Asleep on the Leads.

Otago Witness, Issue 2390, 21 December 1899, Page 56

Asleep on the Leads.

The story of a baby asleep in a cradle on the roof of a church, baby and cradle having been placed there without hands, seems like a piece of extravagant fiction, but there is an old church in London, that of All Hallows, Barking, that has s>uch a story connected with it. It happened (so the tale runs) that in the last month of the leign of Charles I a certain ship-chandler was foolish enough to busy himself 0A r er a barrel of gunpowder with a lighted- candle in his hand. Tie paid tho price of his folly. A spark fell into the gunpowder, and the place was hlcAvn up. The man Avho did the mischicl avis not the only one to perish. Fifty houses were irrecked, and the number oi people who were killed was not known. In one house among the 50 a mother h<Xl put her baby into its cradle to sleep before the explosion occurred. What be ciine of the mother no one ever learned; but what became of the baby Avas verj widely known. The next morning there was found upor tin leads of the church a young child in r cradle, baby and cradle being uninjured b} ih-i explosion tint had lifted both to such < giddy height.