 It is the afternoon of the 18th of May 1927 and Bathcharta Township, Michigan, United States is reeling from a terrible tragedy. Several buildings have been destroyed, one of which is a school. The destruction has been caused by several explosions and horrifyingly still it was a deliberate act. As the community mourns the losses of the day it becomes apparent that the perpetrator had committed the act due to a lost election and an increase in taxes. This reason is clearly insane and it would be no consolation for the community. However it would highlight the risks of an individual who feels they have been slighted. My name is John and today we're looking at the Bath School Massacre. Welcome to Plainly Difficult, A Frugal Man. Our story starts and ultimately ends with one man. Andrew Philip Keough. Now I won't give you a full biography and I'll try to keep it to the relevant information. But Keough was a farmer born in Tecumseh, Michigan on the 1st of February 1872. He was known to be a clever child taking a keen interest in electricity, making experiments with machinery from the family farm. As such after completing school he attended Michigan State College. As it was known at the time he studied electrical engineering. During this time he met a woman who would later become his wife, Ellen Nellie Price. After graduating he worked as an electrician for several years. He even worked down in Missouri and in 1911 he received a head injury resulting from a fall which put him into a coma for two weeks. Presumably as a result of the injury he moved back to Michigan to live with his father, now widower and remarried. His new stepmother wasn't Keough's most favorite person in the world and disputes between the two were a very common sight. In September 1911 a suspicious event would unfold between Keough and his stepmom, Francis. She was trying to light an all-burning stove. All of a sudden it erupted into an explosion covering the poor women in flames. Keough in an apparent attempt to save his stepmother threw water all over her and the oil fire. This unsurprisingly spread the fire and Francis would die on the 18th of September. All of this talk of people's wives rather neatly leads us back to Nellie. Keough's return to Michigan had rekindled his relationship with Ellen Price. They would marry in 1912 and move around the area until purchasing a 185-acre farm in Bath Township. It was originally owned by Keough's wife's aunt and ran the couple a cost of $12,000. The property would be purchased half in cash and half with a mortgage. Keough was known to help neighbors and was also known to be dependable. He was intelligent, neat and a clean man, albeit impatient and easily angered. It would seem Keough was not particularly interested in farming. He beat his animals and reportedly beat one of his horses to death. What he did do on the farm was mechanical experiments, making various attachments to his tractor. Keough would get a reputation in the township for being rather frugal, even stopping attending the local church after being asked to pay a parish assessment. Bath Township residents voted in and approved the creation of a consolidated school district in 1922. This would localize schooling from smaller community schools to a more centralized system. This is all well and good, but how is it to be paid for? Well, much to Keough's dismay, it would be done through landowner's tax. This would hit Keough's pocket hard, because the tax was worked out on the value of each property of Bath Township per $1,000. The initial cost in 1922 was around $120, but it would rise over subsequent years. Keough had quite an interest in the taxes and ran for election for the School Board of Trustees, who was elected in 1924 for three years and at the same time appointed the treasurer for one year. Keough was motivated by one goal and one goal only, to reduce the property tax. As such, he constantly protested any spending by the Board and fought tooth and nail over even spending on a central school equipment. In 1925, Keough was then made the temporary town clerk. He would be required to run for election in April the next year, but this is where he would see defeat. He wasn't re-elected and no doubt it hit his ego hard. And as such, he began to think about some kind of revenge. Nelly by now was severely ill with tuberculosis, adding extra cost to the household. Keough stopped working on his farm and the property began to fall into disrepair. Nelly's uncle held the mortgage for the property and began foreclosure proceedings due to Keough's stopping payments. His life was falling apart, and with revenge on the mind, he began purchasing dynamite from nearby Lansing. Being a farmer, this didn't arouse too much suspicion. He also spread out his purchases to different times and different shops. Also around the same time, he procured over a ton of piratel, a World War I surplus explosive, popular for hedge and tree stump clearing. His revenge would be taken out on the township and upon everyone who had wronged him, and financially crippled him, which the one big one was the school itself. It is thought that he began planning a school bombing around August 1926. Over the coming months, he cut all of his farm's fences, debarks the trees on the property to kill them, and gathered lumber around his house. He filled his truck with scrap metal and replaced its tires for brand new ones, and he began making journeys to the school. Due to his role in the school board, Keough had access to the Bath Consolidated School over the summer holidays. During May 1927, he began placing explosives in the school and around his farm. Neighbours noticed activity at the farm in the night. Something was happening. Nelly was in hospital during his preparations, but she would be discharged on the 16th of May. After returning home, at some point over the next two days, Keough would kill his wife, and place her body in a shed on the property. What we do know, is she was dead by the 18th of May 1927, when things would take an explosive turn. The explosions. At 8.45 in the morning of the 18th of May, a number of fire bombs went off on the Keough farm. Debris rained out onto other properties. Local residents upon seeing the fire rushed in to assist in extinguishing it. One of the neighbours broke into the building to try and find any survivors. Upon realising no one was inside, they started trying to salvage any furniture from the flames. They found some explosives inside the house and handed them off to another person fighting the fire. Shortly after the explosion erupted from the farm, another larger explosion shot out from the Bath Schools north wing. Keough had set up a timer for the explosives inside the school to go off at around 8.45, 15 minutes after the school day had started, presumably in an attempt to catch as many children as possible. The north wing of the school collapsed, burying many children underneath it. Back at the farm, Keough fled the scene of the fire in his pickup truck. That by now was also loaded up with explosives, and he started driving towards the school. He arrived outside the Bath District School roughly around half an hour after the initial explosion. He summoned over some people to his car, in which a scuffle broke out with members of the public trying to get a gun from Keough's hands. By now, many locals were surrounding the school in an attempt to try and rescue any survivors. During the scuffle for the gun, Keough set off the bomb in his pickup truck. The explosion killed Keough, Emery Hayek, Nelson McFarren, a retired farmer, and Cleo Clayton, an eight-year-old school grader. The Lansing Fire Department sent several firefighters and hospital workers came in from all around the region. A doctor and his wife opened up their drug stores and makeshift triage for the wounded, and the whole community came to help. Local building contractors assisted in removing rubble, and even the Michigan Governor came to help organize relief efforts. During the search and rescue, another bomb was discovered under the south wing. It had an alarm clock attached, set to detonate at 8.45. It was disarmed, and local police believed that the first explosion had caused the device to short-circuit. Upon searching, Keough's farm investigators found a wooden sign wide to the farm's fence, with Keough's last message stenciled on it. Criminals are made, not born. Over the coming weeks, thousands of people came to the township to help, and donate money. Enough to rebuild the school, Keough's body was buried in a pauper's grave, and his wife's was claimed by her family and buried under her maiden name. The Keough farm was completely plowed and searched to ensure that no explosives were hidden in the ground, and were sold off at auction to pay off the mortgage. A coroner's inquiry would find that Keough had worked alone, and had murdered his wife, and that the school board was not guilty of any negligence. The school's north wing would be rebuilt, and on three different occasions dynamite would be found within. In total, 45 innocent people, mostly children, had been killed directly because of the bombing. The total number of dead, including Keough, was 46. Another 58 were injured with varying levels of severity, with another dying a few months later of myocarditis. The event marks the country's first school bombing, and one of the earliest recorded school spree killings. It shows how dangerous just one person can be if they have perceived the world they live in to be against them. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative comms attribution and share alike licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me, John, in the currently quite nice and warm southern corner of London, UK. I have Instagram and a second YouTube channel, as well as Twitter, so fancy checking them out. I'd also like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support, as well as the rest of you who tune in every week. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching, and Mr Music, play us out please.