"On the day of the accident Leroux went to the park alone after lunch, and on his arrival at the ornamental water, found that the ice had been broken all round the shore of the lake by the men employed by the Royal Humane Society, with the object of preventing people from getting on to the ice. At the same time several servants of the Society were doing their best to persuade the more adventurous spirits who had got on to the ice by means of planks, to leave it. At that time there were probably not more than three or four hundred people on the whole expanse of the ornamental water. At least they appeared to be very thinly scattered over it, compared with the crowds of a few days before, when the ice was sound and strong, before the thaw had set in. "Having come to the park to skate, and being perhaps of a somewhat self-willed and adventurous disposition, Leroux put on his skates, and watching his opportunity, got on to the ice, which though quite three inches in thickness, was seamed in every direction with a multiplicity of cracks, through which the water constantly welled up and ran over the surface. It was indeed evident that the solid ice-slab with which the lake had been originally covered was now formed of innumerable small pieces, really independent one of another, but still fitting closely together like the sections of a child's puzzle after they have been put in their places. Leroux himself never doubted that it was the breaking of the ice for the space of three or four feet all round the shores of the lake, which allowed room for the cracks in the unbroken ice gradually to widen until at last the whole sheet broke into separate pieces. As the skaters passed to and fro upon it, the whole surface of the ice-sheet seemed to rise and sink in response to their passage, and every moment the gaps gaped wider.