AFRAID TO JUMP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12272, 16 May 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

AFRAID TO JUMP.

TRAGIC SCENE AT A MIDNIGHT FIRE. SuaiNER-STKEET, Clerkenwell, a dingy little place occupied almost entirely by poor Italians, was on April 9 the scene of a fatal Are, two young Italian shop-assistants being suiocated almost within sight of the midnight crowd in the street. The lire, which occurred at a provision shop kept by an Italian named Terrain, was discovered shortly after one o'clock by a policeman. A number of constables were quickly on the spot, and they shouted ai:d knocked in the effort to rouse anyone who might be sleeping in the building. Mr. Terroni, who was in bed on the first floor-, was quickly awakened. He opened the window and dropped unharmed to the pavement.

The .tire was now burning furiously, and douds of smoke were coining from the second-floor window. Suddenly in the midst of the smoke the crowd saw tit a window the faces of three shop-assistants who slept in. the upper room. They seemed utterly bewildered. The crowd shouted to them to jump, and for a moment or two they hesitated. Then one of them climbed out on to the window-sill, which is about eighteen feet from the ground, and dropped unhurt from it into the street below.

'flic highly-excited crowd then urged the other two to follow their companion's example, but they shouted back, "No, no; we cannot,"' and flung up their hands in despair. One was in tears. When the brigade arrived ladders were run up, and streams of water eventually enabled the firemen to get to the upper room. Here they found two (lend bodies— those of Ochi Ceievara, aged twenty-six, and Emilio Cerevara, aged eighteen.