THE INVERCARGILL FIRE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1405, 15 October 1885, Page 1

THE INVERCARGILL FIRE.

An enquiry into the fire by which the Carriers’ Arms Hotel, Invercargill was destroyed on the 28th Sept., was held on Monday, when some evidence of a peculiar nature was given. McLaren, a funner who slept in the house that night, said that he was put into the room where Crawley, the stableman of the hotel, was asleep in. Crawley woke up, and witness asked him to get u watch key, Crawley got up to go for it and witness then noticed that he had been in bed with his clothes on, and again lay down in the same condition. When the fire broke out witness was forced out of the house by the police without any clothes, a’though there was no fire in hi& room. His clothes were afterword* brought to him by Crawley, and on bis examining them be found that his watch was gone from the vest pocket, and £9O from the trousers which he had rolled np and put under the pillow. Margaret Spiers, whose house Crawley frequented, deposed that she had a conversation with him after the fire, when he said he had put plenty of matches and a piece of lighted candle in the stable (where the fire originated), and ran up to bed and pretended to be asleep till » constable roused him. On the following night Crawley was again in witness’ house, a constable being concealed therein, when Crawley again spoke of the fire, and said that he and Jack Hughes (die landlord) knew all about it. Constable Young corroborated the woman’s statement of what Craw'ey had said. Crawley was muddled with drink at the time, and gave this as his reason for sleeping in his cloches on the night of the fire. The jury, after three minutes deliberation, found that “ the cause of the fire doth not appear to the qn*y.” The Underwriters’ Association offer £2OO as a reward for the conviction of the incendiary. The hotel was condemned by the Licensing Bench in June, and six months’ was allowed for commencing to rebuild it in brick.