Fatal Fire at Christchurch

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 112, 29 March 1887, Page 3

Fatal Fire at Christchurch

THREE LIVES LOST. I>EB UNITED PBFSS ASSOCIATION.] Christchurch, March 28. Later accounts of the fatal fire at View Hill show that Mrs Anderson, who was sleeping downstairs with three children, aged two, four, and eight years (two hoys and one girl), found the house on fire at about quarter to 12. She immediately put two children out of the window, and it is supposed left the baby hoy to run upstairs and waken those that were sleeping there — her boys Oscar aged 17, and Kenneth, aged 6. Mr Rudd, sen., of Greendale who was sleeping there for the night, and the boy he with him named Carlyle, and '^Qscar got safely out. Oscar not finding his mother ran into the house again, and got very badly burned about the face and shoulders, and he died on Sunday. The mother in endeavouring to save Kenneth, got suffocated, the flames having got such a hold on the house that the ceiling gave way. She fell on the bed underneath, and was burned to ashes. Kenneth also fell through the ceiling and met with the same fate. The child, which it is presumed tie. mother intended picking up when she returned, was also burned to death. He was sleeping in a cradle close to .his mother. The fire is supposed to have been caused by the north-west wind blowing down the chimney and casting the fire out on to the floor, not by a bush fire as was at first supposed.