Yesterday morning an alarming explosion, which gave rise to wild rumours, took place at the Newton-road mixed school, Rushden. Mr. Arnott, the teacher of the fourth standard, was conducting the experiment of producing oxygen by heating a manganese and potassium compound in a thin glass test-tube of the usual pattern. He held the tube in his hand while a boy named Willie Whitworth held a lighted spirit-lamp under it. Suddenly there was a terrific explosion and the test tube was blown into fragments. Mr. Arnott sustained a slight cut on the hand and the boy Whitworth and a girl named Connie Bennett had their faces lacerated by the flying fragments of glass.
The explosion gave rise to great alarm among the children, some of whom climbed out of the window before order was restored. The class was then dismissed, and the injuries of the two scholars mentioned were attended to. First aid was rendered, and Dr. Owen, who was called in, was able to say that no serious harm had been done to the two children, who were then taken home.
The accident took place just before the dinner-hour, and the majority of the scholars took home exaggerated accounts of what had happened. According to some of the youthful narrators, one of the teachers was nearly dead, others had fainted, the floor was covered with blood, and one or two children had their eyes hanging out. Accounts of the damage done to the school premises were also narrated with great wealth of detail. Desks had been blown out of place by the explosion, a partition had been smashed, and part of the school was on fire. Fortunately these accounts proved to be the outcome of juvenile imagination, and the two children who were slightly hurt will be about again in a day or two.
Mr. Arnott had, we understand, made the same experiment at least fifty times without a mishap of any kind.
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