3-008-511 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene of the boiler explosion at Millfield Ironworks, near Wolverhampton, 1862. Engraving from a photograph by W. H. Dodds, photographer, Railway-street, Wolverhampton. The works were blown to atoms, huge fragments being strewed in all directions. An immense boiler, raised from its bed, was hurled high in air...[and]was driven through the forge in three different directions, tearing down the iron pillars which supported the roof...the brickwork and masonry of the furnaces, with their contents of molten iron and the burning coals from their fires, completed the catastrophe. Men fell bleeding and lifeless, some into boats lying in the adjoining canal, and one at a place twenty yards distant from the boilers; others were buried beneath the molten iron, burning coals, and red-hot brickwork. There were ten furnaces in operation...all these are shattered to atoms. The more distant buildings on the premises bear many traces of the violence with which material was cast at them ; the tall chimney alone appears to have escaped serious injury. Some of the brickwork was thrown 200ft. high. The number of dead as at present ascertained is twenty-seven, but it is feared that among the ruins or in the canal other corpses may yet be found'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.