WORKER'S TERRIBLE END

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22830, 14 March 1936, Page 17

WORKER'S TERRIBLE END

FALL INTO BOILING ACID Tragedy caused by a woman's fall into a vat of boiling acid sent a thrill of horror through n tinplatc works at Pontardawe, Swansea Valley, Wales, recently. The victim was Miss Hannah Williams, of Trebanos, near Pontardawe.

For more than 20 years she had been engaged at Messrs W. Gilbertson's works, where the accident occurred, Iter sister. Miss Lizzie Williams, being also employed there. The two were busy together in n process during which a "cradle" is filled with sheets of thin steel, these being lifted up by a crane, and dipped into the acid to be " pickled." Suddenly Miss Hannah Williams was seen by her sister and other workers to slip from a platform into the vat. She was submerged before a hand could be raised to help her. David Michael Thomas, foreman of the picldiug-bath room, was so overcome that he was taken home suffering from shock and put under medical care.

Another man, still shaking from the experience, as he described it, said: " The woman seemed to slip, and in a trice was in the acid. She was dead in a matter of seconds. Had the, acid been stronger there would have been no body for us to recover.

" I can't, understand what made her slip, as she had been doing this work for years and ,was particularly surefooted." A crane and other implements were used to recover the remains of Miss Williams when the fire below the vat had been put out. The accident was the first of its kind to occur in the w'orks.