THE LATE FIRE AT TIMARU.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 587, 6 May 1876, Page 3

THE LATE FIRE AT TIMARU.

History of the Woman Burnt.

( Weekly Mercury ) The history of the woman, Nellie Duncan, who was recently burned to death at Timaru was a somewhat singular one. She was the daughter of a respectable hotel-keeper at Scarborough, and was a very pretty girl. She, however, went wrong at an early age, and for some time led a fast life in Plymouth. Here she met a man named Swale, and the two emigrated to Canterbury, as man an 1 wife. They took passage by the ship Ivanhno in 1861. and on the way out Mrs Swale behaved very respectably. Fever broke out on board, thirty-six deaths occurred and many of the passengers were ill. Mrs Swale was exemplary in her attendance o ' the sick and dyirg, proving a perfect ministering angel. Her conduct was most highly spoken of, and was the more appreciated, as the captain and surgeon wore inattentive and dissolute, the former dying of delirium tremens a few days after arrival in Lyttelton. Swale and Nellie Duncan quarrelled soon after coming to Christchurch, and parted company, she again taking to fast life. Swale went into business as a grocer, in partnership with another man, whom he subsequently quarrelled with and murdered. Singularly enough the manner of the murder was by fire. He set fire to the house in which his partner was asleep, and the unfortunate man was burned to death, For this crime Swale was hanged. Since that his ei decant wife has gone from bad to worse. She has proved the ruin of many men. One case with which her name was connected was that of a gentleman well known at Christchurch. He was a married man, but became ensnared by this woman, took to drink, and finally embezzled certain moneys to enable them both to bolt to Australia. He however was arrested in Dunedin. Nellie Duncan did go to Australia, but returned to Canterbury to meet her fate by being burned to death after a drunken orgie in a miserable hut at Timaru,