Sad Burning Fatality.

Hastings Standard, Issue 114, 7 September 1896, Page 4

Sad Burning Fatality.

A PATHETIC STORY. Terrible news, says the London Mail of July 11, awaited Mr and Mrs Millward, the parents of a Bermondsey family, on their arrival home last night. Without any warning, they came upon an awful calamity. When they went out late in thv e< emn-_r. they left in their humble home at No. 1, Kailyard Place, Kipling street, Longlane, Bermondsey, their seven children. Four of the veven are now lying at the local niuruiary, four ghastly charred bodies ad of the quartet j of merry, carele-- little ones their parents expected to iiud lying placidly asleep. The facts of the disaster may best be told in the simple language of the eldest of the surviving children, who was standing outside the black ruins of his home when he ( related this most pathetic narrative to ] f Dwly Hail representative. i

-Joseph Millward, for that is his name, j is a most intelligent lad for a boy of 14, as his words will reveal: —"At about a quarter past 10 to-night mother says, ' You had better go and get your hair cut.' When I came back the house was in flames. I ran along the passage and picked up an : egg-box arrangement, and threw it at I the window to let the smoke and heat out*as I thought. But the flames got so strong that I had to rush out. That is all I know." The boy was evidently in a dazed conditioned, but he calmed down with a brave effort when further questions were put to him with every gentleness that sympathy could suggest. He went on : " My father is a snow-card mounter. We live here together, father, mother, and seven of us children. lam the eldest, and then there's Ada, she's six ; Sarah, she's eight ; Martha, she's four ; and Bert, we call him, he's the baby, eight months old. Then there's Amy and Maude, but they ran out. We can't find Maude, but Amy is in next door. I don't know how she got out. She could hardly speak. I don't know where mother and father are. They have gone to meet some people coming up from a seaside trip." Then the boy fell back into the crowd of silent, horror-stricken bystanders. A sorrow-stricken neighbor named Tooney, who works at the Evelina Hospital, opposite the Southwark headquarters of the Fire Brigade, was one of the first to detect the fire. He said : " The flames were coming out of the ground floor when I first ran out of my place, hearing shrieks of ' fire.' The heat was intense. We got a ladder and put it up to the first floor window, because we heard that the children were up there, and we had buckets of water passed up which I threw into the window. We neither saw nor heard any signs of the children, but while we were working like demons to quench the outbreak, the firemen came up on the Tooley-street engine, and . seemed to get the fire out in a.jiffy. At this time we had heard that three of the children had got out safely, and we hoped that everybody was out. j Lilt, alas ! it was not so." j The rest of the terrible tale is soon told. The firemen had been called up by the fire-alarm from Star-corner, Lermondsey, and had dashed up to : the scene with a manual engine and had got a hydrant to work without a moment's delay. In a space of time to be measured almost by seconds the j fierce flames were conquered and quelled, and the brass helmets of the firemen could be seen glinting every I now and again past the windows as the men searched swiftly and skilfully for the bodies, which rumour had already hinted they would find. When the bodies were found, the spectacle was a horrible one. All that remained of the three little girls—Ada, Sarah, and Martha—was found on the upper floor in the back part of the twostoried tenement, and it was well-nigh impossible even for firemen, who, alas! have seen such sights before, to recognise the blackened bones as those of what had a few minutes before been simple children who " lightly drew their breath and felt their life in every limb." For a time it was impossible to realise that the remains were those of three children, and the firemen at first reported to their chiefs that two bodies had been discovered. In the meantime the question arose as to what had become of the baby, little Bert.' It was hoped that one of the escaping girls had carried the infant with her. Then a singular incident occurred. The baby had been seated in the little armchair on the ground floor, and when the boy Joseph threw the box through the window it fell upon the poor little infant and completely hid it from view, Death in this case, it was certain, was due to the more merciful cause—suffocation.