An unusual accident on Monday night frightened the whole of
North London. The proprietor of the Welsh Harp, Hendon, either permitted or engaged a diver named Tatham to let off a new torpedo in the great reservoir at Kingsbury, and two such torpedoes were carried thither in "a black bag." Either by some accident, or in a reckless spirit of fun, Tatham exploded one of them on shore, and the effect was felt throughout North Lon- don as far as Enfield. In Hendon itself, Highgate, Hampstead, and Barnet, it was supposed that a powder-mill had exploded, while in the neighbourhood of the Welsh Harp itself hundreds of windows were shattered. When the ground was examined, it was found that the torpedo had made a chasm in the ground eighty feet in circumference and six feet deep. The force of the explosion had in fact been expended vertically, a circumstance which accounts for the otherwise miraculous escape of the great crowd-2,000 persons, it is said—gathered within the grounds of the inn.
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