The men evidently had been driven down to the ground floor, for while the fire possessed all the rest of the house they kept up their smokeless volleys from below. They seemed terrible, inhuman. But we were all eyes for the flames that now burst out like a rosy fountain from both the upper windows, and wrapped themselves over the high-pitched roof. The alarm ran round that there would be an explosion. It was said that there would be a store of dynamite, and we trembled for the soldiers a few feet away. But there was no explosion, and we had to wait an intolerable hour until the fire had spread down into the bottom room. Shortly after two the ceiling evidently fell in, and now from pavement to roof the house was one furnace.
Before this we had heard the clanging of fire engine bells from somewhere beyond the crowd, and soon men in shining helmets were gathered at the corners of the streets waiting with the hose. That was perhaps the strangest incident of all Ñ London firemen standing idle while a house burned itself out under their eyes.

Once in the thick smoke at an upper window something black was seen to stir, and we looked to see a man leap out. But it was only a blackened curtain. We watched the front door as a terrier watches a rat hole, half expecting to see some monstrous fellow rush out to die in the street under the rifles. None of these things happened. The fire pursued its orderly way, neatly avoiding the houses to either side. The crowd in the streets now found voice and seemed to be cheering.

A CAUTIOUS APPROACH.
The next thing that happened was curious. From the group round Mr. Winston Churchill a little man in dark clothes was seen stealing along the side of the building. He stuck close to the wall, a revolver in his hand. He was a detective officer, and he was the first man to approach the blazing house. When he got to the door he put out his arm and pushed it gingerly. Then he quickly retreated. Other men with revolvers were seen to creep round from the other side and go to the side exit from the buildings. They were there ready to meet a possible rushing out of the murderers.

Another interval, and then suddenly all the watchers seemed to take courage. We saw the Guards who had been firing into the house all day come out on the pavement and stand in a line pointing their rifles at the house. Then they moved the fire engine a bit nearer, and half a dozen firemen brought up a tall red ladder and placed it against the top window. Just about this time the roof fell in, and the street was strewn with burning timbers. A plucky fireman walked up to the gaping ground floor window and turned a stream of water into it. We half expected to see him drop, but as he did not everybody at last felt that there was no more danger, and people began to move up opposite the house. But Mr. Churchill came near before anyone felt sure whether the murderers were dead or alive.

ÒNOTHING TO AIM AT.Ó
Firemen broke down the door and went in, but it was too hot to stay in long. Others mounted the ladder and played into the bedrooms. They soon got the fire down, and all that was left to do was to explore for bodies. We saw firemen going in, but they carried nothing out, and the crowd, ready for a fresh sensation, fell to debating how the murderers died. Suicide was the popular theory. After two oÕclock, when the fire was getting strong, one or two shots Ñ the last Ñ had been heard in the ground floor room, and these were said to mean suicide. Whether it was so or not we could not know, but to round the story off the news ran round that two bodies had been found in the kitchen behind the house. When all was over there was nothing to show but a line of blackened windows, marking the place where terrible passions had run to their end.

A mild-faced young policeman dandling a rifle stood outside receiving the congratulations of his friends. He had been one of the firing party in the bedroom. He said that they never saw anything to aim at Ñ never a face, only now and then a hand. And it was curious proof of the deadly aim of the assassins that not one pane of glass was broken in the opposite windows; the bullets had all gone through the opening over the heads of the soldiers and policemen as they lay. A sash was broken and an ugly chip was taken out of the yellow brick wall.