A most melancholy accident happened at a gentleman's seat near Greenhithe in Kent, where the game-keeper having put a quantity of gunpowder into the warm oven to dry, very thoughtlessly left it there, and went into the field to work. Just before dinner the under cook-maid, as her custom was, went to light the oven, when the powder instantly took fire, and the blast came full in the unhappy girl's face, set her all in a blaze, and she expired in five minutes a dreadful spectacle to look at.
Her terrible shrieks alarmed the family, and one of the men servants throwing his coat over her to extinguish the flames, brought off the skin of her face and neck, when it was removed, and increased the horror of her appearance.
A like accident happened a few days before at a gentleman's seat near Boulogne in France, where the gardener playing with a gun, and firing it oft' in sport, set fire to a box of gunpowder, and blew up the house with seven persons in it; himself and a maid servant were killed on the spot, but five others, though, wounded, wonderfully escaped with life.
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