FORTY-FOUR YEARS AGO

Evening Star, Issue 18375, 8 September 1923, Page 13

FORTY-FOUR YEARS AGO

THE OCTAGON FIRE. Messrs Rothschild, according to a recent parliamentary return, were paid £99,414 lor 'advancing £3,9/6,532 required! to purchase the Suez Canal dlrarea in 1874. yr ’iJ It may convey hope and comfort to Some maids to learn tha t 70,403 bachelors of fifteen years or upwards are wandering about this colony, with only 28,071 jnaidona of the same mature ago to fill their cup of happiness. Talcing what is shown to be the beginning of the marriageable years—fifteen with the girls and twenty with the men —there aro 191 badiolore to every 100 spinster's. * » •» <>

One of the most destructive fires that has occurred in Dunedin, end certainly so far as results are concerned the moat disastrous, (broke out in the building known as Waters’s Oafo in the northern end of Ross's buildings, Octagon, shortly after 2 o’clock this morning (September 8). Adjoining the cate was the shop of Mrs Wilson, milliner, and keeper of a servants’ registry, and besides her family several f email ea were sleeping on tho premises—indeed, so densely populated was this block limit it is estimated that nearly fifty people slept in the building. ... A man named John Taylor jumped from tho top story of the building, and died about 20 minutes after ho was picked up. A woman jumped out of a window on tho centre floor towards a blanket held for her reception, but unfortunately fell wide of it, and was seriously hurt. At 8 o’clock in tho morning tho firo was got under, and l tho remains of Mr and Mrs Wilson, their oldest boy, and two girls were found all huddled to-n-other near to where tho bod had stood. , , , Li all ten. bodies wore recovered that morning, and on the next day two other charred bodies were found.