140 FATAL EXPLOSION OF NITROGLYCERINE AT COLON. 
pears to be a new material, patented by a German under the name of “ Nobel’s Patent 
Blasting Oil,” and manufactured in the neighbourhood of Hamburg. It appears to be of 
enormous explosive power when confined,—ten times greater, it was said, than that of 
gunpowder,—and it is used chiefly in the slate quarries in Wales, and in mining opera¬ 
tions. It is exploded either by percussion or by heat, and a workman from the quarries 
of Mr. Darbishire, in Wales, described how he had been set to clean a waggon which 
had held some of it, which he did by scraping it with a piece of slate, and inadvertently 
throwing the piece of slate into the waggon when he had finished, the percussion ex¬ 
ploded the remnants of the oil, and the waggon was blown to pieces. The scientific 
evidence of Professor Abel, F.R.S., Chemist to the Laboratory at Woolwich; Professor 
Roscoe, F.R.S., of Manchester; and Colonel Boxer, F.R.S., the Superintendent of the 
Woolwich Laboratory, was taken with regard to this material, and it appeared from it 
that the scientific name of the oil is nitro-glycerine. It is a highly explosive substance, 
the explosion being excessively rapid and unaccompanied by smoke, and it is produced 
by heat. Professor Abel stated that the greater the quantity of oil the lower would be 
the degree of temperature necessary to explode it; and having in experiment exploded 
12 to 20 drops by keeping them for six hours daily at a temperature of 180°, he had 
formed the conclusion that a temperature of 110° to 130° would explode the quantity 
contained in one of the cases. It appeared that the commercial article, being far from 
pure, contained a certain quantity of free acid, which generated a gas and produced de¬ 
composition, which itself increased the heat, and the decomposition again was increased 
with the temperature, and all this tended towards explosion. Moreover, when the com¬ 
pound became saturated with this gas it became increased in bulk, and its pressure 
against the sides of the case became stronger, rendering it more liable to be exploded by 
concussion. To the oil and to the operation of these qualities in it they did not hesitate 
to assign the explosion, and Professor Roscoe stated that one case of this oil exploded 
would have destroyed the ‘ European.’ Colonel Boxer proved that it was practically im¬ 
possible to explode a great quantity of percussion caps at once, for, although the ex¬ 
plosion of one extended to the few immediately surrounding it, it never went further, 
and he produced a box of caps upon which he had let a hundredweight fall from a 
height of 6 ft., and it appeared crushed and out of shape, but the caps were unexploded. 
Moreover, he had put two ounces of gunpowder into the centre of 2000 caps in a cylin¬ 
der and placed the whole in a packing-case and exploded the powder. One-third of 
the caps only were exploded, and the others were untouched. The mode of clearing 
the composition out of caps, when it is necessary to do so, is by shovelling 20,000 at a time 
into a heated oven; there is no explosion, and a minute at least elapses before the com¬ 
position is consumed. The result of all this is, that caps will not explode in a body, 
and are not practically dangerous, and, in consequence, the practice is to issue all caps 
from Woolwich packed in the middle of the package of small ammunition, and no case 
of accidental explosion has ever occurred. On the question of the origin of the ex¬ 
plosion, however, the learned Attorney-General adverted to two tin cases which had 
been found loaded amongst the cargo of the vessel, unknown to the owners, and were 
thrown into the sea as dangerous-looking instruments, and contended that there might 
have been others of a similar kind on their way to Chili, which was then at war with 
Spain, to be used as torpedoes or infernal machines, and that one of these had produced 
the explosion. 
With regard to the liability of Messrs. Guion, the defendants, who were acting as for¬ 
warding agents only, and were called on, for a profit of some £5, to undertake a risk, 
and pay to the plaintiffs and the underwriters a liability of at least £130,000, he con¬ 
tended that there was clearly no negligence in loading that which they had no means 
of knowing to be dangerous, nor was there in this case an implied warranty, as in the 
case of Brass v. Maitland, 6 G. and B., that the goods w'ere not dangerous, inasmuch as 
here the defendants, on being asked, proclaimed their complete ignorance of the cha¬ 
racter of the goods, but supplied the plaintiffs with all the information they themselves 
possessed with regard to them. 
His Lordship eventually left to the jury to say whether oil was the cause of the ex¬ 
plosion ; whether there was any negligence in the defendants; whether the plaintiffs 
had any knowledge or means of knowledge of the nature of the oil; whether the de¬ 
fendants communicated to the plaintiffs its quality; and, on a minor point arising on 
the first count with regard to a condition in the bill of lading, whether the cases of oil 
were marked “liquids.” 
