The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-10-10 00:00:00

0u r yotOon Correspoubtnt.

W. deem it right to state that we do not at all time.
°armlets with our Correspondent. opinloini,.

4,i;lr. as

44.
,e4irted
A
... _ as within a day-or two d ten years, the the
I of the metro were et arty the . of
. a le explosion, echoes of ieh rentjh ir
an awilrfor mes Toes the wded city: I
remember the day well. It was Saturday, the let of
October, 1864, at about twenty minutes to seven in the
morthag, when 104,0001 N. of gunpowder were fired
by accident at the Belvedere magazines atAilainseimel
On that occasion 13 persons perished, and the 'bock wax
felt at a distance of 50 miles. A decade wanes away, and
brings us to the morning of the 2nd of October, 1874.
Again are the sleeping thousands of the capital
-awarened by a roar- resembling the sudden and simul-
taneous discharge of a park of artillery; • column of
lurid flame shoots up into the air ; roofs are blown off,
-. and houses are wrecked for miles around. The ex-
plosion had a startling effect, breaking as it dill the
stillness of the early morning air. Five o'clock is too
soon for many persons .to be Mining in the streets of
.- London, and late enough to see the last of the night
royaterers, who between one and four deem themselves
at liberty to make all kinds of Bacchanalian noises.
But about the time when this calamity took place,
' most of the thoroughfares are silent, the stillness being
broken only by the measured tread of the policeman
upon his beat, or by the occasional rattle of a market
cart towards the neighbourhood of Covent-garden. Thus
it was that when the five tons of gunpowder in
the luckless barge Tilbury exploded, with a report ex-
ceeding that of the heaviest thunder, the portentous
5. und caused the utmost alarm and consternation. Sad
AR was the loss of life, and lamentable AN was the de-
struction of property, it was a matter for great thank-
fulness that no worse consequences followed. During
the silent watches of the night the barge containing
such an awful agent of destruction had been towed
, ~..throngh districts where the banks of the canal were
. lined with the houses of a much greater population
. than that which is found in the vicinity of St. John's
Wood, and had the catastrophe occurred during the
- - progress of its earlier passage, the loss of life must
have been infinitely more disastrous.
The Thames Embankment is gradually becoming
- one, the handsomest Boulevards in Europe. The
latest addition to its public buildings are the offices of
the London School Board, a handsome and com-
• modious structure. During the progress of its erection
the Board has, through the courtesy of the Corporation,
been accommodated at the Guildhall, and it has only
just taken possession of its new home. Sir Charles
‘. Reed, the chairman, then took occasion to make a
statement showing what the Board had done during
the four years of its existence. From this it would
appear that this important body has passed the period
at which it could be in any sense regarded as an
experiment, and has taken its place amongst the
most successful of our institutions. It has be-
come a great landed proprietor, an owner of
vast estates of bricks and mortar, a huge em-
ployer of skilled and educated labour, and the head
of the largest teaching organization in the country.
Sixty-live new schoole have been actually opened,
thirty-five more are in course of construction, and
steps have le-en taken for the acquisition of thirty-
four other sites. The new buildings me designed on
the beet models; they are light, airy, pleasant, and
healthy; they are fitted with all the best appliances
for teaching; and are intended to stand the wear and
tear of several generations. The first sixty schools so
raised have cost £9 13e. 4el. a head for the scholars ac-
commodated. These number 61,987 children ; the
thirty-five in course of erection will hold 26,736 more;
and when the whole 134 schools are in operation there
Will be room for a total of 108,930 scholars. Figures
such as these may help to give some idea of the colossal
work in which the School Roard for London is engaged.
It it sweeping into its educational establishments tens
of thousands of untaught and grossly ignorant
children, and the task of teaching them cleanliness,
order, and regularity, to say nothing of reading,
writing, and ciphering, must indeed be a stupendous
one.

A. regularly AS the autumn comes, the First Com-
missioner of Works orders a distribution, amongst the
working-elasses and poor inhabitants of London, if the
surplus bedding-out plants in Batterses, Hyde, the
Regent's, and Victoria-parks, and in the Royal
Gardens, Hew, and the Pleasure-grounds, Hampton-
court. Applications for these plants are made through
the clergy, school cOmmittees, and public functionaries
of different kinds, and there can be no doubt that such
a distribution is well appreciated by the humbler
classes. It is impossible to follow a more innocent re-
creation than the practice of botany; and it is not im-
probable that in many cases the time devoted to it
might be given to pursuits not quite so harmless in
their character.
A return has been issued by the Local Government
Board showing, amongst other items, the cost of vac-
cination. When this item was first added to the
miscellaneous catalogue of elutiee discharged by the
rates, some thirty years ago, it was covered by an ex-
penditure of less than £12,000 per annum. But in 1872
the amount ran up to £112,000, and last year more
than klOO,OOO was thus expended. There are some
curious statistics in this document. For instance, the
number of persons successfully vaccinated in 1852
was 397,128, the expense to the rates being £15,895.
In round numbers, this is rather less than Is. 4d. for
each successful case. Last year the number of vacci-
nations IVEMI 527,106, at a cost, as I have already
stated, of a little over £lOO,OOO. This makes 3s. 10d.
each, or nearly three times as much as was paid
twenty years ago. However, very few people will be
found to grumble at the price to be paid for the pre-
vention of the mainly which the employment of vacci-
nation has almost eradicated from our midst.
For some time past little has been heard in this
country of any practical steps being taken towards
the realization of the scheme for building a tunnel
under the English Channel. In France, however, the
idea has not been finally abandoned, and the latest
number id the French Scientific Review contains a
paper by M. Bergeron, in which that distinguished
engineer canvasses at length the chances of success.
According to this authority the danger of filtration of
thereto water is purely imaginary; and accepting as
correct the observations made by Sir John Hawkshaw
upon the character of the soil, M. Bergeron entertains
very little doubt that the construction of a tunnel
would be a question of expense only. But this hope-
ful view of the matter is not universally accepted in
French scientific cimles. Many of these, and amongst
the number M. Belgrand, do not believe in the con-
tinuityof the chalk formation, and suggest the existence
44 a large break or gap in the chalk which would prove
fatal to the progress If tunnelling operations. The
cost of construction was, some time ago, estimated at
ten millions sterling, and even were that calculation
not exceeded, an enormous traffic between the two
countries would be necessary before the shareholders
who invested in such an undertaking could expect to
receive anything like a return for their money.
Railway travellers who have often noticed the dense
volumes of smoke emitted by locomotives, blinding the
passengers, and blackening their faces, would be rather
surmised to learn that an Act of Parliament is in
existence making the consumption of smoke on the part
of locomotive engines compulsory. The precise terms of
the Act are that such engines "must be constructed
on the principle of consumption, and so as to consume
their smoke." In country districts the evasion of this
enactment makes no material difference, but in crowded
towns, where the atmosphere is laden with the
vapours of manufactories, and the smoke of thousands
of chimneys, the enforcement of the statute which I
have quoted might well be demanded by considerations
of health and comfort-
A discussion has lately been going on concerning the
enpediency of restoring the craft of the goldsmith and
laphlary to the position of an art. It is contended that
tin hall-marks of the Goldemiths' Company axe easily
counterfeited, and that more energetic measures than
those which now exist should be taken for the supervi-
sion of the trade in gold and silver. I may state that
the Goldsmiths' Guild has enjoyed the right of assay
sinoe the time of Edward 1., and was regularly incor
porated in the reign of Edward 111. But it is now
maintained that the public require a guarantee for
parity of material, and some school of art which shall
restive the dignity of personal ornament. The com-
pany of Goldsmiths is one of the richest of the city
gnilda, and its means are generously applied to public
charities. Its hall is one of the most magnificent which
even the city of London can boast.
Other companies are following the good example set
by the directors of the Brighton Railway in the matter
of keeping the ticket offices open continually during
the day instead of crowding the work of bunting tickets
within five or ten minutes of the departure of a train.
At the stations where this improvement has not yet
been adopted, the thronging and the inconvenience
during the tourist Reason are well-nigh incalculable.
In fact the struggles of unprotected females to obtain
their tickets are often painful to witness, but it is
satisfactory to find that the manifold evils of such a
system are rapidly being recognized, and it may fairly
be hoped that by the time next year's holidays arrive,
the facilities for the sale of tickets now in use on some
of our railway systems will have been adopted by
most, if not by all, of the companies.
The astonishing growth of some of the cities of the
United States has often been made a subject for com-
ment. There is no doubt that the capacity shown
fia adding to their numbers places them in this
respect out of reach of European rivalry. One of the
Canadian journals publishes a table showing the
increase in the population of various cities during the
first decade, and this illustrates a striking tendency ti
crowd towards the business centres where work is

atAlimmellmoiLyi4www
"1e sh.k : Glaotgow,