Messrs Kershaw & Leese were building one of the largest mills in the country, the India Mills on Heaton Lane, Stockport. It would hold 70,000 spindles and 1,000 looms and John – though still an apprentice – was given the brief of designing the buildings and supervising the erection of the iron-work and the gearing. (The building that John designed was, I believe, replaced at some later point in the century. The India Mills are no longer standing).
A near accident and a fatality at the India Mills must have impressed him deeply and personally with the responsibility and the dangers of his work. In the words of his daughter Mary
While engaged in starting the Mills he had a remarkably narrow escape. Slipping, he fell some twenty feet on to a stone foundation between two pairs of revolving wheels, but fortunately without receiving any injury
She tells another, undated, story
On another occasion, when a heavy iron ball falling from a height of sixty feet and passing close to his face, buried itself in the ground at his feet, he had another narrow escape
But she doesn't tell the story of the fatal accident that happened in July 1847 to one of Wren & Bennett's own workforce at the India Mills. The interior of the engine house was still unfinished – it had no floor and access to the pipes was by planks laid in different directions – when a steam pipe burst at the starting time of the engine.
John Hampson, the engineer, was in the engine house with a 24 year old assistant, George Knight, a "steady sober young man", according to the Manchester Examiner of 27 July 1847. John Hampson may have been about to turn on the steam into the cylinders. George, it was thought, was greasing pistons while standing on a plank about fourteen feet (4.25m) above a feed pipe. The pipe was about twelve inches (30cm) in diameter and connected the boilers and the engine cylinders. There was a hole and flange of about the same diameter in the pipe with a lid screwed down on top. Suddenly, before the steam had been turned into the cylinders, there was a loud explosion and this lid was blown off. The engine house filled with steam.
John Hampson escaped, though burned. The heat in the engine house was so fierce that, although they opened windows and did all they could, it was half an hour before they could get in to look for George Knight. They thought, when they found his body, that he must have fallen or been thrown by the explosion off the planks and that he had died of scalding because they could see "the skin peeled off his body." The doctors later said he had been suffocated by the steam. It was thought that the small valve which let out the cold water had not been opened before the steam was turned on – whose responsibility this was is not clear from the newspaper reports – "as the box valve has before frequently borne a far greater pressure."
"It is expected," reported the Manchester Examiner matter-of-factly, "that it will take four or five days to repair the damage, during which time the mill will have to be stopped."
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