THE FATAL FIRE AT PORT CHALMERS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8481, 9 July 1907, Page 6

THE FATAL FIRE AT PORT CHALMERS.

A THIRD VICTIM. THE HUSBAND'S SAD STORY. By Tehgraph—Press Association. DUNEDIN, July 8. Further details of the Port fire show that Kathleen Rehu, aged 11 years, died at the hospital, last evening, after great suffering from burns, thus making three lives lost. William Haberfield supplies the folowing narrative:— "I came from the Rluff about three weeks ago to work i ; the new graving dock at the nort. ■Ay poor wife oniy arrived last Thursday, and we only took that house for the time being. I came back from stone-crushing at the dock at 9 o'clock on Saturday night, and went to bed, after putting out the fire, and with my wife talked about our prospects till about midnight. We had no light burning, and I fell off to sleep. I remember nothing more till I was awakened by a loud crackling and saw a volume of suffocating smoke coming in at the bedroom door. On jumping out'of bed I found a great column of fire roaring up the staircase, writhing round the banisters, and licking the paper on the walls. Our escape was cut off, and as the smoke was suffocating, I ran to the window, and, smashing ' the glass, looked out. There was not a soul in sight. Tongues of iiame were darting in at the door, there was not a moment io be lost, and shouting to my wife to throw the children down to me, and then follow herself, I jumped out of the window. I was crazed with agony, and do not remember reaching the ground. All the windows glowed red with the fire that raged within, and I kept crying out: 'Oh, my wife and child,' but no one seemed to hear me. I shouted up to her to make haste with the children, but there was no reply, only smoke rolling heavily through the broken glass. Then 1 scaled the side of the house. How I managed it I cannot tell. I was mad with grief and fear for my wife and„children. I reached the sill and beat in the sash with my fists. Choking and blinded, I staggered into the room and trod right on the prostrate body of my sister-in-law. My head seemed bursting, and I could not breathe. I thought I heard voices in the street below, so seizing the child I threw .her out of the window in the hope that someone might be waiting below to catch her. There was no signs of my wife or little boy. I was on the point of suffocating, and reeling to the window fell out of it and remembered no more. It was the oldest house in Port Chalmers. There was no fire escape, and it was infested with rats from top to bottom, and they might have caused the fire by dragging away the loose matches. We had made such plans, and this is the end of it." Mrs Haberfield came from Moeraki, and she and the boy will be taken there to be buried. William Haberfield is 27 years old. His grandfather arrived in Moeraki in 1836, and married a Maori woman. Haberfield is a respectable hard working man, devoted to his wife and family. His parents reside at Green Hills, near the Bluff. Mrs Haberfield had been married before, and the child who was burnt with her was the youngest child of her first husband. Denth Eate Decreased. , The "Chicago Tirbune," in a recent article on what medical science bas been able to accomplish for the benfitof humanity, drew particular attention to the one great fact that stands pre-eminent in the light of reliable statistics, viz, that the deathrate of the world has, through its agency, been positively decreased. One of the chief factors in this decrease is the marvellous success which is nowadays attained in the treatment of that fata I ype cf disease classified under thl heading of "Lung Troubles." Ihe is accomplished by the use is l)r. Sheldon's New Discovery fof Coughs Colds and Consumption. Modeor medicine can point to no more marvellorn achievement than the perfecting of thu grand, unfailing, specific cure, which cas be relied on to save the lives of ais who take it in time. Guaranteed to curll or money buck, Price Is Gd and 3s. Obe tainable at H. B. Eton, Chemist, Masterton-