DEATH LEAP FROM FIRE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1039, 11 June 1924, Page 12

DEATH LEAP FROM FIRE.

A LIVERPOOL MAN KILLED. WOMAN BURNED TO DEATH. Two deaths at Liverpool, the flight of a family with a sick child two minutes before a burning house collapsed, near Lyme Regis, and the rescue of a paralysed man and an invalid woman from flames in a Durham village were features of recent fires. The Liverpool fire broke out in a ladies' outfitting shop occupied by Mrs Cowan, aged between 55 and 60, and John Whittier, aged 37; said to be her adopted son, who acted as manager. Their bedrooms were on the first and second floor. A dock gateman saw flames just before 3 a.m., and climbing a wall at the back, tried to break open a door, but was beaten back by the heat. He then gave the alarm, and the brigade was soon at work, but nothing could save the place. The dock gateman says that he saw two people at the window of the top sitting-room before he went to the back -of the premises. "When he returned the man was standing on the ledge of the window. Someone shouted to him to hold on, but evidently he was overcome by the heat, for he released his hold and fell, his body striking a ledge over the shop and falling to the ground, a drop of 2." feet. He was taken to the hospital, but died almost at once.

When at last, after many attempts in which they had been beaten back by heat, the firemen could enter tho gutted building, they found the dead body of the woman, terribly burned, on the floor of the top sitting-room.