HOUSE FIRED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 155, 23 February 1932, Page 2

HOUSE FIRED

FIENDISH ATTEMPT TO BURN HOUSE AND WOMAN OCCUPANT. TWO SEPARATE OUTBREAKS. SYDNEY, Monday. Believed to have been the victim of a 'fiendish design on her life, Miss Martha Harris, 52, who lives alone at Mimosa Street, Bexley, had a dreadful experience when she was awakened at 1.30 in the morning by the crackling of burning timber and volumes of smoke pouring into her bedroom. Terrified and clad only in her nightdress, she leaped from bed and rushing to the door, unlocked it, to be met by dense clouds of billowing smoke. * Almost smotliered, she stumbled along the hallway, and with difficulty inanaged to open the front door and escape into the street. She then strug'gled about 50 yards up the- street to a fire box, and gave the alarm. Meanwhile, her cries for assistance quickly brought a number of residents to the scene.-

Arncliffe and Kqgarah police are .. mystified, as two separate fires were started underneath the house, and but for the prompt arrival of the Bexley fire brigade, who put out the fire, the place would have been quickly gutted. The house was occupied and owned by Miss Harris, who informed the # police that for some time past she had received anonymous threatening letters, and practically every nigut her house had been bombarded with stones. One of the fires was burning directly under the floor of the owner's bedroom, and she estimates that the damage will be over £200. The house was insured for £300, and the furniture covered for £200. A weatherboard cottage n'earby, in St. George's Road, was mysteriously detroyed by fire Iast week.