Mercury can get you other ways too!
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.pyrotechnics/2005-12/msg00095.html The Rise and Progress of the British Explosives Industry Published under the auspices of the VIIth International Congress of Applied Chemistry, 1909
Eley Brothers, London
By 1828 the demand for these accessories gave promise of opening an almost unlimited field for inventive ingenuity. William Eley, the founder of the present firm was early attracted to this interesting branch, and literally devoted his life and fortune to mechanical inventions. To him is attributed the once-famous wire cartridge, which by delaying the dispersion of the pellets, effected the same purpose in the guns of the period as in now produced by choke-boring.
At the age of forty-seven he fell victim to a disastrous explosion of fulminate of mercury which simultaneously destroyed him, his laboratory, and its contents.
