New London Texas School Explosion

March 18, 1937

            New London was an oil well community.   The public school there was heated with Natural gas. (At that time natural gas was odorless and colorless.)  There was a gas leak from a pipe in the school boiler room.  Triggered by a spark in the wood shop the whole school exploded. Over 300 children and their teachers where killed. One news reporter’s estimate at the time was 425 children killed.   With the loss of so many children, no one took an actual count of how many died from the explosion. 294 bodies were recovered, some had been blown to pieces. Those that weren’t blown apart were buried in the debris.

Everyone in the community rushed to the rescue. Men started digging through the rubble as the women prepared food and aid for the rescue workers. As the digging went on they found what they were looking for, the bodies of their children. The bodies where taken to the American Legion post where a temporary morgue was set up for identification.   Whole families where lost.  Everyone in the community had lost someone in the explosion.

On July 18, 1961 William Benson confessed to sabotaging the gas lines under the New London school, causing the explosion. He said he done it because he had been reprimanded for smoking and he wanted to run up their gas bill.

           As a direct result of this devastating catastrophe the United States Government passed a law that the chemical “Mercaptan” be put into natural gas to give it an identifying smell.

-          Joseph E. Harszy

    The school exploded when my father was in the the 5th grade.
My grandfather worked in the oil fields and had moved to Gainesville, Tx. just 2 weeks before the explosion.

As soon as my grandparents heard the news, they packed everything they could get in the car and a small
trailer. They put my aunt and my father between them in the front seat and came back to New London that night. They had no home to come back to, but friends looked after the children while my grandfather helped to remove the debris by hand looking for children's bodies and survivors, and my grandmother helped take care of the men doing the work . . . This went on for several days.
  My grandparents didn't leave New London again until 1960 when my grandfather retired.

-     Michael D. Ferguson 

Also See: 

www.tyler.net/tyr7020/nlondon.htm

Last Updated: February 22, 2003