HOARD IN BURNING BED

Evening Star, Issue 21493, 18 August 1933, Page 12

HOARD IN BURNING BED

£4OO IN CARDBOARD BOX DRAMATIC SCENIC AT EIRE. While exploring firc-ravagcd premises in a poor quarter of Hastings. England. occupied by an aged woman who was thought to be penniless, firemen made a dramatic discovery. Beneath the mattress on the bed of the woman, Mrs Theresa Warren, aged 72, the firemen found hundreds of pounds hidden. Nearly £4OO in wads of £1 notes, sewn together, was in a cardboard box under the bed. Other bundles of notes were in the mattress, while hoards of silver coins included one box of £S in threepenny hits. . The premises consisted ot a small eeneral shop and house, and the fiienien wove puzzled by the reluctance of Airs AVarreu to leave after everyone else had been saved. Lying on her bed she struggled with the smoke-holmeted firemen, screaming, “Let me none. Don’t take mo away! 1 can t leave it!” Apparently she alone ot the occupants of the house know that hei life’s savings wore secreted in the bed beneath her. . ~ Struggling and protesting the old woman was dragged out through a window, and was removed to hospital suffering from burns and shock, bfie was stated to be unable to reveal the amount of money in the room. but. it was considered almost certain that much was destroyed. ... When the fire broke out Airs Warren’s daughter and .son-in-law. Air and Mrs Rood, with their children. Joan and George, aged five and thirteen, wore asleep on tlio top floor. Air Reed rushed downstairs to give the alarm, and was cub off from Ins family by the collapse of the staircase. Air Frederick Cooper, who lives opposite. broke into an empty building next to the shop, and was able to save the mother and two children by chmbin<r with them from the window of the biirning room to the window ot the onmtv house. At’the peril of his Ino Air Cooper made three journeys along a ledge only n few inches wide, high ■ above the street. His feet were so badly burned that afterwards he could not stand.