DEAD MAN’S DYNAMITE

Taranaki Daily News, 20 January 1933, Page 8

DEAD MAN’S DYNAMITE

TOWN ESCAPES DISASTER.

WORKMAN’S TIMELY FIND.

A workman’s accidental use of a shovel instead of a pickaxe has saved the town of Addlestone, Surrey, from partial ■ destruction. . ' A house in the centre of the mam street, once occupied by Professor W. F.. Reid, the discoverer of smokeless powder, was being demolished when the workman came upon a packet containing dynamite, gelignite and other explosives sufficient to blow up houses a mile distant. Within a radius of 50 yards of the house are a cinema, a Wesleyan church, the Borough Health Centre, six private houses and a row of shops. Their occupants all owe their escape to Mr. William Edes, of Byfleet, the builder’s labourer who unearthed the packet. “I was shovelling rubble in the basement,” Mr. Edes said, “when my shovel caught up a small packet wrapped m newspaper lying in a corner. Normally I should have been using a pick, and as the packet was hidden I should almost certainly have hit it. Inside the wrapping were found eight sticks of dynamite and one of gelignite, all labelled and numbered, a bottle containing some colourless fluid, and two packets of black gunpowder.” The Superintendent of Police stated that he had taken measures to render the chemicals harmless. “When the professor died,” he said, “packets of gelignite, powerful enough to blow up the whole district for 10 miles around, were handed over to me.”