KILLED BY A SHELL. A Horrible Disaster by which Two People Lose their Lives.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 187, 15 January 1887, Page 8

KILLED BY A SHELL. A Horrible Disaster by which Two People Lose their Lives.

A New York despatch says : Lieutenant William M. Medcalfe, of the United States Army Ordnance Board, and Private Henry King, of his command, were killed at the proving grounds on Sandy Hook yesterday afternoon by the explosion of a 12-inch mortar shell, which they were loading. Lieutenant Medcalfo was to tC3t several new raortara this morning, and with Private King, Corporate Goodknow and Abbott, and Dr. Sinclair, overseer of the proving grounds, was loading shells proparatory to (he morning's work. Each shell was loaded with 27 pounds of powder. About a dozen shells had been loaded, and a shell in the hands of Private King had just been filled with powder. On attempting to screw down the plug closing the hole in the. baae of tho shell through which the powder had been inserted, King found that the plug would not turn. Thia was not an unusual occurrence, and King rapped the plug smartly with a hammer kepb for the purpose. A tremendous report, which deafened those wham the scattering portions of the shell did not injure, instantly ensued It is pupposed that a few grains of tho powder got between the threads of the screw and that the shock oxploded them. As the stunned spectators recovered from the shock they found, all about them a condition of chaos. When tho smoke roPed over huge pieces of the shell had been hurled into the air and were descending in showers hundreds of feet away. Officers and men lay stretched upon the ground, and fragments of human flesh followed the iron raissileß in their flight through the air Private King, the innocent author of the disaster, was rent limb from limb. The trunk of his body was picked up two hundred feet away, and the scattered fragments ot his from were afterward collected in a blanket form all points of the compass. Lieutenant Mcd oalfe was horribly shattered, flia right leg: waB torn off at the knee, and the left was fearfully mangled. Other injuries disfigured his frame. He lived half an hour, tod terri&ly hurt to recognise his grief- crazed mother, whose agony was beyond expression. Death had recently taken away her husband, and a few years ago, by the accidental discharge of a revolver, her other son was killed. Providence strangely interfered to save, as if by miracle, tho lives of the other men bending near that shell. No others were even seriously injured.

Tho home rule that is embodied in no latchkey and haying to carry your wife's breakfast to bed» is not the one.that we a.r,evoting for every unanimously.