Boy’s Death During Gunpowder Experiment
(Special) AUCKLAND, This Da* • While experimenting with gunpowder a 14-year-old boy was fatally injured. This was the verdict of the coroner (Mr. A. Addison) yesterday at the inquest into the death of Thomas Bruce Orr, son of Mr. G. Orr, of 52 Maungakiekie Avenue. A classmate of deceased, Michael Rolling Andrews, aged 13, described how they mixed potassium nitrate, potassium chlorate, sulphur and charcoal.
When the powder had been mixed they filled a cartridge case. Witness flattened the open end of the cartridge and deceased then hammered the detonator end to bend the flattened end over.
Suddenly there was an explosion and deceased was wounded in the neck.
Constable W. A. Duncan said all the cartridge cases produced in court had been previously discharged and appeared to be the type used by the American armed forces. Inquiries had failed to trace how they came to be in deceased’s possession.
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Northern Advocate, 20 December 1945, Page 8
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154Boy’s Death During Gunpowder Experiment Northern Advocate, 20 December 1945, Page 8
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