FIRE IN SALISBURY STREET.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1464, 25 October 1878, Page 2

FIRE IN SALISBURY STREET.

Shortly before one o'clock this afternoon the Chester street fire bell rang an alarm, which was speedily taken up by the other. The locality was found to be a cottage standing in its own ground at the corner of Salisbury and Colombo streets, and the property of a person named Read, residing up country. The tenement, which is known as Malvern House, is at present used as a boarding house, and is tenanted by a Mr and Mrs Cowan. The house has two storeys, and at the time the fire was discovered, the only persons in it were two servants named Margaret Hogan and Anne Wilson. The former first observed smoke, and went upstairs to find where it came from, as there were no fires alight. She found the floor and skirting boards in the corner of one of the bedrooms on fire, and at once gave the alarm to her fellow servant, and together they commenced tearing the paper and canvas from the walls, and threw water upon it. A minute or two after she gave the alarm, Mr Cowan, who was in the adjoining paddock and a sick gentleman who was living in a detached cottage in the garden, were on the spot, and helped to throw water on. Directly afterwards other persons coming up, a ladder was reared outside against the wall of the house, and by this means the zinc was torn from immediately over where the fire was, which was promptly extinguished without doing further harm. There are one or two rather strange circumstances connected with the fire, one of which is that on the ground outside the window of the room where the fire was discovered a large bunch [of flax, saturated with kerosene, was picked up. Moreover, one of the servants stated that on first going in to try and extingu'sh the fire she saw a lamp standing in one corner, which subsequently could not be discovered, but beneath the window, near the flax, a quantity of fused glass, together with a portion of the brass burner of a lamp, was picked up. Mr Cowan can offer no explanation of the origin of the fire further than that he thought it was possibly attributable to some children, who had been staying in the house and left that morning, playing with matches in the room before they quitted the house. The hand engine, one of the steamers, with Mr Superintendent Harris and a large number of members of the brigade, together with a body of police under Mr Inspector Buckley, were quickly on the spot, but fortunately their services were not necessary. The house was stated to be insured by the owner for £6OO, and the furniture, owned by Mr Cowan, in two offices (the South British and Transatlantic) for £3OO in each.