TRAGEDY AT SHOOTING PARTY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19669, 11 December 1933, Page 7

TRAGEDY AT SHOOTING PARTY

LIVES LOST IN FIRE IN HERONRY United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received December 10, 630 p.m.) LONDON, December 10. Tragedy overtook a week-end house party, the night before the projected hunt, when the premier French Duke, and crack cavalryman, Due de la Tremoille, aged twenty-three, and Captain J. Rodney, (Lord Rodney’s brother and a descendant of the famous Admiral), lost their lives as the result of a fire destroying the heronry at Whitechurch, the home of the millionaire, Mr L. J. McCormick. The Duke, being unfamiliar with the house, was trapped on landing, after calling to the others that he was going down the staircase. His body was unrecognisably charred. Captain Rodney, who mangled his hands smashing panes of windows, died in hospital, after a jump of 20ft from the window, with his wife, who was sent to hospital, with a fractured spine, necessitating an operation. She is now in plaster of paris, and in a critical condition. Mr McCormick’s wife and the other guests escaped in their night clothes. After the wife had discovered the fire in the upper bedroom at 3 a.m„ and had roused the inmates, the house rapidly became an inferno. The firemen rescued one maid, and another, after knotting the sheets, slid down a waterpipe from the top floor. The fire brigade was powerless, despite the adjacent river. The flames frustrated the chauffeur's gallant efforts to rescue the Duke.