The Penn's Grove record., 1906-05-18
BIG POWDER EXPLOSION
Whole State Shaken When Mag
azines GO Up at Bridgeport.
Lunatics in Almshouse Escape Panic
Stricken--F Fish Are Killed in
Long Island Sound.

Bridgeport, Conn.-Three terrific ex-
plosions which shook houses and shat
tered window panes, sent the people of
this city rushing into the streets just
before sunrise i'll fear of an earth
quake. The streets were filed with
men, women and children in their night
clothing and in all degrees of excite
ment and terror. Women knelt upon
the splintered glass ON the pavements
clasping their babies, praying in the
d~rizZling rain that their lives might be
spared.
The cause of this panic was the
blowing up of four powder magazines
on Success Hill, in the northern section
of this place. These belonged to the
Union Metallic Cartridge Company.
There are ten such magazines grouped
together a quarter of q mile distant
from the nearest inhabited house-the
isolation hospital of the Town Farm.
These are small, frail structures of cor
rugated iron.
First a magazine containing coarse
blasting powder exploded at 4.25 a. M,
sending up a dense column of black
smoke shaped like IN enormous cigar.
Then followed, in rapid succession,
two other explosions, involving three
magazines filled with smokeless pow
der.
A boulder, weighing quarter of a
ton, was blown through the rear door
Of the Isolation Hospital, where An
thony Walsh and his wife were asleep.
They We're thrown out Of bed. Quar-
ter of a mile further on is the aims
House, i'll which are housed $50 per-
sons, including about twenty ~lunatics.
All these fed the building, screaming
that the end of the world had come
The insane patients, unmanageable al
first, were Gained and returned to the
house.
The shocks were felt throughout
Connecticut, especially in the hilly
country, and the idea of an earthquake
was general, the people remembering
the recent slight tremors at East
Hampton.
A most curious freak of the explosion
was the removal of a house six feet
from its foundations. 1t is situated
two miles away from the magazines,
and was occupied by Jacob Leitz and
his family, who were too frightened to
run, but crouched in their rooms until
the house came to a standstill.
The sites of the exploded magazines
are now four deep holes in the ground.
Large trees nearby were blown to
splinters. Powder cans are lodged in
the tops of many tall trees hundreds
of yards distant. A magazine a
hundred yards distant from the nearest
n that exploded was almost demol-
ished, but its store of explosives is in
tact.
No person was injured directly by
the explosion, but the sudden death of
Patrick Doherty, q New York, New
Haven and Hartford signal man at
Milford, is ascribed to it. Aroused
from bed, he raj to his signal tower,
and when he reached the top Of the
steps he fell dead.
The cartridge company will pay all
uninsured losses. such as broken Win
dow panes, and including repairs of
damaged chimneys, according to its
custom. This will cost perhaps $4,000.
Reports from Long Island state that
the shock was felt distinctly, espe-
cially in North Shore towns, shaking
houses as an earthquake does. Many
fish, killed by the conclusion, are be.
ing washed ashore.