DEATH OF GIRL

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 98, 22 October 1940, Page 11

DEATH OF GIRL

IN HOTEL FIRE

MOTHER CLAIMS DAMAGES

SUPREME COURT CASE

The death of Kathleen Olive Matthews, aged 17, a waitress, in a fire at Lloyds Hotel in Lower Cuba Street on the morning of February 10 was the basis of a claim for damages made in the Supreme Court today against Robert Stuart Wilson, the proprietor of the hotel and the employer of the girl. The plaintiff was the girl's mother, Olive Gwynne, and she claimed £900 general damages and £28 3s special damages. The case was heard by the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers) and a jury of twelve. Mr. O. C. Mazengarb conducted the plaintiffs case, and Mr. E. Parry appeared for the defendant. In her statement of claim the plaintiff said her daughter had been employed by the defendant at Lloyds Private Hotel for £2 a week together with board and lodging, for three weeks before February 9. On the night of February 9-10 a fire broke out in the hotel premises, and as a. result of it Miss Matthews was burned and died of suffocation. Her death, it was contended in the statement of claim, was caused by breaches of legal duties which the defendant owed to the girl as occupier of the hotel and as her employer. The breaches of duty alleged were lodging the girl in a room on the top floor or attic of the hotel away from all other guests and members of the hotel staff; lodging her in a room the window of which was nailed so that it would not open from the inside; lodging her on a floor to which the alternative stair access had been blocked and the only means of egress was down the main staircase; exposing her to a dangerous and unnecessary risk by lodging her in the room and on the floor mentioned; lighting a fire or allowing a fire to be lighted on the ground floor in close proximity to a disused hatchway or chute which ran up alongside the main staircase from the ground floor to the top of the staircase; failing to take adequate precautions to confine the fire to the fireplace in which it had been lighted; removing the burning embers from the fireplace and negligently placing them in a receptacle or receptacles which were not suitable.for the purpose and thereby setting the hotel building on fire; failing to watch or direct any person to watch the premises and guard against an outbreak of fire; failing to warn the girl of the outbreak of fire so that she could escape from the top floor before the fire spread up the staircase; failing to use the means available to him of freeing the girl from the floor in which she was entrapped after the outbreak of the fire which caused her death. The statement of defence admitted the employment of the girl at the hotel and that she died as a result of the fire, but it denied all the other allegations in the statement of claim. ALONE ON TOP FLOOR. Miss Matthews was the only person sleeping on the top floor, said Mr. Mazengarb in opening his case, and there was practically no hope of escape. The window of the room was nailed up so that she could not gain access to the fire escape outside. She appeared to have endeavoured to escape. She came out of her room in her night attire, but was unable to get to the lower floors and she attempted to get out through the end room, next to hers. It was piled with mattresses, and apparently the girl sank down on them, buried her head in her hands, and was suffocated there. Mr. Mazengarb said that the Fire Brigade was called to the hotel shortly after 1 a.m. on February 10, but found it was only a "smoke scare" from a chimney and nothing was done. Everything was found to be safe. While the brigadesmen were there one of the senior officers inquired from Mr. Wilson whether anyone was sleeping on the top floor, and was told that no one was on that floor. At 4.5 a.m. the brigade was called again, and its men found the kitchen on the ground floor ablaze, with fire also on the top floor. The reason for the almost simultaneous outbreak of the fire on the two different floors, explained Mr. Mazengarb, was that a disused dumb-waiter chute ran up from the kitchen to the top floor. When the building was constructed in 1908 the kitchen was on the top floor and the dining-room on the bottom floor, and food was sent between the two by means of the chute. In subsequent alterations to the building the kitchen was moved to the ground floor and the chute ceased to be necessary. On the ground floor it was cut out, but the opening was left in the ceiling of the ground floor, providing a funnel up which the fire spread almost instantaneously from the ground floor to the top floor. Shortly after the issue of the permit for the building in 1908 the city bylaws were altered to provide that such chutes must be of brick or concrete, and not of wood. It was of interest that since the fire the top floor of the building had been largely done away with and the chute had been removed altogether. It was not until 25 minutes after the Fire Brigade had arrived, said counsel, that Mr. Wilson told one of the firemen that there was a girl on the top floor. A fireman made his way up the staircase to the top floor, : but had to wait for a few moments while the fire was quelled to enable him to get through. He found the girl in the end room. The deputy-superintendent, continued Mr. Mazengarb, went through the building opening windows to ventilate it. When he attempted to open, the window in the room where the girl had been sleeping he had to give it two or three hard wrenches and the whole frame came away. A later examination showed that the window frame had been nailed in so that it would not open, and that the frame actually belonged to a neighbouring room from which it had been taken, leaving no window in the latter room. ORIGIN OF THE FIRE. Mr. Wilson's suggestion, said counsel, had. been that, the fire brigade must have put something down the chimney when they were there on the first occasion, and that after he went .to bed some ashes or hot soot must have been blown out of the boiler opening on the ground floor, setting fire to the kitchen. But it was found by fire brigade officers that the fire had not started in the immediate vicinity of the boiler. In a different part of the room a hole about 20 inches by 10 inches was burned through the floor and adjacent woodwork was badly burred. Immediately above this was the open hole of the dumb-waiter chute. It was suggested, said counsel, that the fire was caused not by anything having blown out of the boiler, but by embers being taken from the boiler and placed in some wooden receptable on the floor. When the inspecting officers made inquiries of Mr. Wilson to ascertain the cause of the fire-he told them at first

that he had attended to the fire after the brigade's first visit, but later, when he was shown the hole in the floor and was reminded of his remarks about doing something to the fire, he stoutly denied having said anything about it. The ashbins were full and the inference was that some person had raked out the fire and placed the ashes in a wooden receptacle and that this, probably assisted by the draught up the chute, had set fire to the building. A few days before the fire, said Mr. Mazengarb, Mrs. Gwynne went to the hotel to see her daughter, and was told by Mr. Wilson that the girl was in her room. Mrs. Gwynne proposed j to go up, but Mr. Wilson said it was! a long way and he had Miss Matthews brought down in the lift. The significance of that did not appear to Mrs. Gwynne at the time, but it did seem a little significant now. . FIREMEN'S EVIDENCE. Evidence of what they had done during the two calls to the hotel on February 10 was given by Sergeant James Gracey and by fire brigade witnesses — Alexander Milne, senior station officer, Thomas Elliott Raid, a first-class fireman, and Donald McMillan, a station officer. John Philp, the deputy superintendent of the Wellington Fire Brigade, said that when he went to open the window in the room occupied by Miss Matthews, he found it would not open. He gave it a severe wrench and part of it came away in his hands. Later he examined the frame and found in it two nails which appeared to have j been there some time. He was present, when Detective G. Hogan asked Mr. Wilson whether he had interfered with the fire after the brigade's first call, and Mr, Wilson had replied that he had. Cross-examined by Mr. Parry, the witness said that the bottom half of the window was nailed on either side. Mr. Parry: Was anything burned in | the girl's bedroom? The witness: No. It had been under severe heat, but you would not say it was burned. Everything in it was blackened with heat. Was anything burned in the next room. Where the girl was found? — No. Was there anything to prevent anyone not already overcome by smoke and fumes opening the window in the room in which she was found? —I did not try the window in the room in which she was found, but I don't think there would be anything to prevent it opening. The witness said there was a fire escape outside both windows. The case is proceeding.