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 Assured that the charge had been withdrawn, the proprietors displayed the shell in a hotel parlor.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.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Crime/Disasters