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AD 1835 HORROR IN HOLBECK...

The Annals and history of Leeds described it as "one of the most dreadful accidents that ever happened in Leeds"
The events of 28th October 1835 would, in every sense, shake the city of Leeds to its foundations.
The run-up to Guy Fawkes Night on the 5th of November would have been a busy time in Holbeck for fire-maker
William Wood and his staff.
On the evening of the 28th October, at least one employee was working late at Wood's cottage, Susannah Dockray,
one of the several local girls who were paid a penny an hour by Wood to make "squibs" and other fireworks.
Susannah worked by candlelight in an upstairs room in the Wood's family house, on this night she had been twisting
paper to make firecrackers. At the end of her shift, she went to snuff out her candle, the guttering candle wick
loosed of a spark, perhaps Susannah did not know, or had forgotten, that the room was crammed with gun powder.
The law forbade manufacturers from storing more than 50 pounds of gunpowder in one place, Wood-perhaps
anticipating a rush come the Guy Fawkes festivities -had stockpiled more than 130 pounds!!

Across the road from the Wood's cottage, weaver, Mr Walker, bent over his loom upstairs work room, looked up to
see sudden lights in the Wood's window, squibs, he saw were shooting to and fro, prudently, he took cover.
Meanwhile Wood's wife Hannah was chatting in the family parlour with her daughter, also Hannah, and neighbour
Mary Stephenson, Mary nursed her baby son,Joseph, as they talked.
A hissing, cracklings sound from upstairs was the first sign the ladies had that something was amiss.
Alarm soon turned to horror, footsteps clattered on the stairs and into,the room burst young Susannah Dockray,
screaming in terror and engulfed in flame, still ablaze she stumbled out of the house, followed by young Miss Wood
and Mary Stephenson, Mrs wood had also leapt to her feet , but she had no intention of fleeing, her plan was bolder,
she would grab the lit explosives and fling them out the window before they could destroy her family home and
with it, her family's livelihood.
Despite Mary's cries of warning she made for the stairs yelling for water, she didn't make it, she had barely reached
the threshold of the room in which the explosives were housed before a barrel and a half of gunpowder exploded!!

The blast was heard as far afield as Armley, Kirkstall, Headingley and Chapletown.
At St Pauls church, more than a mile away, in the centre of the city, congregants gathered for the evening service
quailed in gear, believing, fro. The noise and juddering of the masonry,that their own church was giving way.
The shockwave smashed windows and shattered equipment in mills and factories throughout Holbeck.
The towering black chimney of Marshall's mill was seen to shake perceptibly.
Three houses were completely ruined by the blast, the Wood's cottage was levelled to the ground and every article
of furniture consumed by fire or crushed by timbers, Mrs Wood , her daughter and Mary Stephenson were all killed,
as was baby Joseph Stephenson.
Another neighbour, weaver's wife Mrs Walker, was also killed, (the three others in the same house, including a three
year old girl, escaped miraculously).
One Mr Stead, more than seventy years old and bed-bound, sustained horrible burns and died soon afterwards.
An inquiry was hastily convened, the bodies of the dead were laid out for inspection, the report made distressing
reading.
"All the three women were dreadfully crushed, particularly about the heads,'It was noted . "Mary Stephenson's baby's
skull was not merely flattened and broken into pieces, but it's head had been severed from its body,"
Surgeon Robert Craven added grimly, "The two Stephenson's were much mangled"
The city of Leeds was left in shock, perhaps some thought fearfully back to the appearance of "Halley's Comet" a
dark potent wherever it was seen, over the city only a fortnight before, and they would perhaps think of the
explosion again when, a month later, the city was visited by the "Aurora Borealis", and strange and onimous fire again
lit up the Yorkshire Sky. B-itterly cold, on November the fifth..
O-n Dirework's night, we enjoy ourselves , With,
N-aughty 'Guy Fawkes' up in flames, We can,
F-eel the heat of the bonfire on our faces, then
I-n white sparks , I write my name in the dark..
And,
R-emember to out the dead sparkler in the
water bucket for safety. Whilst,
E-veryone is wrapped up, in gloves and scarves
against the night chill.

N-ot wanting the fun to end.
I-n awe watching the fireworks up high,
G-ot to be careful, don't want to get lost.
H-ot chocolate and toffee apples, delicious
treats, Then,
T-ime to go,home, until next year we'll meet...

Bonfire Night
2-6-5-6-9-9-5=6. 5-9-7-8-2=4
10=1

Good evening Hope, there is nowt so queer or potentially tragic as events in local history and this is a prime example.

During a search of the House of Lords, part of the British House of Parliament in the London Borough of Westminster at about midnight on 4 November 1605, following an anonymous warning letter, Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder, that is the equivalent of 2204 pounds (1,000 Kgs) of explosive, certainly enough to reduce the House of Lords to rubble. However, 150 pounds in a smaller space would have demolished considerable property.

Plus few lessons appear to have been learned in the aftermath of such a cataclysmic event in Leeds, for this is a chronologically much later news item that appeared in The Yorkshire Evening News, Yorkshire Evening Post and Pudsey Times in the June of 1957.

'An explosion occurred in one hut at the Ferncliffe works of Guy's Fireworks in Calverley woods on June 19 1957. Three people died and four others were seriously injured. An inquest was told that the explosion occurred when a worker had been drilling into rockets and a spark from a steel bit ignited gunpowder stored in the same hut. The factory consisted of 16 huts in the woods which were formerly an Army and European Volunteer workers camp. The factory opened in 1953 and employed up to 80 people during peak production periods, it is to be closed permanently on December 31 1957.

Anway you mention Halleys Comet as being a potential portent of doom relating to the explosion back in 1835, so I thought perhaps a little background and capture of related points of interest might not go amiss.

When 1P/Halley appeared in 1835, streams of vapour were seen emerging from the ‘body’ of the comet. Prompting German mathematician and astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel to conclude that theoretically the jet forces generated by evaporating comet material could both significantly and unpredictably alter a comet’s orbit based on Newton’s third law, which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It was indeed Bessel that helped refine the orbital calculations for Halley’s Comet.

On November 30, 1835, exactly two weeks after the comet’s perihelion (its closest approach to the Sun), American writer Mark Twain was born. Many years later, Twain wrote in his autobiography:

I came in with Halley’s comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’ With perfectly dramatic literary timing, Twain died on April 12, 1910, the exact day after 1P/Halley’s perihelion on its return in that year. We might be tempted to conclude that he was waiting steadfastly for this occurrence before giving up the ghost, in which case it is fortunate he didn’t make a false start on his journey into the afterlife given that the Great Daylight Comet of 1910 appeared about four months earlier. As the name given to this premature comet implies, it was visible in broad daylight even to the naked eye, outshining the planet Venus in what may have been the brightest cometary passage to occur in the 20th century. Halley's Comet made its closest approach to Earth in 837 AD, coming within 3.2 million miles. Roughly ten times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, so close that its tail would have stretched across around a third (33.34%) of the night sky. The comet made the ancient times international news, appearing in records from Japan, China, through the Middle East, and onward to northern Europe.

However, Halleys most influential appearance was probably in 1066. Although not quite as close as the 837AD version , it was still an astounding sight, four times bigger than Venus and only about four times less bright than the Moon. English astrologers interpreted its arrival as an omen for the upcoming battle between the English and invading Normans, not a good one for the shortly to die King Harold II.

It obviously appealed to William the Conqueror, he's said to have called it, quite correctly in his case, ‘a wonderful sign from heaven’ as he witnessed it overhead off the French coast taking it as a phenomenon totally symbolic of the destined success of his invasion.