A COLLIER’S “EVENING AT HOME.”

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 319, 21 June 1875, Page 3

A COLLIER’S “EVENING AT HOME.”

Whatever may be the charms of the colliers’ “evenings at home,” they want “ repose,” to judge by the account given of a visit paid on Saturday night by James Lackland, a collier at Knole Brow, Skelmersdale, to the house of a neighbour named Howard. The four children of Howard were seated round the fire, their parents being absent, when Lackland good-naturedly “looked in” on the little ones, bringing with him a canister containing 31b of gunpowder. Placing some of the powder in his hand, he threw it on the lire, producing an exhilarating but rather alarming blaze, and causing the eldest of the children to ask him “whatever he was doing.” Scarcely had she uttered the words than Lackland threw the whole canister of powder on the fire. The result was more sensational than entertaining. A loud explosion followed. The house was riven and shattered. The panels were blown out of the kitchen door, the pantry adjoining the kitchen was blown partly into the yard, the walls upstairs were displaced, and the fanlight over the front door was blown out. It is, however, only fair to say that, although the younger children and a young man named Rimmer, who was in the house at the time, were seriously injured, no one was actually killed. Moreover, neither the clock nor the crockery in the kitchen, where the explosion occurred, were in the least damaged. Notwithstanding these circumstances, however, Lackland must not be surprised if the next time drops in to Howard’s cottage to spend the evening he should be at first received with a certain amount of awkwardness,

A man who had been married twice to ladies both named Catherine, advised his friends against taking dupli-kates.