A new danger has made itself manifest in London. A
new gas-main, 3 ft. in diameter, has been laid down between Bailey Street, Tottenham Court Road, and Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, and the last work was, on Monday evening, to be finished in Bailey Street. The new main was supposed to be empty, but gas must in some way have leaked into it from a full main with which it was connected, although the two were divided from each other by a valve. The gas, therefore, was mixed with the atmospheric air, forming a highly explosive compound, and on a workman applying a match to a test-pipe, to see if all was right, the mixture exploded. The explosion did not burst out the whole main, but seven weak places, at each of which it formed a crater, or deep hole, by blowing out earth, piping, and paving-stones, some of which latter actually crashed back through the roofs of neighbouring houses. One workman was blown through 24 feet of the main. One wall was blown out, the foundations of two or three houses were exposed, and nearly 400 houses were more or less injured. Two workmen were killed, and ten or twelve persons seriously injured, of whom one, Emma Bryant, is not expected to recover. Had the mixture been a little stronger, it being supposed that the leakage had not been very great, or had a crowd been stand-
ing about in the neighbourhood, the destruction might have been as great as in a small earthquake. Even as it is, the injury done to the stability of neighbouring houses will not be fully tested for some time.
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