BEAD OF EXPLOSIVE
CORDITE FACTORY TRAGEDY. One man was killed and another injured when an explosion occurred at the Royal Naval Cordite Factory at Holton Heath, near Wareham, Dorset, recently. The dead man was J. H. Mitchell, 3S, of Upper Sandy-lane/ Lytchett Minster. Frederick Barnes, of Lytchett Maltravers, received slight abrasions. Mitchell, who leaves a widow and one child, died half an hour after the explosion. The men were cutting a lead pipe, which had been used in one of the processes of the manufacture of nitroglycerine. Capt. Hammond, superintendent of the factory, stated afterwards that there was apparently a bead of nitroglycerine left in the pipe and this exploded. A bead of nitro-glycerine, he explained, is about double the size of a pinhead. The pipe had been thoroughly cleaned out, but apparently a tiny speck of this high explosive had been left in it. The Admiralty stated that the explosion occurred during treatment of lead scrap from the nitro-glycerine plant.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GEST19340904.2.14
Bibliographic details
Greymouth Evening Star, 4 September 1934, Page 2
Word Count
161BEAD OF EXPLOSIVE Greymouth Evening Star, 4 September 1934, Page 2
Using This Item
The Greymouth Evening Star Co Ltd is the copyright owner for the Greymouth Evening Star. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of the Greymouth Evening Star Co Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in