DEADMAN'S DYNAMITE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 435, 20 January 1933, Page 3

DEADMAN'S DYNAMITE

LEGACY FROM MAN WHO j DISCOVERED SMOKELESS POWDER. A workman's accidental use of a shovel instead of a pickaxe has saved the town of Addlestone, Surrey, from P'artial destruction. A house in the centre of the main street, once occupied by Professor W. F. Reid, the discoverer of smokeless powder, was being demolished when the workman came upon a paclcet containing dynamite, gelignite, and other explosives sufficient to blow up houses a mile distant. Within a radius of 50 yards of the house are einema, a Weslyan church, the Borough Council Health Centre, six private houses, and a row of shops. Their occupants owe their escape to Mr. William Edes, of Byfleet, the builder's labourer who unearthed the packet. "I was shovelling rubble into 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 shonld almost certainly have hit it. Inside the wrapper were found eight sticks of dynamite and one of gelignite, all labelled and numbered, a bottle eontaining some colourless fluid, and two packets of black gunpowder." The Superintendent of iPolice stated that he had taken measures to render the chemicals harmless. "When the professor died," he said, "packets of gelignite, powerful enough to blow up the whole district for ten miles around, were handed over to me."