DEMENTED RECLUSE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 3, 5 January 1927, Page 8

DEMENTED RECLUSE.

AMAZON THREATENS FIREMEN WIELDS AXE TO STOP THEM. UNPRECEDENTED CASE. <From Oar Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 31. An experience unprecedented in the records of firefighting in Australia came the way of voiunjteer members of the Harbord, N.S.W., brigade on Sunday night, when they turned out to extinguish an outbreak in a weatherboard cottage. On Sunday night, Captain 011iv«Sr received a telephone message to the effect that a weatherboard cottage was alight and burning fiercely near the ocean front. He got his men together, and in a few minutes they were on the scene. But when Olliver went to enter the place an awe-inspiring sight met his gaze. Like the Angel of Judgment, a woman stood in the doorway, her figure • silhouetted against the fiaming background, and, waving a large axe menacingly, threatened to use it on anyone who attempted to enter the place. Captain Olliver, who was on his: way inside the place when she appeared, was in an uncomfortable position. He wanted to save the cottage but did not want to lose his life. While he was deliberating -what to do —a matter of seconds—the woman turned and ran back into the cotage. Olliver followed her into the bedroom, where he found that she had smashed most of the fittings and furniture with the axe, and was even then in the act of pouring kerosene on the walls and floor. He closed with her and, after a terrific struggle overpowered her, taking care that he' kicked the axe into a corner. She became docile enough at that stage, and suffered him to hurry her outside, where he handed her over to the care of a civilian. Obviously she was temporarily insane. By that time the whole cottage was alight, and the firemen were startled when the woman voluntered the information that a man was inside the place. While the firemen were inside searching, the woman broke away from the civilian into whose charge she had been given, and ran into the cottage again. The firemen had all they could do to drag her back to safety. She was handed over to the police, who transferred her to the mental reception home. It was subsequently ascertained that she had been living the existence of a hermit in the cottage, and for the past month had been most eccentric. Un doubtedly, but for the firemen, she would have perished in the cottage she hid set alight- and seemed so determined to de-