BURNED TO DEATH.

Evening Star, Issue 4238, 26 September 1876, Page 4

BURNED TO DEATH.

A little boy three and a-half years of age | was burnt to death in Sydney on the sth inst. under most distressing circumstances. After he was put to bed in the evening his mother went out to attend a service of sacred song, leaving the house in charge of her mother-in law, an old lady of sixty-five. Her husband was also away from home. The ' Sydney Morning Herald' relates that shortly before eight o'clock, Mrs Harmer went to cover up the child in bed, taking with her a lighted candle. So that she might adjust the clothes on the child with her right hand, she took the candle in her left. While standing by the bedside, and throwing the clothes over the little boy with her right hand, the motion which the sweep of that hand gave to her body brought the candle in the left hand in contact with the valance which was hanging from the top of the bed. This caught fire, and in a trice the bedding was in flames. It is probable that the suddenness with which the flame spread caused the grandmother to lose her presence of mind. She tried, in her excitement, to pull down the burning valance, and probably by so doing unintentionally hastened the progress of the flames. Finding such efforts ineffectual, she ran to the front door and began to scream out ' fire.' A man ran into the house and pulled her out, thinking she was in danger of being burnt to death. On her calling out that the child remained in bed in the house, an attempt was made to reach it, but by this time the bed and all around was in a mass of flame, wlrch continued rapidly to increase in intensity until the whole of the house, which was a small weatherboard cottage -with shingled roof, was completely destroyed. The remains of the child, burnt to a cinder, were ultimately found. So rapid was the spread of the flames that a little English terrier, which was a pet of the household, was unable to effect its escape, and also perished. There is much commiseration in the neighborhood for the condition of the Harmers, who have thus, in one evening, been rendered both childless and homeless. They had had other children, but they are dead."