As frightening as were all the articles on bombs, nothing was as terrifying as the crude instruments of destruction themselves. An account of the trial published in Harper's Monthly Magazine in 1907 recalled that "in plain sight of the jury during the lawyers' summations were not only the red banners and flags of the terrorists blazing with mottoes urging defiance of the law," but also "bombs of all descriptions, fulminating caps, shells, melting-ladles, and other tools of the dynamiter's trade." Over the objections of the defense, the judge even allowed entered into evidence some explosives with no apparent connection to the men on trial or to the Haymarket bombing. These exhibits "spoke louder than any words," the Harper's article recalled.

The first two images are of People's Exhibit 130, a round bomb of the kind thrown in the Haymarket. It consists of two lead hemispheres that can be filled with dynamite and then bolted together, with a fuse inserted in a hole in one of the hemispheres. The second image shows the constituent pieces of the device. Johann Most singled out this type of bomb for praise. "The best form of bomb," he wrote (see People's Exhibit 44 in the Haymarket Affair Digital Collection), is "the globular form, because of the equally resistive force on all sides of the missile, which renders its destructive power in every direction alike. This is of great importance, because bombs are generally used only to operate amid a crowd of assailants or other social fiends."

According to the July 22 testimony of Chicago Daily News reporter Harry Wilkinson (see the Haymarket Affair Digital Collection), August Spies gave him this bomb during an interview conducted in Spies's Arbeiter-Zeitung office in January of 1886. Wilkinson said Spies called it a "Czar bomb" since it was "the same kind that had been used by the Nihilists in destroying the Czar [i.e., Alexander II, in March of 1881]," and that Spies claimed that the anarchists had an arsenal of some eight thousand bombs.

The third image is People's Exhibit 132, the ladle allegedly used by Louis Lingg for pouring hot lead during his bomb-making. He conducted this activity in the home of William and Bertha Seliger on Sedgwick Street, a few blocks south of North Avenue, where he boarded. William Seliger was indicted for the Haymarket bombing, but when he and his wife agreed to testify for the state, these charges were not pursued. Their testimony is in the Haymarket Affair Digital Collection.

The fourth image, People's Exhibit 134, is of four pipe bombs standing on end, two with their fuses inserted. The fifth image, Exhibit 13, shows a so-called canister bomb. Although none of these had any relevance to events in the Haymarket, and though the defense objected to their being entered into evidence, the judge admitted them.