FURTHER DETAILS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12851, 9 July 1907, Page 7

FURTHER DETAILS.

A MOTHER'S HEROISM

HABERFIELD'S GALLANT

CONDUCT-

(special to "this musss.") DUNEDIN, July 8. One of tho first peoplo to arrive on the scene of tho fire says:—" I noticed something; it looked like a heap of sacks on the road. This was the man and his daughter. Tho girl waa found, doubled up under the window from which she had jumped or had been thrown, a distance of about 16 feet. Tho girl was almost naked, and burned badly about the lower part of the body. We could not tell whether she waa deid or not. Her wrist was bleeding so badly that I could not feel her pulse, so I put my head down and could just make out th© faintest movement of tho heart. Presently she uttered a groan and her head lell back. Her father was in a terrible stat©, blooding freely, whilo his head, anus and legs wero burned. Ho was on th© point of swooning away, and kept saying, ' Oh. my poor wife and my poor child.' I wont out and told the bystanders that there was a woman and a child iv tlut blazing building. Somoono, however, said that they wero sale, but this was alterwa.ds found to b© a mistake. Tho inmate* had boon burnt by that tinw. When tlio brigade, winch arrived promptly, got the fir© tinder, W. Dougherty, ono of tho firemen, was told to search tho hon, but at first he could see nothing. Whilo he was looking the flames broke out again in a corner of th© bedroom, and ho turned to play tho hose on them. Presently he saw something white—the hose was washing the grime and soot off a human figure, and Dougherty exclaimed, * 000-i God. them s a woman her©.' Wlien the brigade and tho police got inside with the lamps, they saw tho body, and on moving it found that th© mother, driven into tho corner near the window, had doubled herself over lier three-year-old boy in a last endeavour to save his life. It must have been a gallant struggle. Th© child,only had one leg burned, and had evidently been suffocated. As for the woman, she was terribly burned, especially about the legs, back and bead." Tliere is a ion-.er.sus of opinion that Mr HaL-erficld s conduct must have been of an uncommonly heroic kind. It was not only that ho did everything possible while bleeding trom a cut artery and otherwise injured, but people who visited the scone od" tho fire to-day are quite unable to account for his entering the building a second time As far as can bo seen there is no way up to the window, and jet he managed to enter it a -second time.