In 1857 Darby’s factory at 98 Regent Street, Lambeth Walk, was destroyed. The upper part of the house was used as bedrooms, with the stock below; the whole of the premises and stock were destroyed, the occupants of the bedrooms, who were cut off, being rescued by the aid of ladders. On this occasion the gunpowder appears to have been stored in a magazine away from the house. The report adds that the same premises had suffered in a similar manner on one or two previous occasions, and subsequently, in November, 1873, a disastrous explosion at the same premises resulted in the loss of no fewer than eight lives. In 1858 a serious explosion took place at Madame Cotton’s factory in the Westminster Bridge Road. The above-mentioned accidents do not comprise anything like a complete list, but tend to show the lines on which the manufacture of fireworks was conducted during the period covered. The frequency of such occurrences and the danger entailed to third parties pointed to the necessity of action of some kind. The old Act might have been put into force, but by so doing the industry would be stamped out, an industry which found employment for a large number of workpeople, and besides giving amusement and entertainment to many, provided signal lights and rockets, the demand for which was steadily increasing. There were at this time a considerable number of firework makers in London, particularly in the east and south of the Thames. Much of the work was given out to the workpeople’s families to make up in their own homes. Workmen now living can remember, as children, seeing crackers, squibs, and other small goods being manufactured in bed and living-rooms of tenement houses in crowded districts, with open fires in the grates and several pounds of powder in a corner of the room. The materials were either given out at the factory and a piecework rate paid for making up, or the workers bought their own materials at the local shops, which in these districts kept what was required, and sold them to the factory on completion. It was then a common practice for a maker who had completed a “frame” of quickmatch to take it round to the local bakehouse to be dried and called for in the morning. [Illustration: THE EXPLOSION AT MADAME COTON’S FIREWORK FACTORY, WESTMINSTER ROAD. From “The Illustrated London News,” 1858.] Considered from the point of view of modern practice, the wonder is that there were not more accidents than actually took place.