War souvenir kills two young men in a Camden, New Jersey hotel

A friend of the Parson and Smith's Hotel in Camden, New Jersey had recently sent an unexploded Confederate shell from Virginia as a souvenir.  Assured that the charge had been withdrawn, the proprietors displayed the shell in a hotel parlor.  In the evening, two prominent young men of the town, Remington Ackley and Charles Hamell, the son of Camden's mayor, were handling it when it exploded, killing Hamell immediately and fatally wounding Ackley.  The room was demolished and fragments of the shell damaged buildings nearby.  (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
J.Thomas Scharf and Thompson Wescott, History of Philadelphia 1609-1884, in three volumes (Philadelphia, PA: L.H. Everts & Co., 1884), I: 795. 
    Date Certainty
    Exact
    Type
    Crime/Disasters
    How to Cite This Page: "War souvenir kills two young men in a Camden, New Jersey hotel," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/38768.