Martinsburg Gazette And Public Advertiser

It is somewhat singular, that the deleterious effects of an article so generally in use as charcoal, when burned in confined places, should not be better known and guarded against. Repeated are the instances of the loss of life, from this cause, which are noticed in the papers, yet numerous as are the fatal results, it has so far failed in rendering persons more cautious in the use of this convenient material for fire.

Some two weeks since, a vessel from Salem county was oyster-raking in Delaware Bay, and in the evening one of the persons on board, Zebulon Somers, lighted a charcoal fire in the cabin, and laid himself down to sleep; a short time after another of the hands went into the cabin with the same intent, and after lying some time, and feeling the oppressiveness of the air of the room, without knowing the cause, he got up and went on deck. After a short time he returned to the cabin with a light, and found poor Somers a corpse! The deceased was a respectable man, and has left a wife and two children to mourn this unlooked for affliction.