250 Report of the Select Committee 
gave it up; he said he would boil no more, and the men in at- 
tendance, who belonged to the engineer, went to fetch the en- 
gineer. He and his men came down, and persuaded Constant 
to,have the fire lit again. He consented, after a great deal of 
difficulty, and went to another pan in an adjoining building, and 
there he was at work when. the accident happened. They were 
urging the steam, and actually had put an immense weight upon 
the lever of the valve, so as to render it totally useless. This 
was ascertained by a Frenchman, who saw it, and who stated to 
the man that he was doing mischief and doing wrong. He was 
told to hold his tongue and mind his own business ; that he 
knew his business, and they knew theirs; the consequence was, 
that immediately afterwards it blew up. After this accident, I 
went every day to the ruins, for the purpose of satisfying myself 
of what had been the cause of the bursting ; and I saw the ex- 
cavation until the parts of the boiler, which was of cast iron, 
were found; and then finding parts of this boiler in different 
places, the seat of the boiler being where it had been placed, but 
the rest scattered about in different directions, | measured the 
thickness of different parts of it. The bottom of it was two - 
inches and a half thick, the upright sides of the bottom one inch 
and a half thick; the lower part of the dome was seven-six- 
teenths thick, and one of the parts at which it must have burst, 
and where the boiler was completely defective in the casting, 
was less than the eighth of an inch thick; it was not thicker 
than a crown-piece: the wonder is that it stood at all, not that 
it burst. 1 am sure I never would have gone near it, if they had 
not assured me it was three inches thick in every part of it, and 
I was over it repeatedly. 1 apprehend the cause of that bad 
work was this; that the man was his own founder, as well as an 
engineer, and having made the thing in his own house, it was 
his interest to patch it up in the best way he could, and J under- 
stand it was actually patghed. 
Were you enabled to form any judgement to what pressure 
the men had raised their steam ?—I could not form any judge- 
ment of that, but I understand that it had been seen at forty- 
eight. 
What pressure was the boiler originally intended to sustain ? 
It wasnot intended to be worked above forty-five, and was ordered 
to be made to sustain the pressure of a hundred pounds to an 
inch ; the whole house was blown to pieces, which, | apprehend, 
arose from the fragments of the boiler striking the story posts, 
by which the support being taken away, the walls fell inwards. 
Do you know whether there was a second safety-valve to this 
boiler ?—I do not think there was. 
Mr. 
