FATAL EAST END FIRE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 3831, 14 May 1913, Page 8

FATAL EAST END FIRE.

TWO LIVES LOST AND SEVERAL INJURED.

EXCITING RESCUE WORK IN

DENSE SMOKE

Two lives were lost and exciting rescue scenesc were witnessed at an early morning fire at 69 Cable Street, in the East End of London on March 4. The victims were: Rebecca Hamer, agor 7, and Emily Cole, aged 23. The child was burned to death, and the woman fell from a window and died later in the London Hospital. Four other members of the Hamer family and John Holland, aged 25, Miss Cole’s fiance, were severely burned, and are in the same hospital. The building, a three-storeved one, comprised a shop seven rooms, and a basement. Hamer and his family of nine occupied the shop and the first floor, the girl Cole and Holland and her father lived on the top floor, and the basement was occupied by a negro rag and bone seller known as “Darkie.” The fire apparently originated in the basement, and the flames spread with rapidity to the upper floors, completely "cutting off escape by means of the staircase. A train on the line at the rear of the house stopped, and the occupants aroused the neighborhood with warning shouts. Simon Abrahams, tailor, living nextdoor, and a baker, got a small pair of steps and placed it against the wall, while a police officer climbed up. Women wore hanging out.of the windows and screaming for help. Three children were .handed down to the policeman. Rachel Hamer, aged 25, jumped from tTie first floor window and fell on to the crowd below. Her father knocked the window out completely, and came out on to the leads, from which he and Mrs Hamer were assisted by the policeman. Emily Cole was hanging out of the top window and screaming. She fainted and dropped from the window, crashing right through the'iron grating of tho cellar maid the flames. Fire and smoke were pouring out so fiercely that it was ten minutes before the firemen could rescue her. She was then unconscious. The elder Holland was rescued from the top floor by the firemen. His son was seen climbing out of the window as though to jump. .411 bis clothes had been burnt off him. He was brought down the escai>o. Alec Hamer, aged IS, a son off the tenant, who was sleeping with his brother Samuel, aged 13, and his sister Sarah, aged 11, in the first floor back-room, broke the glass of the window and jumped out to the ground, about 12 feet below. Then his brother jumped, and his sister threw herself out of the same window. The smoke wag so thick at the time that Alec -missed her, and she fell to the ground and was picked up unconscious. When the fire was extinguished the girl Rebecca was found lying dead in the front bedroom on tho first floor.