FATAL FIRES.

Woodville Examiner, Volume 3, Issue 281, 3 September 1886, Page 2

FATAL FIRES.

A MOTHER AND HER CHILD BURNT TO DEATH. [by telegraph.] (Per United Press Association.) IxVEHCAEGIIL, Sept. 1 A fire involving lamentable loss of life occurred about 10 o’clock to-night in a house occupied by Mrs Kaill, Liddellstrcet. Two of the children and the maid escaped from the burning house. Mrs Kaill occupied a separate room with the younger child. LATER PARTICULARS.

Mrs Kaill lived with her four children, and a servant named Flora McLeod. The latter makes the following statement : —The inmates of the house retired shortly before ten o’clock. They all occupied the same apartment, a bedroom close to the kitchen. About a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes after they got into bed the girl was alarmed by a smell and a crackling sound, and on jumping up found the kitchen and the passage in flames. She called Mrs Kaill, and urged her to get out of the house with the remaining child, a boy of three years, but she replied to the elect that she could not do so. The girl thou got three of the children, one a baby in arms, out of the house, and finding it impossible to return through the lobby, ran round to the window of the bedroom, broke a pane of glass, and again implored Mrs Kaill to endeavor to get out. Again Mrs Kaill replied that she could not, the probability being that by that time she was partially suffocated.

Shortly after midnight, the trunk of Mrs Kaiil’s body was found among the debris. Mrs Kaill, who with her child has perished so sadly, was left a widow a few months ago, her husband dying suddenly. Her body was found in a passage leading out of the building, an indication that she had tried to obey her servant’s calls, and was stifled by smoke. AN OLD WOMAN BURNED TO DEATH. Dunedin, Sept. 3. A fatal fire occurred iu Walkers street this morning resulting in the death of an old woman name Mrs Joyce, better known as Granny Joyee. She lived in a oneroomed shanty at the back of the Rising Sun Hotel, and is supposed to have been sitting by the fire all night, and, falling asleep, to have fallen into the fire. The fire brigade arrived too late to save the woman’s life. The deceased had been an inmate of the Hospital and Benevolent Institution, but could not be induced to stop at cither.