WE often forget just how deadly some jobs throughout Essex history could be.

South Essex had several explosives-making factories in decades and centuries past and although accidents were few and far between, when they did happen, they weren’t pleasant.

On March 28, 1913, one of the worst explosions to ever occur in the patch happened at the Pitsea Cordite Factory - on the site of what is today Wat Tyler Park.

Three men were killed in the blast which happened in a shed where guncotton - a compound more powerful than gunpowder- was being dried.

Such was the force of the blast that the victims’ bodies were wounded almost beyond recognition and windows in houses miles away in Vange, Laindon and Pitsea were shattered. The tremor of the explosion was felt as far away as Danbury and Chelmsford.

Arthur Cross, aged 48, was a married man with five children and lived in Church Hill Pitsea. He was a painter and didn’t normally work in the explosives shed, he just happened to be there that fateful day painting windows. He was crushed to death.

Henry Hanna, aged 28, was married with one child and lived in Southend Terrace, Vange. He was a foreman and stoveman at the factory. His charred body was found missing its legs.

The third casualty was John Bayles, a single 21 year old man of Station Road, Pitsea, who worked as stoveman. His body was torn open and he was thrown 99 yards by the force of the blast, leaving a 20ft hole in the ground.

The factory belonged to the British Explosive Syndicate, Ltd and was based at the edge of Pitsea Fleet, a deep artificial lake about a mile long.

The site was about half-a-mile from Pitsea town and around 200 men and women were employed at the works at the time of the explosion.

The shed building, which had been specially constructed to dry guncotton- sometimes a risky business- was blown out, and the debris was scattered all about the Pitsea marshes.

A fire immediately broke out following the explosion and for nearly an hour, workers and firemen battled to bring the flames under control.

The shed was known as “stove” and it was where cotton soaked in mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids was dried before it was made into cordite, a popular explosive at the time.

The factory’s “stoves” were made of wood and corrugated iron and was heated by hot air. The temperature was strictly regulated and was never allowed to go above 110 degrees.

Two teenagers who were working outside the shed- Frank Harrison, 19, from Pitsea and Thomas Powell, 17, from Thundersley were also injured but lived.

Harrison, who was wheeling the damp guncotton to the stove, had a remarkable escape. His trolly was wrenched from his hands and blown to pieces.

After he came round from the shock, Harrison described the trauma of the incident: “ I saw a blinding flash,” he said, “like lightning and I clapped my hands to my eyes. I felt myself lifted off my feet and found myself lying the ground. I got up and discovered that my trousers had been blown from me.”

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At nearby Pitsea Hall manor house (now Cromwell Manor), the windows were shattered in every room except one which happened to be where Louisa Davey, wife of accountant William Davey, was lying seriously ill. She was only aged 50 and would die within months.

In another room of the house a woman was nursing her four-month-old baby. The blast shook a heavy horseshoe from the mantelpiece, and it passed within inch of the baby’s head- but fortunately both mother and baby were not harmed.

People in the vicinity of the factory who heard the explosion reported how they saw “the whole of the stove shed rise into the air”, enshrouded by a poll of thick yellow- smoke, and then “fall in fragments to the ground”.

The shock of the explosion was felt for a radius of miles and the factory’s other buildings were badly damaged. The ceiling in the works’ office fell in upon number of clerks and the glass in the windows was shattered.

A mess room, in which half an hour later some female workers would have been at dinner, was wrecked. At the time the girls were work making cartridges in sheds some distance away.

Heroic rescuers like Edward Adams, a member of the St John Ambulance, and Dr Thompsom of Laindon ran into the burning shed in a bid to locate Hanna. As soon as they got inside, however, they came across bag of unexploded guncotton and had to rush out again.

In Pitsea the ceilings in row of cottages caved in. Pieces of timber and corrugated iron were hurled from the factory up to a mile away.

A Southend resident, a mile away at the time, had his face badly cut by falling glass.

The shock of the explosion caused alarm and panic even as far as Chelmsford, twenty miles away, where “every house was shaken, and windows rattled”. In most cases people feared something disastrous in their own vicinity had happened.

In Danbury, five miles from Chelmsford, “everything shook alarmingly”. Residents had heard guns firing from the Shoebury military range earlier that day and assumed that a big gun must have burst.

To many people the factory explosion brought flashbacks of the great Essex earthquake of 1884 which caused considerable damage across the county.

At the time the Pitsea Explosives Factory produced nitro-glycerine, guncotton and all sorts of explosives for mining and for war weapons. Because of the nature of the work, employees were searched every morning for metal objects that could cause a spark – matches, coins, watches, and jewellery.

It was feared a spark could ignite volatile fumes and blow up the factory, as had happened in several factories around Europe in recent years. Staff were also searched as they left for the day.

In the aftermath of the blast a report was made to the Secretary of Stare over the incident.

It was compiled by Captain Reginald Aneurin Thomas, the UK’s Inspector of Explosives and an expert in the field.

In the report Captain Thomas determined there was no full proof way of ever knowing why the explosion happened, though some interesting information did come to light. Henry Hanna’s wife told Captain Thomas that her husband had frequently moaned about Bayles’ carelessness at work, saying he would “one day blow up the stove”

Bayles sister also gave evidence and admitted her brother was a clumsy sand careless man by nature.

However, it seemed that when Hanna had been given the chance to have a different assistant, he asked to keep Bayles and never complained about him to the management, just to other workers.

Captain Thomas said in his report: “I consider the most probably cause of the accident was some act on the part of one of the workmen in unloading the stoves. Whether such an act was done by carelessness or pure accident it is impossible to say, but the report does indicate that some carelessness did exist.”

Hanna had been working at the factory as foreman for four years and was considered ‘trustworthy and reliable’. Captain Thomas noted that Bales, although a man of good character, was not suitable for employment in a guncotton stove.

So, in the end the blame was sort of pinned on Bales and it did look as though he had inadvertently caused the explosion.

Following the publication of the report, bosses at the factory brought in stricter systems for drying guncotton in compressed slabs, to reduce dust. They also made other safety improvements.

It seemed the message to ramp up on health and safety got round to nearby factories. In November 1914 Henry Crockett of Station Estate, Pitsea, was sacked and hauled to court for turning up at the Kynoch explosives factory in Coryton smoking a cigarette and under the influence of drink. The matter was deemed so serious he was sent to prison for a month.

As for the cordite factory, after the First World War broke out the business thrived but when peacetime returned it began to struggle and closed in 1929.

In 1937 almost the exact same accident occurred at the Royal Ordnance Factory in Waltham Abbey when a cordite shed exploded. Houses in streets three miles away were shaken. This time workers managed to escape in time.