The meeting-house was burned on the 23d of April, and its destruction was impressed on the recollection of those living in the vicinity by a special circumstance. The fathers of the town had seen fit to utilize the loft over the church as a magazine, and in it was stored the supply of town powder to the very respectable amount of three barrels. Naturally, at the proper moment, this brought the conflagration to a crisis, making, as Parson Smith, the clergyman of the period, has recorded, “a surprising noise when it blew up.” The event has also been celebrated in contemporaneous verse by Paul Torrey, the village Milton: Our powder stock, kept under lock, With flints and bullets were, By dismal blast soon swiftly cast Into the open air. The poet also intimates grave suspicions as to the origin of the fire, and indeed hints at a personal knowledge of the incendiaries, suggesting very radical measures for their destruction and extirpation: O range and search in every arch, And cellar round about; Search low and high, with hue and cry, To find those rebels out. I’m satisfy’d they do reside, Some where within the Town; Therefore no doubt, you’ll find them out, By searching up and down. On trial them we will condemn, The sentence we will give; Them execute without dispute, Not being fit to live.[62] History does not record any satisfactory result as attending the poet’s search, but in the succeeding year he was tuning his lyre to sing the dedication of a new and more commodious edifice, erected in place of that which had been destroyed. But the other disaster which made memorable the year 1751 was far more terrible than the destruction of any building the work of human hands. That year was marked by a veritable slaughter of the innocents. Death stalked through the town. Between May, 1751, and May, 1752, a terrible throat distemper so raged among the children as to amount almost to a pestilence. In October, 1751, alone, thirty died, and in all there perished some one hundred and twenty. Out of a population of only twelve hundred, no less than one hundred and fifty persons died in the town during that twelvemonth.[63] During the succeeding year the disease gradually disappeared, and has since been almost unknown in Weymouth. Rarely, indeed, however, even in times of plague, has the death-rate exceeded that of Weymouth in 1751-2.