1885. J on Accidental Explosions by Non-explosive Liquids. 219 



liquids, and which, though they had been entirely or nearly emptied 

 of their contents, still contained, or retained by absorption within their 

 body, some of the volatile liquid, this having, by evajioration into the 

 air in the emptied receptacle, produced with it a more or less violently 

 explosive mixture. Thus, a loud explosion occurred at the entrance 

 of a lamp-maker's shop in Whitecross Street, which was found to have 

 been caused by a boy throwing a piece of lighted paper into a cask 

 standing under the gateway, which had contained benzoline ; two 

 boys were very seriously injured by the blast of flame which was 

 projected from the barrel. A perfectly analogous accident was soon 

 afterwards reported in the papers as having occurred at Sheffield, 

 with serious injury to the author of the catastroj)he and another boy ; 

 and a very similar case occurred at Exeter during the removal of 

 some empty benzoline barrels, consequent upon a boy applying a 

 lighted match to the hole of one of them. Again, at Spaxton in 

 Somersetshire, a young man applied a light to the hole of a benzoline 

 cask described as nearly empty which was standing in the road, when 

 three young men were blown across the road, one of them being so 

 seriously injured about the head that he died. 



Explosions with similarly disastrous results have also been 

 publicly recorded as having resulted from the application of a light 

 to rum puncheons and whisky casks, even some time after they 

 have been emptied of their contents, the evaporation of the alcohol 

 absorbed by the wood having sufficed to convert the confined air into 

 a violently explosive mixture. 



The readiness or extent to which inflammable vapour is evolved 

 from those j^i'oducts of the distillation of petroleum, or of shale or 

 coal, which are used for illuminating purposes, dififers of course 

 considerably with the character of these liquids. Those which are 

 classed as petroleum spirit (known as gasoline, benzine, benzoline, 

 nai3htha,japanners' spirit, &c.), and in regard to which there exist very 

 special precautionary enactments, are, it need scarcely be said, of far 

 more dangerous character than those classed as burning oils, which 

 include the paraffin oils obtained from shale and the so-called flashing 

 points of which range from 73^ to above 140° Fahrenheit. The 

 rapidity with which the vapours, evolved by the more volatile products 

 on exposure to air, or by their leakage from casks or barrels, diffuse 

 themselves through the air, producing with it more or less violent 

 explosive mixtures, has been a fruitful source of disaster, sometimes 

 of great magnitude. The lecturer had occasion to refer, in his 

 discourse of 1875, to an accident at the Eoyal College of Chemistry 

 of which he was a witness, in 1847, when the lamented Mr. C B. 

 Mansfield was engaged in the conversion of a quantity of benzol into 

 nitrobenzol in a capacious glass vessel, which suddenly cracked, 

 allowing the warm liquid hydrocarbon to escape and flow over a large 

 surface. This occurred in an apartment 38 feet long, about 30 feet 

 wide, and 10 feet high ; there was a gas jet burning at the extremity 

 of the room opposite to that where the heated liquid was spilled, and 



