The balustrade had previously been held! by an fron bar jetting up to the roof and several wooden struts had recently: been added. so thee it could not be pressed out near the top the stairs. Tt could you be fore~ Seen that the iron bar would act Sort of fulcrum when the halust at the bottom of the. stairs—the balustrade is one piece vf wood aust 25 feet longe—was foreed out, yet this was what occurred. 'The twp pillar of the. balustrade was' cor from its holding and the long stib of wood being forced outwards at the Vettom, swung, inwards on to the jammed women at the top, pivoting the iron bar. Numbers were crushed by its swing, but this was not s0 serious as the tap left at the top for about the for ten steps from which there was a sheer dre: of about 15 feet. The balustrade icing. swung across the stairway caused a check in the rush and others throwing themselves against the dammed up croyd, found themselves pushed off this unprotected drop, At the top of the stairs, on the right going up, is the reeling voont of the filature, and this appears (9 have been untouched by the pa the workers sticking tothe! machines. When the firemen its reached the upper floor some of the workers at the far end of the floor ere still sitting quietly at work The Soi Lun Silk Filature is 2 lon: two-storeyed building, the top star being two rooms only—the reeling room! and the washing room, Th panic occurred among the women Working at rows of basins washing cocoons at the western end of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.