An awful calamity has happened to Sheffield. The great reser-
voir of the local water company, called the Bradfield Reservoir, covers about seventy-six acres, will hold 114,000,000 cubic feet of water, and is protected by a dam about 90 ft. high, 40% thick, and 300 yards long. It appears that this dam was badly built of mud and sand, " flesh without bones," says acompe- tent authority, and the extraordinary wetness of the season gradu- ally dissolved it. A little before midnight on Friday, the 11th inst., a portion of the dam, 110 yards long by 70 feet deep—say the space occupied by twelve London houses as high as an ordinary church—gave way, and with a roar which witnesses describe with a strange uuanimity as " hissing thunder," dashed into the valley and made for Sheffield. The cottages on the route were swept away, persons in the lower streets of Sheffield were drowned in their beds, animals were strangled, and for fourteen miles the country was laid waste. A number of persons variously estimated, but certainly exceeding 250, were drowned, and the dis- tress of the locality exceeds belief. It is calculated that the claims for compensation will exceed 1,500,0001., or three times the capital of the company, and 16,0001. has already been raised to relieve the greatest sufferers. The Home Secretary immediately sent down an engineer, and reports are rife of warnings received by the company, and of too great economy in erecting the dam, which, should they be proved, will go far towards establishing negligence.
