Water gas is made by placing coke in a vertical cylinder and heating the coke to a red heat. Through the red-hot coke, air is forced up from below for ten minutes; then the air is shut off and steam passes from above downwards for four minutes; the gas passes through a scrubber, and then through a ferric oxide purifier to remove SH2. It contains about 50 per cent. of hydrogen and 40 per cent. of carbon monoxide, that is, about five times more carbon monoxide than coal gas.
On November 20, 1889, two men, R. French and H. Fenwick, both intemperate men, occupied a cabin at the Leeds Forge Works; the cabin was 540 c. feet in capacity, and was lighted by two burners, each burning 5·5 c. feet of water gas per hour; the cabin was warmed by a cooking stove, also burning water gas, the products of combustion escaping into the cabin. Both men went into the cabin after breakfast (8.30 A.M.). French was seen often going to and fro, and Fenwick was seen outside at 10.30 A.M. At 11.30 the foreman accompanied French to the cabin, and found Fenwick asleep, as he thought. At 12.30 P.M. French’s son took the men their dinner, which was afterwards found uneaten. At that time French also appeared to be asleep; he was shaken by his son, upon which he nodded to his son to leave. The door of the cabin appears to have been shut, and all through the morning the lights kept burning; no smell was experienced. At 2.30 P.M. both the men were discovered dead. It was subsequently found that the stove was unlighted, and the water gas supply turned on.
What attracted most attention to this case was the strange incident at the post-mortem examination. The autopsies were begun two days after the death, November 22, in a room of 39,000 c. feet capacity. There were present Mr. T. Scattergood (senior), Mr. Arthur Scattergood (junior), Mr. Hargreaves, three local surgeons, Messrs. Brown, Loe and Jessop, and two assistants, Pugh and Spray. Arthur Scattergood first fainted, Mr. Scattergood, senior, also had some peculiar sensations, viz., tingling in the head and slight giddiness; then Mr. Pugh became faint and staggered; and Mr. Loe, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Spray all complained.
These symptoms were not produced, as was at first thought, by some volatile gas or vapour emanating from the bodies of the poisoned men, but, as subsequently discovered, admitted of a very simple explanation; eight burners in the room were turned partly on and not lighted, and each of the eight burners poured water gas into the room.
In 1891 occurred some cases of poisoning[59] by CO which are probably unique. The cases in question happened in January in a family at Darlaston. The first sign of anything unusual having happened to the family most affected was the fact that up to 9 A.M., Sunday morning, January 18, none of the family had been seen about. The house was broken into by the neighbours; and the father, mother, and three children were found in bed apparently asleep, and all efforts to rouse them utterly failed. The medical men summoned arrived about 10 A.M. and found the father and mother in a state of complete unconsciousness, and two of the children, aged 11 and 14 years, suffering from pain and sickness and diarrhœa; the third child had by this time been removed to a neighbouring cottage.
[59] “Notes on cases of poisoning by the inhalation of carbon monoxide,” by Dr. George Reid, Medical Officer of Health, County of Stafford. Public Health, vol. iii. 364.