TUSSAUD’S FIRE

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12093, 21 March 1925, Page 5

TUSSAUD’S FIRE

MR MASSEY DESTROYED CROWD DELIGHTED WHEN POLICEMAN IS RESCUED. DAMAGE £250,000. By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright. Reuter’s Telegram. LONDON, March 19. Hie damage to Madame Tussaud’s is estimated at £250,000. Thousands of people visited the ruins, and watched the salvagers carrying the wax effigies from the building and the pictures from tlie valuable Gainsborough collection house in the building. Police-Constable Robertson, the wax policeman who stood at the entrance, deceived many thousands of visitors into addressing him. He was one of the first to be rescued, to the evident delight of the real police outside, but out of the hundreds of famous effigies only a few models of notorious criminals in the chamber of horrors, including Peace, Crippen, Vaquier, Thompson, and Bywaters, were saved. The crowd was chiefly anxious in regard to the fate of Peace and Crippen. MANY PREMIERS DISAPPEAR. (Sydnev "Sun" Cable.) Tassaud’s fire was responsible for unprecedented political cataclysms, destroying models in a few minutes of Empire rulers and Premiers, including Mr Stanley Bruoe, Mr W. F. Massey, Mr Mackenzie King, and General Smuts. It has not yet been decided whether Mr W. M. Hughes has proved to be the modern Abedqego, because the model was removed when he ceased to be Prime Minister of Australia, and was kept in a lumber room pending political events. Mr John Tussaud states that negotiations for the transfer of the business to a London syndicate had almost been completed when the fire occurred and destroyed the work of five or six generations.