Mr. Walker awoke at about 4 a.m. by hearing his child crying and shouting. He immediately went into the child's bed-room, but she was too much frightened and too sick to be able to tell her father anything.

Noticing a smell of gas in the room, Mr. Walker went downstairs into the sitting-room, where he struck three or four matches low down in the room without any effect. He struck one higher up, and immediately there was a terrible bang and Mr. Walker felt himself being hurled across the room and thrown into a corner rather forcibly, with his hair singed.

It appears that there was no water in the chandelier and the gas had gradually accumulated, the result being an explosion.

In the course of an interview, Mr. J. Jackson, who was sleeping in the house, told a "Rushden Echo" representative that he suddenly awoke with

A Terrific Noise

in his ears and the house in flames, as it seemed to him. He rushed downstairs and found Mr. Walker in the corner with the curtains on fire behind him. As soon as Mr. Walker was able move, they succeeded in beating out the flames. Most of the windows were broken and some of the glass flew to a distance of 20 yards. A piece of the window blind shot through the window, across a space of about 10 feet, and then through the kitchen window into the house, and dropped on the sofa. So powerful was the explosion that the outer wall of the house was pushed over an inch out of the perpendicular. Half the front door was found in the road; and the middle room door, which opens inward, was blown out into the passage. The stair-rods were all displaced. A wardrobe in one of the bedrooms was jerked out, one half falling across the bed, from which the children had fortunately just been moved, and the other half was hurled to the other side of the room.

Pictures were Broken

and the piano and carpets were covered with ceiling plaster. Great cracks are visible all over the house.

No one was injured but all sustained a nasty fright.

The house and furniture are insured. The damage amounts to about £100.

Naturally so terrific an explosion caused great alarm in the neighbourhood, and many of the houses in Grove-street were shaken and the inhabitants frightened.

Mr. F. J. Simpson, the captain of the Fire Brigade, was called, and he at once went to the scene of the explosion, but the flames had been partially subdued before his arrival.