NUN KILLED IN FIRE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 797, 18 October 1929, Page 16

NUN KILLED IN FIRE

DRAMA IN BURNING SCHOOL CHILDREN MARCHED OUT Sister Celestine, the acting-mother superior, sacrificed her life to duty in a fire which partly destroyed St. Patrick’s School, Hayling Island, near Portsmouth, early one morning a few weeks ago. She and six other sisters of the Order of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who carry on the school, marched 58 little children to safety from the blazing building. Sister Celestine, having seen to the children’s safety, went back into the building, it is believed, in an effort to save the Sacred Host in the chapel. Hours later her charred body was found there. A nun told a London “Daily Chronicle” correspondent: “Shortly before 2 a.m. Sister Bertha heard a noise and found flames shooting from the workroom, which Is at the side of the main entrance hall. She immediately wakened the other sisters.

“There was no panic. Many of the children were sleeping above the fire and there was no time to dress them. We wrapped blankets round them and ordered fire drill. “Sister Bertha blew a whistle, and the little ones, who are between four and twelve years of age, fell in, as they had been taught to do, and marched two by two down the /emergency staircase. One little girl burst out crying when she found that she had left her favourite doll behind, but the others thought that it was great fun that they should be wakened to do fire drill early in the morning. “When the roll was called we missed Sister Celestine. Several of us searched for her until the roaring flames drove us back.” Another sister said: —“Sister Celestine superintended the work of getting the children out. The last we saw of her was as we left the building. We thought she was following, but she evidently turned back to make sure that nobody was left behind and to try to save some of the valuable property belonging to the Order which had been left in her charge. “The firemen found money and papers lying beside her body. They were kept in the Mother Superior’s room, and she had collapsed just inside the door.” Sister Celestine, whose name was Harrington, was a native of Tipperary, and she was 50 years of age.

Portsmouth and Havant fire brigades put out the fire. It broke out again in the afternoon, and firemen played their hose on the ruins for several hours.