The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-01-12 00:00:00

LADIES' DRESSES TAKING FIRE.

The Paris journal, Le Figaro, informs us that a
recent accident by which a lady lost her life by her
dress catching fire while she was engaged before a
looking-glass, is a representative of eighty per cent. of
the female deaths by fire in France. Perhaps the
average was higher in the period of crinoline; but
even during the present era of exiguous costume
the mirror hung over the fireplace has appa-
rently much to answer for. Before coming down to
dinner or before starting for a ball the temptation
to the superior sex to hover round the fire is
irresistible. We will not attempt to analyze the
nature of the attraction which draws them thither,
and to define the exact percentage of the forces
exercised respectively by the fire and the mirror;
but the fact remains that four out of five French
women burnt to death perish because they will warm
their feet, button their gloves, or take a last fond
lool.: at their head-dress in the, treacherous mirror
-above the fireplace. It needs but a slight gust of air,
the opening of a door or of a window, to drive a light
fabric within reach of the fire, and ball-dress once
ignited will prpbably cause the death of the wearer.
Careful people have, for the last quarter of a century
at least, proposed fireguards of a, thoroughly defensive
character, but their warnings have met with the
' fate of the utterances of careful people generally. A
fireguard reduces a room to the level of a nursery, and
degrades fully grown-up people to the rank of children.
There is then but one remedy, and that is the removal
of the looking • glass from above the fire. In houses
furnished on the newest and most msthetic principles
this has already been done. Thanks to the re-intro-
duction of the style of the fourteenth and fifteenth
I centuries, when mirrors were of metal, and very rare,
there is no room over a high-art fireplace to put a
dangerous attraction, and Lord Foppington would, in
a fashionable drawing.roorn, regret his absence from
his own library, wherein lie could "see himself all
round." Unfortunately, however, the taste fAr re-
curring to the massive fireplaces of our ancestors has
not yet had time to take effect on the great majority,
and it is therefore necessary to point out, especially at
the present season of the year, when thousands of
young girls are dressed in finery of unusually light
texture, and are naturally anxious about their
personal appearance, that the worst use to which a
mirror can be put is to hang it over a fireplace.—Ditily
News.

An Irish passenger on board an Atlantic steamer,
being asked Ma experience of sea.s,ckness, replied, "The
first quarter of an hour you feel afraid the ship's going down;
the next quarter of an hour you feel afraid it will not go
down."

Last week 26 persons died from small-pox in Lon-
don' 16 of the deaths occurring in the Metropolitan Asylum
hospitals, and ten in private dwelling-houses. Of the 26
fatal cases 13 were certified as unvaccinated, and 7 as
vaccinated. The number of patients in the, Metropolitan
Asylum hospitals, which had declined to 137 in the
beginning of October, afterwards steadily increased to 316
and 309 at the end of the last two weeks of the year, and
further rose during last week to 374, the highest number
since the middle of August last. 129 new cases were ad-
raittod during the week.