Several years after the Buffalo explosion, when those convicted for their part in it were fighting for stay of proceedings, new trial, anything to escape sentence, and were trying by every means in their power to impress upon the public the altogether innocent character of the little incident at the works of their rival, something happened at their own works--the Vacuum in Rochester--which gave the people an appalling sense of the terrors of the new school of supply and demand. Naphtha is one of the by-products of petroleum distillation, and is used by the gas companies in the manufacture of the greased air they furnish under the name of gas. The Vacuum Company were selling their naphtha to the Rochester Gas Company. It was delivered to the gas company through a pipe line. On the afternoon of December 21, 1887, there was an explosion on Platt Street, Rochester, tearing away the pavement, shattering the basement of a building, and filling the air with missiles. In a few seconds another explosion occurred a short distance away, making a hole in the street several feet in diameter, from which came large volumes of smoke and flame. A third and fourth "bust-up" rapidly followed, and then a fifth, in the Clinton Flouring Mill, tearing away a considerable portion of the building, blowing off the roof and upper stories of the Jefferson Mill adjoining, and shattering the Washington Mill. The Jefferson and Clinton and Washington mills were burned to the ground. People were killed by flying débris, burned to death, smashed by falling walls, crippled by jumping from the upper stories of factories and mills on fire. "There is probably no chemical product," says Professor Joy, of Columbia College, "which has occasioned the loss of so many lives and the destruction of so much property as naphtha.... From its highly explosive and inflammable nature it has proved little better in the hands of ignorant people than so much gunpowder." "The counsel for the defence," said District Attorney Quinby, in summing up the case before the jury, "laughed at the idea of Matthews and his associates coming to Buffalo with a little money to compete. I congratulate him that instead of defending for conspiracy he is not here to-day pleading for the defendants' lives. If a person had been killed, and it had been under the advice and instruction of his clients, he would have been differently situated from what he is to-day. How well you men may be thankful that the gases from this still did not flow down and, becoming ignited, explode and kill the fireman! You ought to get down on your knees and thank your God that Providence prevented any such terrible thing as that for you."