Some Great Fires.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5028, 8 June 1889, Page 3

Some Great Fires.

Almost every city of any importance looks back to a ' great fire ’ that has, at some time, swept over it, effaced the frail structure reared by man, and brought ruin if not death to thousands. For example, tho statistics of Constantinople, which in the matter of fires, go back only to 1729, makes so dreadful a showing that it seems wonderful that, even with all her unrivalled adventages of situation, the city should still exist, or that there should bo roofs to cover the 900,C00 human beings that live within her walls. Constantinople’s firo record from 1729 to 1870, includes 18 fires which ranged in destructiveness from 20u0 buildings to 30,00-J, with an averake of 8,003, and putting the great fires where the exact loss has not been made a matter of record at a low rate, there must have been destroyed by the great fires alone in less than a century and a half something like 219,000 buildings. This is certainly tho champion record ; and when we remember that in the great firo in Chicago, probably tho most destructive single blaze of modern times, the whole number of buildings consumed was 17,430, tho destruction in Constantinople is frightful to contemplate. Another Turkish city that seems to bo one of lire’s especial playgrounds is Smyrna. The population is now only about 150,000, but in the course of seventy years, from 1772 to 1841—there were three great fires. The first destroyed 3,000 dwellings and from 3,080 to 4,000 shops, entailing a money loss of d01|20,090,000. The second burned *4,030 shops, mosques, etc. The third 12,000 houses, a deaclful showing for a town of but 155,000 people. A strange place for a great fire seems Venice ; yet in A.D. 1106 the greater part of that serai-aqueous city went up in flames. The great fire in Moscow in 1812, which caused the retreat of Napoleon’s army and such stupendous loss of human life, is well known to all; but just forty years before a firs of tho usual accidental kind had destroyed 18,000 buildings. The fire started by the Hussions on tho 14th of September, , 1812, was simply awful in its work of destruction. Nine tenths of the city on which stood 30,5C0 houses were reduced to ashes, the loss to the owners being estimated at about §150,000,000. In May, 1842, the free town of Hamburg was almost swept out in existence by a fire which burned for 100 hours, consuming 4,219 buildings, and inflicting a lose so greet for tho then resources of the town that a subscription was taken up all through Germany to enable the citizens to rebuild. Edinburgh had its “great fire" in 1700,

London has a considerable records of great fires. In the iiros which occurred in 798, 982, 1086, and 1212, the greater part of the city was burned. Then came the “great fire of London,” in 1666, a Ore that probably caused more suffering than any other of modern times. But a year before London had been visited by tho great plague. Before the coming of the disease the population of London had been about 400,030. Of these at least two thirds lied, and probably one half of those that remained died. Then came the great fire. It began about 10 p m., iu the shop of a baker named Farryner, in Pudding Lane, and raged for throe days, utterly destroying all the best part of the town, which was confined to narow limits, and very densely peopled. The area burned over was 436 acres, on which were 13,200 houses fronting on 400 streets, lanes, etc. The magnificent Cathedral of St. Paul’s, eightysix parish churches, six chapels, tho Guild Hall, the Hoyal Exchange, the Custom House, many hospitals and libraries, fifty two companies’ halls, a vast number of other stately edifices, including three of the city gates, four stone bridges, the prisons of Newgate and the Fleet, and the Poultry and Wood-street compters, were all destroyed. Strange to say, only six persons are known to have lost their lives during the whole conflagration. ‘ The great fire of New York in 1835 burned over fifty-two acres. A fire in Pittsburg in the year burned 1,100 houses. The fire of ’49 in St Louis burned twenty three steamboats and fifteen blocks of houses. Two years later, fct. Louis had two great fires ;in the first three-fourths of tho city, say 2,500 buildings went up in smoke, and in the second SCO others. Philadelphia has never gone beyond her fire of 1050, when 400 buildings disappeared. In ’65 another blaze destroyed about half as much. In May of 1851‘ San Franchco was by fire, losing 2.500 buildings and many lives. Tho record of Boston as to great fires goes back to 1670, when much of the town was burned, but all are eclipsed by her blaze of 1872, There were but 776 buildings destroyed, but they covered sixty five acres, were mostly superb granite structures and the loss on thorn and their contents was §75,000,000. The Chicago fire of October 8-10, 1871, was the most destructive of modern times. The burnt area was 2,124 acres, or about three and a quarter square miles. On it had stood 17,430 buildings, one third by count of all in the city and of the value fully equal to all that were left. Two hundred and fifty persons lost their lives, 98.500 were rendered homeless, and the pecuniary loss was estimated at §195,0C0 800, In the period of thirteen years from 1875 to 1887, a table of which I have before me (although it docs not include any of the very remarkable individual conflagrations, the great Chicago blaze being in 1871, the Great Boston fire in 1872, and all the others earlier) the losses by fire in this country for those thirteen years foot up to more than a thousand millions of dollars. —StJLouis Globe Democrat.