SCHOOL EXPLOSION

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 June 1927, Page 10

SCHOOL EXPLOSION

THE CORONER’S COMMENT. LONDON, April 20. “1 feel confident that someone set lire deliberately to that pool of methylated spirit.” This remark was made yesterday by Mi - Ingleby Oddie, the Westminster Coroner, at an inquest on the two schoolboys who were killed in an explosion at the L.C.C. Technical Institute, Vincent Square, Westminster. A drum of methylated spirit evploded in a room where boys were working with blowlamps, and Maynard Muntz Stalworth, aged fifteen, of the officers’ quarters, Wandsworth Prison, and •Tames Playlc, aged fourteen, of Regency Street, Westminster, died in hospital from burns. At the previous hearing it was stated that the explosion was caused by a. boy putting the light of a blowlamp to a pool of methylated spirit on the floor. Two boy apprentices said that they believed the lad who did this was Reginald Hunt, aged fifteen, a gasfitter’s apprentice, of Kneller Road, Twickenham. Hunt denied this. The instructor at the class, Robert George Price, of Stanhope Road, North Finchley, said yesterday that the key of the methylated spirit drum was kept on his desk, and any boy could take it if he were not looking.

Hunt, said Mr Price, was an industrious boy, and keen on his work. He lid not see how Hunt could have got o the drum without being noticed. A police, sergeant said that Price old him: "The boy with the lighted :orch was at the tank, and the other me was on the other bench opposite. know the boys, but I do not know heir names.”

Price was recalled bj' the Coroner, and explained: “I believe I must have said, ‘I assume that was how the accident must have occurred.’ It was just my theory as to how the fire started.” Two other boys told the Coroner that Hunt was working at his bench up to the time of the explosion. Mr Ingleby Oddie said he was impressed by what these boys had told him. “I feel confident that someone set fire deliberately to that pool of methylated spirit,” he added, “but 1 am not prepared to go so far as to say that it was Hunt. If the story of the first two boys is true, and Hunt did stoop down and set fire to this pool of methylated spirit, I should not have said very much against him. One could not say that that was criminal All you could say is that was stupid, mischievous and boylike, and just a boy’s prank. Although I cannot say there was any negligence, it was, in

m y view, an error of judgment for the instructor to leave the key so readily accessible in view of these boys.” Mr Oddie recorded a verdict of accidental death, and added that the spirit drum ought not to be kept in the room.