DIED FOR CHILDREN
GRANDMOTHER'S VALOUR LONDON, Oct. 27. Mrs. Florence Selby, aged 78, sacrificed her life so that her three greatgrandchildren might be saved when fire broke out at her home in Oswin street, Newington Butts, S.E. The fire started in the ground-floor back room, where Mrs. Selby .was sleeping. The room was ablaze when her daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, who occupies the next room, ran in to her. Mrs. Selby refused to leave. “Don’t bother about me, save the kiddies,” she shouted, as she waved her daughter back. Mrs. Jones ran upstairs and roused her own daughter, Mrs. Pinder. With the help of a lodger, Mr. Smith, she carried Mrs. Finder’s three boys— John, aged seven, Dennis, aged five, and Jimmy, aged two —through a third-floor window on to a flat room. Then they crossed into an adjoining house. Meanwhile, the fire had spread rapidly on the ground floor. Two A.R.P. wardens twice tried to reach Mrs. Selby’s room.
“My mother worshipped the children, and she has died for them,” Mrs. Jones said.
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Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20129, 26 December 1939, Page 11
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174DIED FOR CHILDREN Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20129, 26 December 1939, Page 11
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