DANGER WRAPPED IN COTTON WOOL.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 322, 8 October 1908, Page 3

DANGER WRAPPED IN COTTON WOOL.

What a pity it is that cotton wool lends itself so attractively to fancy dress purposes (says a Sydney writer). It is the .most dangerously inflammable stuff, and everyone knows it; yet, representing "snow" and fluffincss as it does so splendidly, people will wear it, thus incurring terrible risks. In England, I believe, its use as wearing apparel (in fancy dress costumes) has been forbiddon, in consequence of a fatal accident at Leeds many years ago, when several school children were burnt at a school fete. A little boy dressed at Father Christmas in Melbourne some" time ago was burnt to death, his "beard" and dress catching fire as lie carried a lighted match through a doorway. An unfortunate accident which occurred the other day in Sydney, the night of the carnival at the Glaciarium, will serve to banish this material from many homes, except for medical purposes. A girl, who was to have taken part in the " Snow-Man " set, had dressed herself early in the evening in the tight "overall" of white wadding, which she and her three companions had agreed to wear "for fun." With this inflammable costumo on, she was in the act of burning cork at an open gas jet, wherewith to blacken her eyes in grotesque fashion in imitation of a snow-man's mask, when the cotton v.-00l caught fire, and in an instant she was in flames. Luckily help was at hand, and the flames were extinguished, but not before the poor girl was considerably burnt, especially about her face, which was a very pretty onq.