Young Lady's Awful Fate.

Hastings Standard, Issue 456, 21 October 1897, Page 4

Young Lady's Awful Fate.

A New York telegram states : Bessie Jackson, who is a young and pretty soubrette of twenty-three, had a bad habit of smoking in bed. At six o'clock on Saturday morning she got out of bed for the purpose of having a matutinal cigarette, but in lighting it she also lit her nightdress, which blazed up and eveloped her in flames. She screamed for help and threw herself upon the bed in the hope of extinguishing the flames but only succeeded in setting the bed on fire. She leaped from the bed to the floor where she rolled in her agony, and in doing so knocked over a small table on which a kerosene lamp was burning. The lamp exploded, and the oil, scattered all ovsr the room, made it a mass of fire. The woman, with her nightdress still burning, rushed from the room into another, where the rolled upon a lounge, setting fire to that also. The maid-servant, aroused by the noise, rushed into the room, and seeing her mistress rolling in agony on the lounge, tore the remains of her nightdress off her back and tried to check the flames. Jackson, half mad with pain and fear, ran to the door of the flat and dashed downstairs. She was given a refuge by some neighbors living in a flat on the floor below, but was found to be so shockingly injured that she was conveyed to the hospital, where she lies in a dying condition.