FARM FIRE HEROINE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19784, 7 March 1927, Page 12

FARM FIRE HEROINE

SPLENDID RESCUE WORK SUFFOCATING MAN SAVED. The prompt and plucky action of a 17-year-old servant, Margaret Bateson, j led to lhe rescue of five persons from i a burning farmhouse on the hillside al ! Oxenholmo. near Kendal, England, • recently. ’ The girl, who sleeps above the ' kitchen, woke choking with fumes and I wont downstairs for a drink of water. |Shc found the kitchen on fire, and, rei turning upstairs, she roused the farmer’s son, Henry Rishton. By this time the stairway was impassable owing to smoke, and Rishton, telling the girl to rouse the others, leapt eighteen feet from the.' bed-room window in his bare feet and got out the dar to drive to Kendal to summon the fire brigade. Frank Rishton, aged 77, the farmer, awakened by the motor horn, went to the bed-room window 7 and threw his son some garments and slippers. lie awoke his wife, aged 70, and, wrapping her in a blanket, let her down to the roof of an outbuilding, aglainst which the son had placed a ladder. In the' meantime, Margaret Bateson had entered the rooms of two male farm servants and awakened George Mason and Wilfred Smith. The Hatter dashed out through ' the window 7 to assist his employers to fight the fire. Margaret, finding that Mason had not got up re-entered the room and found him overcome by fumes. She dragged him from the bed and across the landing into another room, beneath which was an outbuilding. After a terrific effort she got Mason through the window, and together they slid dowm the sloping roof, dropped six feet on to another roof, slipped down this, and jumped ten feet to the ground.