Perils of Civilisation.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXI, Issue 1895, 17 March 1905, Page 2

Perils of Civilisation.

A gas explosion which occurred in London a low weeks ago has set the newspapers of the great metropolis writing' about the perils by which the ordinary citizen is surrounded. The explosion itself was certainly sulliciently alarming. It seems that a man and a boy were engaged in the basement of a shop, when by some moans a plug became displaced, and in a few moments the plumber, who had attempted to stem the escaping gas with his hand, was lying senseless on the door. The lad ran for assistance, and, as is always the case in London, a crowd gathered round the shop directly the police were noticed hurrying to the scene of the occurrence. The man was rescued and carried away, but scarcely had the crowd of inquisitive sightseers dispersed before a terrific explosion took place, shooting a. huge sheet of (lame right across the street and hurling the shop front, cellar lights, paving stones, and all manner of debris on to the very spot which a minute earlier had been occupied by two or three hundred people. The noise of the explosion was like the discharge of heavy ordnance, and its effects were momentarily appalling. Huge lumps of pavement, according to one spectator, were lifted bodily into the air, great plateglass windows shivered and crashed on all sides, and the air was full of flying fragments. A couple of constables who were near the spot had their legs broken, several men and women received severe cuts from stone.- and glass about their heads and fates, and many others received minor injuries. Two barmaids, who were in a hotel nearly fifty yards off, were knocked down, and windows more than live times that distance away were broken. The newspapers comforted the sufferers by telling them that they ought to consider themselves very fortunate, when they remembered all the dangers that beset their daily path, to have escaped so lightly. There were the slippery pavements, they said, the overhead telegraph and telephone wires, the overhanging coping stones on the older buildings, the electric cables, and the old gas mains, any one of which might produce a much more serious catastrophe. London was honey-combed with perils to life and limb, and the people should bo profoundly thankful that they were so seldom reminded of their existence.