GEM FROM THE ARCHIVE
Rosemary Collins talks to Martin Sach of the London Canal Museum about a report into a fatal explosion onboard a barge
A report into a fatal accident on Regent’s Canal in 1874
Early on 2 October 1874, as a chain of barges were being pulled under Macclesfield Bridge on Regent’s Canal, one of them, the Tilbury, exploded. The boatmen on the barge – Charles Bexson, William Taylor and Jonathan Holloway – died, and the bridge was destroyed. London Canal Museum holds a copy of the report into the accident by Major Vivian Dering Majendie, Queen Victoria’s chief inspector of explosives. As Martin Sach, chair of the museum, explains, it offers a remarkable insight into dangerous corporate negligence.
Why did you choose this report?
I’m very impressed with this report, because when you’ve read it you can’t fail to be convinced that it’s an accurate portrayal of what happened.
Why was the accident so serious?
The three boatmen were killed, and there were some less serious injuries to others. Because the accident happened in a cutting and the bridge itself was right above the boat when it exploded, the damage was much less than it would otherwise have been, but nonetheless there was damage to buildings in quite a wide range around the site. The explosion apparently could be heard over a wide area around London, and birds were even released from their cages at London Zoo.
When they rebuilt the bridge they reused the columns, but they put them back the other way round – so left faced right, and right faced left. You can still see the groove marks, which were worn away by the canal boats’ towing ropes, on the wrong side of the columns.
Tell us more about the report…
First of all, Major Majendie started by debunking all of the theories that crackpots had put forward. There’d been a lot of suggestions, some of them extremely silly, as to how this accident occurred.
I think he actually did a remarkable job. We tend to think that the past is an area populated by very strange people who had very strange ideas. But in actual fact, in my view as someone who’s worked in health and safety, if you transported a senior inspector from the present-day Health and Safety Executive back to 1874 I don’t think they could have done any better: Major Majendie wrote a very good report that was remarkably clear. He carried out a number of experiments, and did interviews and investigations.
One of the interesting points about this report is that it demonstrates what an extraordinary, to modern eyes, attitude they had to the safety of the crew, and health and safety generally. The Grand Junction Canal Company, who owned the boat, were severely criticised in the report for their lackadaisical approach to safety.
By today’s standards, it’s breathtaking. They had barrels of petrol which they knew leaked, in an enclosed space which was packed with cargo of different sorts, and covered with tarpaulins, so there wasn’t much circulation of air. There was a bulkhead between the cargo area and the cabin, and this bulkhead had an opening in it.
So you had a build-up of inflammable vapour from the petrol, and an opening, and what did you have in the cabin? A fire, because it was October, and about 4am – it wasn’t a warm, sunny day.
If you did a risk assessment on that in the modern way of doing health and safety, you would say that this was a petrol-ball of certain death. The petrol vapour leaked and formed a flammable vapour inside the cargo area, which very easily passed through into the cabin and caught fire. The fire then caused the explosion, because there was also gunpowder on this boat as well as petrol.
What does the report show about the lives of our ancestors?
It highlights a very cavalier
If you did a risk assessment in the modern way, you would say that this was a petrol-ball of certain death