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. 24, 1863.] five months ago—before the last explosion, and before the last Act of Parliament was passed—there would have been no such difficulty; for, though the then existing Act forbade the loading of caps in the same building where the metal work was made, it gave nobody in authority the right to see whether it was observed, and, as it thereby became a dead letter, the loading of caps was carried on in the midst of hundreds of workpeople with impunity. The last explosion was, in fact, the result of a direct violation of this very law. On that occasion, nine persons were killed and forty or fifty maimed. Public indignation was naturally excited, and a new law was asked for; and eventually Parliament condescended to make one, or rather to patch up an old one to save trouble, and the result is that, though there is every reason to believe that the loading is carried on in precisely the same places as before, the manufacturers are more careful about allowing people to know it. We will, therefore, date our inspection of this part of the manufacture a few months back.

Our guide would then, no doubt, after showing us the various processes in the manufacture of the shell-cap, have conducted us from the top to the bottom of those crazy old tenements, through crowds of girls and women and children; right away down into the cellar again; and, opening a cupboard, would have shown us a large brown-paper parcel containing, perhaps, a dozen or fourteen pounds of white silky needle-like crystals. If of a humorous turn of mind, he would, perhaps, make us nervous by telling us that, by pressing his two thumb-nails together in the midst of that mass of crystals, he could blow up the whole of the manufactory and half the street in which it stood. Supposing he did, he would tell us truly, for the brown-paper parcel contains fulminate of mercury—the all-important ingredient in the detonating powder with which the caps are loaded. Of the terrific explosive force of this fulminate, figures will convey no adequate idea. The best plan to arrive at it would be to put a common percussion-cap on the nipple of an unloaded gun and fire it at a lighted candle some three or four yards away. You will find that, if your aim be accurate, the candle will be blown out. Then consider for a moment. There lay concealed in the drop of matter at the bottom of your percussion-cap, an amount of force sufficient to blow out your candle, and only half that drop was detonating powder, the other half being varnish to keep it in. Of the half that was detonating powder, only one-fourth part was pure fulminate of mercury, and that atom of fulminate was the only explosive agent in the whole compound. You may now form some notion of the mighty force wrapped up in that brown paper parcel before you: it is, as our guide says, fourteen pounds of death and destruction. To release that force the slightest neglect or carelessness either in manufacture or in transit will suffice. Could it be believed, then, that the building, where tons of it are made yearly, stands next door to a national school-room, which is all day long filled with little boys and girls; and that, by one explosion,—which luckily occurred on a Saturday when the children were not at school,—it has already given timely warning of others to follow! Yet so it is; and the new Act of Parliament does not compel the proprietor to remove it.

And now, having examined the raw material, we are taken from the cellar to the very top of the building, into a little attic covered with a light roof, where the first process in the manufacture—“mixing”—is carried on. Our guide, with bitter but unconscious irony tells us that the mixing is done in that room because, in case of an explosion, the light roof would offer least resistance, most of the force of the explosion would go upwards, and there would not be so many killed. Nevertheless, the nineteen poor creatures we saw buried just now lost their lives by an explosion in just such another room—the whole building crashed down and killed them, though there was not more than a pound of fulminate in the place.

To return: the sole occupant of the attic, at the door of which we now stand, is an elderly woman, whose length of service has proved her general carefulness, and, in the mind of her employer, has rendered her a fitting person to hold in her withered hands the lives of more than a hundred human beings. As secluded as an alchemist of old, she, like him, seems wholly absorbed in her work, for, beyond glancing hurriedly and somewhat petulantly at us as we enter, in company with our guide, she bestows no further notice upon us. Upon a table before her lies a clean sheet of brown paper, which she rubs again and again with a clean linen cloth until she is apparently satisfied that not a particle of any foreign substance remains upon it. From a strong iron safe, imbedded in the wall, she then brings out a packet of pure fulminate of mercury; and, familiar as she is with her work—she has been a “mixer” twenty years—her hand trembles nervously as she scatters a few ounces of it upon her sheet of paper. Carefully refolding the packet she replaces it, and, locking the safe door, seems glad to be rid of so dangerous a burden. Going, then, to a closet, she takes from sundry jars certain proportions of nitre, chlorate of potash, sulphur and ground glass, each of which she damps and deposits in little heaps on separate parts of her sheet of paper. All is now ready for the most perilous part of the operation; and in the midst of a painful silence, broken only by her own heavy breathing, she takes up the sheet of paper between the thumb and finger of each hand, and letting the centre droop slightly, holds it at arm’s length, and gently rolls the ingredients backwards and forwards. In her every motion there is danger. If any part of that powder be too dry; if the paper be shaken too roughly; if one end of it fall and drop the powder; if any foreign substance get amongst it, or if it even come into violent contact with the thumb or finger-nail, there is danger of the whole exploding; and, the whole exploding, the operator is blown to atoms and the manufactory laid in ruins. No wonder, then, that the old woman should breathe harder and harder, and tremble more and more as she sways to and fro with her paper, in an agony of carefulness. At length she ceases, and a sense of relief comes over us. Her part of the work is completed, and we find, on inquiry, that she has