DISASTROUS FIRE AND LOSS OF LIFE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 177, 2 January 1875, Page 4

DISASTROUS FIRE AND LOSS OF LIFE.

( From the Some Newt.) A terrible fire took place on October 27th, at Over, near Winsford, by which a large cotton mill of Messrs Abraham, Haigh and Son, was burnt almost entirely to the ground, and nine lives were lost. Of the noble building, which at 4 o'clock on Tuesday was in a perfect state, and contained some hundreds of people busily at work, there now remains but a small portion of the outer walls, and the confused heaps of smouldering debris. The splendid machinery with which the factory was fitted is twisted by the great heat into most fantastic shapes. The greatest excitement prevails in the neighbourhood, and hundreds of people are assembled around the wreck. Up to the present time eight bodies have been discovered. Soon after the fire broke out a poor woman flung her child from a window on the sixth storey, and when picked up it was quite dead. Another child of the same woman dropped into a tank, and was saved. The mother then threw herself out, and her head coming violently in contact with the brickwork, her skull was smashed in and the brains scattered on the bystanders congregated near. Another woman was seen hanging by her feet in one of the windows. Her heartrending screams were soon silenced, for the poor creature was literally roasted, and the charred body fell when the window wai burned out. At five o'clock next morning five other bodies were found by two fiiemen in a tower burnt to cinders, and beyond identification. Others are missing, and it is supposed that their remains are in an unexplored part of the ruins. Six of the bodies lie in a room of a neighboring beerhouse, and present a most sickening spectacle; the other two are at a cottage close by. The loss is estimated at £150,000. It is stated that . the building was insured, but for not anything like the full value. The details o f the catastrophe are harrowing in the extreme. Since writing the above »another body, making the ninth, supposed to be that of a missing man, has been found.