HOARD IN BURNING BED

Taranaki Daily News, 16 August 1933, Page 10

HOARD IN BURNING BED

£4OO IN CARDBOARD BOX. DRAMATIC SCENE AT FIRE. While exploring fire-ravaged premises in a poor quarter of Hastings,.England, occupied by an aged woman who was thought to be penniless, firemen made a dramatic discovery. Beneath the mattress on the bed of the woman, Mrs. Theresa Warren, aged 72, the firemen found hundreds of pounds' hidden. Nearly £4OO in wads of £1 notes, sewn together, was in a cardboard box under the bed. Other bundles of notes were in the mattress, while hoards of silver coins included one box of £8 in threepenny bits.

The premises consisted of a small general shop and house, and the firemen were puzzled by the reluctance of Mrs. Warren to leave after everyone else had been saved. Lying on her bed she struggled with the smoke-helmeted firemen, screaming, “Let me alone! Don’t take me away 1 I can’t leave it!” Apparently she alone of the occupants of the house knew that her life’s savings were secreted in the bed beneath her.

Struggling and protesting the old woman was dragged out through a window and. was removed to hospital suffering from burns and shock. She was stated to be unable to reveal the amount of money in the room, but it was considered almost certain that much was destroyed.

When the fire broke out, Mrs. Warren’s daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Reed, with their children, Joan and

George, aged five and 13, were asleep on the top floor. Mr. Reed rushed downstairs to give the alarm, and was cut off from his family by the collapse of the staircase.

Mr. Frederick Cooper, who lives opposite, broke into an empty building next to the shop and was able to save the mother and two children by climbing with them from the window of the burning room to the window of the empty house.

At the peril of his life Mr. Cooper made three journeys along a ledge only a few inches wide, high above the street. His feet were so badly burned that afterwards he could not stand.