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The boiler was one of a series of eight, set side by side, all of them of the plain cylindrical egg-ended externally-fired class ; the exploded one being No. 3, reckoning from the left hand. The boiler was twenty seven years old; it had worked three years at one colliery, and was then reset at another, but not worked; after which it was removed to the pit at which it exploded, where it had worked eleven years. It had had an interval of thirteen years, during which it laid idle, and had only worked fourteen years out of the twenty-seven. It was 30 feet in length, 6 feet in diameter, and made of plates fully five-sixteenths of an inch thick, and laid longitudinally from one end of the boiler to the other, while the pressure to -which the safety-valves were loaded was 351b. per square ineh. Boilers 1 to 4, which included the exploded one, were fired by Juckes’s self-acting furnaces, which had been applied about two years since; the remainder, 5 to 8, being fired "by hand in the ordinary way. The boiler was severed into four pieces, one of the rents, which in all probability was the primary one, running along the bottom longitudinally through the line of rivets for a length of about 15 feet. These fragments were scattered right and left. The main portion of the shell was thrown to a distance of about 50 yards, crushing down the crab gear in its flight; while another was thrown to a distance of about 70yards; and a third, 130 yards, carrying away the coping of a chimney about 30 feet high in its course. A fourth fragment was thrown to a distance of 77yards, while a portion of one of the steam pipes was thrown 180 yards to the west, and a safety-valve the same distance to the east, so that some of the parts flew as much as a fifth of a mile asunder. Two boilers to the left of the exploded one and another to the right were torn from their seats, while boilers 5 and 6 were bulged in at the sides and had to be replated. The stoker, who was in the firing space at the time, was killed on the spot, and a pitman, hap pening unfortunately to enter at the moment of explosion to request the fireman to wake him early in the morning, was so severely scalded and otherwise injured that he died a few hours afterwards. At the coroner’s inquest the foreman smith, who had recently repaired the boiler, but at a part not in any way affecting the explosion, stated he considered the boiler was quite safe to work at a pressure of 70 lb. per square inch. He had examined it from one end to the other, and found the plates all right, and had detected nothing to account for the explosion. Another witness, an engineer, who had been inside the boiler ten weeks ago, and had seen nothing amiss, produced a plate through which the longitudinal rent already referred to had run, which presented the appearance of an old crack that had gone partially through the metal. The government inspector of mines con sidered there was plenty of water in the boiler at the time, and that the plates had not been overheated, but that the explosion arose from the flaw in the plate already referred to, and that being the case, as it had been shown that the defective plate could not be detected by inspection, no one was to blame. The jury brought in a verdict to the effect that the explosion was purely accidental, and that no one was in any way to blame for the manner in which the deceased came by their deaths. This evidence must be considered as eminently unsatisfac tory, and as long as explosions are considered unaccountable and accidental, it is quite clear they will continue to recur from time to time with their fatal consequences. No notice was taken at the inquest of the injudicious way in which the feed was introduced. It was carried down by a vertical open- mouthed pipe to within a few inches of the bottom of the boiler, and thus impinged severely on the plates, the conse quence of which wouid be to distress them through severe straining from local contraction, and it was in the neighbour hood of this feed inlet that the primary rent occurred. It would have been well had this been called attention to at the inquest, while it is thought that the fact of these boilers being liable to such treacherous and hidden flaws as the one dis covered in this instance afforded an argument rather for dis carding these boilers as destructive of human life, than for condoning their explosion as unaccountable and accidental. No. 20 explosion, by which one person was killed and six others were injured, occurred at a fireclay works. The boiler was of the ordinary Cornish type, being internally fired and having a single flue tube running through it from end to end. Its length was 23 feet 10 inches, its diameter in the shell 6 feet, and in the furnace tube 3 feet 4 inches, while the thickness of the plates was three-eighths of an inch in the shell, and seven-sixteenths in the tube; and the load on the safety valve 401b. per square inch. The boiler gave way in the external shell, which was com pletely opened out, torn away from the flue tube, and rent into two pieces, one of the fragments being thrown on to a bank at a height of about 20 feet above the level of the original seat of the boiler, and at a distance of about 30 feet. On the occur rence of the explosion, the fireman, who had just gone into the stokehole, was killed on the spot, some adjoining buildings to the right of the boiler were reduced to a heap of ruins, and six persons who were in various parts of the works injured. Added to this, the engine house was thrown down, the engine buried, and a good deal of other property destroyed. An examination of the fragments of the boiler left no doubt as to the cause of the explosion. The plates at the right-hand side of the boiler, and at the back end above the level of the external side flue, were reduced to a thickness of about one- sixteenth of an inch, and at this part the primary rent occurred, which assumed a horizontal direction, and ran through the solid metal for a length of 7 feet. The thinning of the plates was caused by external corrosion, and although there was some difficulty, after the explosion, in arriving precisely at what the arrangements had been, yet it appeared that the boiler had been injudiciously set, and the corroded plates inaccessible to examination. It is thought that this part of the boiler had been concealed by flags, which is a most undesirable mode of covering. Competent inspection could not have failed to detect the wasted condition of the plates in time to have prevented the explosion. No. 21 explosion occurred to a boiler closely adjoining a public street, and although no one was either killed or injured, yet it shows the jeopardy in which the lives of persons living near to improperly constructed and equipped boilers are placed, and the absolute necessity of competent periodical inspection for public safety. The explosion took place at half-past eight o’clock on the evening of Monday, June 22nd, at a mill let out in tenements to cotton spinners, machine makers, and others, who were supplied with power by the owner. The boiler was of the ordinary Lancashire mill type, being internally-fired, and having a couple of furnace tubes running right through it from one end to the other. Its length was 27 feet, its diameter in the shell 7 feet 6 inches, and in the furnace tubes 3 feet, the thickness of the plates being seven sixteenths of an inch in the shell, and three-eighths in the tubes, while the safety-valve, which had a diameter 1 of only 2Jth inches, was loaded to a pressure of 701b. per square inch. The boiler gave way in the left hand furnace tube, which was the only portion of it that failed, the tube collapsing from one end to the other, with the exception of a few feet over the furnace, and crumpling up as if made of cardboard, the crown coming down vertically and rending in six places. The boiler was scarcely moved from its seat, being only slightly canted over a little to one side, but in consequence of the rents, the steam and hot water rushed out at both ends of the tube, blowing up the brickwork at the back, and effecting a breach in the base of the chimney, while at the front end of the boiler, the fire bridge, fire door, and grate bars were shot out at the furnace mouth like grape shot from a cannon, and, flying across the road, completely demolished a small tobacco pipe manufactory at the opposite side, as well as bringing down the corner of a dwelling-house on its right, and damaging the doors and windows of another factory on its left, while in addition a great quantity of glass was broken in the windows all round. Fortunately the explosion occurred after working-hours, other wise the workpeople in the tobacco pipe factory must have been involved in the ruin of the premises. With regard to the cause of the explosion:—The boiler was totally unfit for the pressure at which it was worked, since the furnace tube was not strengthened, as it should have been, with any encircling rings or other suitable appliances, so that a pressure of 701b. for the flue tube of 3 feet diameter was highly dangerous. The equipment of the boiler was very second rate and defective. Every boiler, more especially a single one, should have a duplicate safety-valve, whereas this had but one of the small size of 2| inches in diameter, and of such rough construction that the eye through which the lever