FIRE TRAGEDY

Hokitika Guardian, 11 December 1933, Page 5

FIRE TRAGEDY

ENGLISH MANSION

DUKE & PEER’S BROTHER DEAD.

i United Press Association—By Electro Telegraph— Copyruglu,.; LONDON, December 9.

Tragedy overtook a week-end house party on tiie night before a projected uuuc, wnen tae premier French Duke, and a crack cavalryman, the Dune -ue la Iremoiile, aged 28 years, also Captain J. Rodney, the brother of Lord Rodney, and a descendant of the- famous Admiral Rodney, lost their lives. The cloube tragedy was the result of a lire destroying “The Heronry,” in Whitechurch, the home of the millionaire, Mr L. J. McCormick. Duke de Tremoille was unfamiliar with the house. Tie was trapped on a landing after calling to others when he was going dow a a staircase. His body was unrecognisably charred.

Captain Rodney ,who mangled his hands in smashing window panes, died at the hospital, after lie made a jump of 20 feet from a window, with his wife, who was sent to hospita with a. fractured spine, necessitating an operation, and she is now in plaster of paris, and is in a critical condition. Mr McCormick’s wife and the other guests escaped in their night clothes, After Mrs McCormick discovered the fire in an upper bedroom at 3 a.m., she roused the inmates. The house, however, rapidly became an inferno.

Firemen rescued one maid. Another maid, after knotting - sheets together, slid down a water pipe from the top floor. The fire brigade were powerless, despite the house being adjacent to a river. The flames frustrated his chaffeur's cpllant efforts to rescue Duke de la Tremnillle,