Page:Accidents and disasters on land.pdf/14

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suffer any luggage on the outside of the coaches; little can be said to a simple gun-case, though, in this instance, it might have proved serious; but the servants of public carriages are very reprehensible in suffering passengers to smoke on the journey. A lamentable circumstance lately occurred, in the like manner, to a baggage-waggon in Hampshire.

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Dreadful Explosion.

A dreadful explosion took place some time ago, attended with the most melancholy consequences. The 2d battalion of the 8th regiment having been relanded a few days since, their baggage and ammunition were placed on Point Beach, where they remained till this morning, when an old woman emptying a pipe which she had been smoking among the baggage, the sparks fell on a barrel of gunpowder, and an instant explosion took place. The effect was most dreadful. About thirty men, women and children, were literally blown to atoms, and the remains of their bodies, limbs, and heads, are strewed in all directions. One poor fellow was blown over the whole of the buildings in Point street; another against the wall of the Union tavern, as high as the garret window; the thigh of the third was blown as far as Broad-street Point. I have seen numbers of legs, arms, &c., taken from the