INTERPROVINCIAL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 216, 12 September 1877, Page 2

INTERPROVINCIAL .

FIRE AND LOSS OF LIFE IN WELLINGTON.

[press agency.]

A fire broke out in Alcorn's draper's shop on the beach about 8.20 o'clock last night with alarming suddenness. No sooner was the alarm raised than tbe whole upper storey was iv flames. The owner was' out at the time. When Mrs Alcorn's attention wa3 called by a servant to the fire she opened the door, and was immediately driven back by a sheet of flame, and was prevented from rescuing her little son three years old, who was asleep in another room. With some difficulty she passed the other four children on to the roof of the verandah, from which she threw her infants to the bystanders below, and soon after she was assisted down by a ladder by her husband, who had just arrived. Water was soon playing on the fire which would have been shortly mastered, but that some volunteers broke the stand pipe in endeavoring to turn more water ou. A delay of ten minutes occurred before the accident was remedied and the water again flowing, during which the building was blazing furiously, and all the buildings to leeward seemed to be doomed, but great exertions confined the fire to Alcorn's. The body of the child was found when the fire was out. The insurances, so far as is yet known, are, on the building, in the Phoenix £6 >0, South British £1000. The stock was insured in the Transatlantic for £2000, and Standard £500. Two branchmen who were on the verandah when the water was cut off were severely burned before they came down. Insurances on the stock had for some time been current in ;the New Zealand and National, but had been allowed to lapse.