LUCKY ESCAPE

Hokitika Guardian, 18 January 1933, Page 7

LUCKY ESCAPE

FIND OF DYNAMITE.

SAVES GRAVE DISASTER,

LONDON, January 8

A workman’s accidental use of a shovel instead of a pickaxe has saved the town of Addlestone, Surrey, from partial destruction. A house in the centre of the main street, once occupied by Professor AV. F. Reid, the discoverer of smokeless powder, was being demolished when die workman came upon a packet containing dynamite, gelignite aii3 /tiler explosives sufficient to blow up louses a mile distant. Within a radius of 50 yards of the house are a cinema, a AVesleyan church, the Borough Council Health Centre, six private houses and a row of shops. Their occupants all owe their escapo to Mr AVilliam Edes, of Byfleet, the builder’s labourer who unearthed the packet. “I was shovelling rubble in the basement,” Mr Edes said, “when my shovel caught up a small? packet wrapped in newspaper lying in. a corner. Normally I should have been using a pick, and as the packet was hidden I should almost certainly have hit it. Inside the wrapping were found eight sticks of dynamite and one of gelignite, all labelled and numbered, a bottle containing some colourless fluid, and two packets of black gunpowder.” The Superintendent of Police stated that he had taken measures to render the chfemicaW harmless. “When the professor died,” he said, “packets of gelignite, powerful enough to blow up the whole district for 10 miles around, were handed over to me.”