BONFIRE night has always been a night of great excitement but also one of risk as a terrifying story from a century ago in The Argus archives goes to show.

A young boy, Charles Henry Green, dies from burns he suffered in a home-made fireworks accident which our reporter described as a “shocking affair”.

The incident happened in Montgomery Street, Hove, as the youngster was making fireworks at the back of the premises. A terrible explosion rocked the neighbourhood and the injured boy staggered indoors calling for his mother.

He then collapsed into the coal cellar under a staircase and died on the spot.

A police sergeant was called and examined the boy’s body which had been moved to the back room sofa.

Police reported a terrible litany of injuries included a left hand that had been blown off, a two-inch wound in his chest and a three inch wound in his left thigh. Described in graphic detail by our reporter, his wounds also included his left knee cap being blown off and a wound above his right knee.

A doctor was also called from nearby Portland Road but “the poor fellow was beyond human aid”.

The carnage of fireworks night was also being played across the fields of France and Belgium.

A young rifleman, Herbert Ellis, returned from the front line to recover with his parents in Carlton Road, Eastbourne, and said what he had seen was too horrible to describe.

He told our reporters that his first three days were so “nerve-wracking” his senses were numbed with the terrible bloodshed left him “callous and unfeeling”.

Fifteen men had already been killed and a further 50 wounded including the eighteen-year-old Mr Ellis who was taken home after suffering a shrapnel wound to the shoulder.