Of all the woes which inflict the world, it's when children are hurt, maimed or killed that we are affected most.

The sense of lives unfulfilled, lives which have barely started, is a painful one, either in a natural disaster or when human evil is involved.

Nature wasn't involved in Bingley on the morning of June 9, 130 years ago - only the unremitting laws of physics.

And there was no evil, only the possibility of human error. But 15 people, nine of them children, died and were laid out in a schoolroom turned into a makeshift mortuary.

It was playtime at the National School in Park Road, Bingley, and pupils were enjoying their release from the classroom.

Next door, at the mill of John Town and Son, the bobbin-makers were hard at it. Trade was good, and the world was an exciting place for businessmen like John Town and his son Joseph in the year of 1869.

The Suez Canal would be ready in a few months, opening the Far East markets up as never before. The United States had become truly united, not just by the ending of the Civil War, but by the completion of the transcontinental railway - a golden spike marking the event had been driven just four weeks earlier.

And in South Africa, diamonds had been found lying on the banks of the Vaal river, just waiting to be picked up. Who would do the picking up was yet to be settled - the Boers claimed the land and so did the British.

But war was in the future and it was a comparatively peaceful world. The last great European war had been against Napoleon, nearly 50 years earlier, events which formed the background to Tolstoy's new novel War and Peace.

But it was a sound redolent of war which shattered the calm of Bingley just after 10.30 on that summer morning.

The boiler at John Town's factory, built of low-grade metal, exploded with a thundering roar which filled the town. The blast rolled across the natural sounding-bowl of the Aire Valley. Even the echoes echoed. The earth shook. Buildings tumbled.

The factory - two storeys, and built of the good local stone which even today houses many of Bingley's residents - was reduced in parts to rubble. Twisted beams, machinery, bobbins and furniture littered the scene.

Much of the debris had been spread further afield. A 47lb safety valve from the wrecked boiler, having seemingly failed in its job, was hurled 150 yards on to the forecourt of the new Bingley station.

A circular saw blade flew a quarter of a mile down the valley and into the garden of a Mr Carr.

Another lump of iron, weighing 16lb, landed near the Fleece Inn in Main Street, 200 yards away.

The roof at Johnson and Denby, builders, 40 yards away, was lifted off and shop windows along the main street were smashed by the blast.

But these were just material casualties. Some of the human ones had disappeared under the debris which now covered the school yard.

Mothers rushed to find their children; but nine were dead. The oldest was eight, and the youngest just four. Among them was five-year-old Elizabeth Town, daughter of the factory owner. Her mother Rebecca also died, along with - 24 hours later - Joseph Town himself. He had been injured in the blast.

As desperate hands cleared the rubble, the hall of the boys' school became a makeshift infirmary for the 40 who were injured, more or less seriously.

The girls' school hall became a mortuary through which the bereaved picked their way. And there were remarkable survivals.

William Fisher was pulled from the debris with savage cuts and bad bruises, but insisted on helping in the rescue work. Another employee, Joe Murgatroyd, was feared lost. He had been working near the boiler when it blew.

Rescuers spotted an arm protruding from the debris, under a lump of iron shaft.

He was trapped so tightly rescuers had to scoop the rubble from under him and saw through a hefty wooden beam to release him.

They thought they were recovering Joe Murgatroyd's body, but when released he proved to be suffering only from shock and some less-than-serious cuts and bruises, and recovered.

The rescue work was helped by a large number of policemen on duty at the Petty Sessions in the Court House in Myrtle Place.

And that was not the last involvement by the law. The subsequent inquest returned a verdict of manslaughter against boiler tenter Robert Hodgkinson for not having exercised adequate supervision.

But Hodgkinson was now beyond the law in this life. He had been injured by the boiler he was charged with minding and was dead.

An engineer asked to report on the condition of the boiler found it had been made of inferior metal, and also recommended that industrial machinery should, in the future, be subject to government inspection.

This came about, though slowly.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.