SERIOUS GAS EXPLOSION IN GLASGOW.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VIII, Issue 1279, 24 March 1881, Page 2

SERIOUS GAS EXPLOSION IN GLASGOW.

At an early hour on New Year's morning a terrible gas explosion occurred in Glasgow, by which five persons were killed, ten people injured, and two houses completely destroyed. The explosion occurred while a number of families were celebrating the event of the new year. A largo quantity of gas, which is supposed to have come from a broken main pipe, accumulated underneath the flooring of the ground flat of a house in a comparatively new district in the north-west quarter of Glasgow. William M'Culloch, an occupant of one of the houses, was so alarmed by the strong smell of gas that he got the assistance: of two police constables and a neighbour named Hugh Reid, a gasfitter, to see where the escape was. While they were examining near the kitchen, the gas exploded in the parlor, and without a moment's warning the window's were blown out, and the partitions of that and the adjoining houses, along with the ceilings and floors of the flat above, were torn down and destroyed. The furniture of the houses was smashed into matchwood, and the inmates thrown down and buried in the debris, while the windows of several tenements on the opposite side of the street were broken. Two explosions of a lighter nature followed. The houses are so shaken and torn that they have had to be propped up, and in all between 20 and 24 families have been rendered houseless, and no fewer than eight have lost nearly all fcheir furniture besides.