The use of higher pressure steam had stretched the mechanical integrity of steam raising equipment, leading to significant numbers of calamitous explosions, causing many horrific deaths and injuries as well as destruction of anything unfortunate enough to be with the impact range.
One of the worst boiler accidents in USA was the February 1850 blast that devastated the manufacturing headquarters of A.B. Taylor & Co. a firm of hatters on Hague Street in lower Manhattan. More than 60 workers – many of them young boys – and bystanders were killed and 70 more were injured when the building collapsed into its foundation.
In the period 1860 to 1880 there was an average of 44 land boiler explosions per annum in the UK, causing 56 deaths per year on average.
A Boilermakers Story 