Page:Pyrotechnics the history and art of firework making (1922).djvu/136

 The materials were either given out at the factory and a piecework rate paid for making up, or the workers bought their own materials at the local shops, which in these districts kept what was required, and sold them to the factory on completion. It was then a common practice for a maker who had completed a "frame" of quickmatch to take it round to the local bakehouse to be dried and called for in the morning.

Considered from the point of view of modern practice, the wonder is that there were not more accidents than actually took place.

The Gunpowder Act of 1860 was an attempt to place the manufacture and storage of explosives generally on a more satisfactory footing. It laid down regulations to be "observed with regard to the manufacture of loaded percussion caps, and the manufacture and keeping of ammunition, fireworks, fulminate of mercury, and any other preparation or composition of an explosive nature"; and makes it lawful for Justices of the Peace in Quarter Sessions to license places for the manufacture and storage of such articles, and to grant licenses to persons to sell fireworks.

It also provided for the installation of lightning conductors in explosive magazines.

This Act, although far from perfect, was a step in the right direction; it had the effect of bringing some makers out from the back streets of crowded districts, to construct properly arranged factories, or at any rate, factories planned with some regard to their use.

Four years after the passing of the Act, public attention was sharply drawn to the matter by an explosion on an unprecedented scale at Erith, where several of the gunpowder manufacturers had magazines. Enormous damage was done, and many lives lost, over an area ten miles in radius. Lieutenant-Colonel Boxer, R.A., Superintendent of the Royal