DIABOLICAL INCENDIARISM AT AKAROA. [BY TELEGRAPH.]

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1584, 29 August 1882, Page 2

DIABOLICAL INCENDIARISM AT AKAROA. [B Y TELEGRAPH.]

Ciikistciiurch, Last Night. A telegram from Akaroa states :—: — " Mackerlie's Hotel was burned to the ground last night, and the Criterion Hotel and Bruces Hotel were also set fire to. All three fires are clear cases of incendiarism. It is presumed that each act was perpetrated by the same person. Indications afforded by subsequent careful examination show that a most deliberate attempt was made to burn the town down. A quantity of gorse hart been placed under the Criterion and Bruces Hotels. The incendiary had so arranged matters that the three fires broke out at each end of the borough and in its centre. The time of the alarm being shortly after two a.m., it is a remarkable coincidence that in each case the fire was discovered through the restlessness of an invalid. A feeling of intense excitement and indignation prevails. Later. Nothing lias yet transpired to afford a clue to the perpetrator. Mr Bayley, of Mackerlie's Hotel, lost his books, but saved some effects. A man named Druck, who was sleeping at Mackerlie's, actually heard the incendiary engaged in his diabolical work, but, unfortunately, he imagined that it was the landlord who was moving about.