FATAL FIRE IN DUNEDIN.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1103, 31 October 1879, Page 2

FATAL FIRE IN DUNEDIN.

[by telegraph.] Dunedin, October 30. A fire broke out shortly before 10 in a two-roomecl cottage at the rear of a building near the corner of Great, King-street and Union-street. The building was occupied by a dairyman named Michael O'Brien, his wife, and three children. At the time the fire occurred the husband, wife, and infant were outside the house, and the two children in bed. It is thought that one of the fowls inside the house knocked over a kerosene lamp, for it was from a lamp that the fire originated. The small tenement was filled with flame directly, and though desperate efforts were made to save the children, both perished in the flames. Their bodies were recovered about half an hour after the fire broke out, as the (lames were easily subdued. One of the children was a boy aged three, and the other a girl two years old. The scene was a terrible one. The father and mother were in uncontrollable agony, and the mother swooned and was removed to a neighbor's in an insensible state. A very sad accident connected with the affair is, that when O'Brien rushed to see the body of his child he was struck a heavy blow in the face by a fireman, and an order \yas niadp by one of the brigade to take him in charge. This, of course, occurred in mistake, but it was an exceedingly painful exhibition of oflicious--I!GSS.