The Press.
London, England, 1858-04-03 00:00:00

(Ottitil a rg.

Joni HOGAN, the eminent Irish sculptor, died on
Faturday last, is his fifty-seventh year, at his residence
in Dublin. Mr Hogan has left a widow and eleven
children in comparatively destitute circumstances.
The Freeman's Journal of Monday, in speaking of
his labours and his poverty, remarks that his
"Drunken Faun " was one of the most original con-
ceptions and the most classically treated out of the
old school of Greece. Thorwaldsen pronounced it
worthy an Athenian studio, and the same illustrious
artist preferred his " Dead Christ " to Danneker's.
He often regretted his inability to choose his own
subjects, like more fortunate artists who give com-
missions to their own genius ; but he had no choice,
and the few orders he received in Ireland were
scarcely sufficient for his maintenance on the
simplest scale :
He was engaged up to his death on two commissions—
the Mathew testimonial in Cork, and one of the bas-
reliefs for the Wellington monument in the park—illus-
trative of the Duke's concession of civil and religious
liberti. The sketch for the latter had been submitted to
the Eerl of Carlisle, and highly approved. It was a
beautiful conception, and even on that small scale showed
the creative power and felicitous skill with which the
artist seized the idea and rendered the marble history
plain to the least educated eye. After the completion of
the Mathew Monument, he designed to carry his son with
him to Italy to complete the bas-relief in the neighbour-
hood of Carrara, and return to Ireland with his great
historical work, on which he designed to lavish all his
powers. The remuneration was sufficiently poor, we be-
lieve only 1,00%, whereas the figures were to be about
twenty, as large as life, in very high relief, or what artists
call " the round," and the marble six inches thick ; but
then he expected it would extend his reputation. All the
drenins of genius are now over, and poor Hogan himself
will lack a monument in his native country. He thought
his influential countrymen overlooked his claims to illus.
trate Irish genius in the Palace at Westminster, end had
lie urged them perhaps they would have been recognised
and satisfied. But Hogan was a modest men—too modest
for success in life, and too proud to place himself under
obligation to any man. Of one member of Parliament,
however, he always spoke with great warmth. Mr. White-
side, with whom he was very slightly acquainted, under-
took to submit his claims, as an Irish artist of the highest
order,
to execute one of the statues for the Houses of Par-
liament ; and had Hogan lived the Attorney-General
Perhaps would have succeeded in helping forward his
neglected countryman. But all such speculations are
now useless, and the vital question remains, how are his
widow and eleven young children to be saved from desti-
tution? Had Lord Carlisle been now in power he would
have exerted all his influence with the Government, and
Lord Palmerston, like Sir Robert Peel, has ever been dis-
tinguished for his attention to such claims. Lord Derby,
we are certain, will be equally anxious to gratify the Irish
people in providing an humble competence for the widow
of their great sculptor.

THE PRESS, APRIL 3, 1858.

QtIINTIN DICK, Esq., uncle of W. W. Fitzwilliam
Hume, Esq., M.P. for the county of Wicklow, died
on Friday week at his residence in Curzon-street.
The deceased was for many years a member of the
Howie of Commons, and was much respected as a
man of independent thought, sterling good sense,
and unwavering attachment to Protestant prineipl es.
He represented the borough of Maldon, in Essex,
for fifteen years, during which period he stood four
contested elections. In the general election of 1847
he was defeated by Mr. T. B. Lennard, and shortly
afterwards was invited by the Conservative con-
stitueney of Aylesbury, in Buckinghatrishite, to be-
come a candidate for it representation, a vacancy
having occurred by the unseating of Mr. J. P. Deer-
ing, on petition. After a warm contest he succeeded
in defeating his Liberal opponent, Mr. John
Houghton, and sat in Parliament for that borough
until 1850, when he retired from public life alto-
gether. For some ,years he suffered greatly from
confirmed and protracted ill health, and his demise,
deeply regretted as it must necessarily he, was not
unexpected by his relatives. Mr. Dick was un-
married, and died possessed of enormous wealth, a
very large proportion of which will devolve on his
nephew, the respected member for Wicklow county,
to whom he was much and deservedly attached.
THE EARL OF MORTON died this week at the family
residence in Brook-street, after a short illness. The
deceased earl was attached to the mission in Spain
in 1811, and was appointed secretary of legation at
Stockholm in July the following year. Subsequently,
in 1814 and 1810, he filled the some capacity at the
Courts of Florence and Berlin ; the latter post he
filled up to January, 1825, when he obtained his
diplomatic pension. The noble earl was a lord-in-
waiting to the Queen from September, 1841, to
January,lB49. In November, 1850, he was appointed
vice-lieutenant of the county of Mid-Lothian, of
which county he was made a deputy-lieutenant in
1840. He is succeeded in the family honmrs and
estates by his eldest son, Lord Aberdour, born 13th
April, 1818, and formerly in the 71st Foot. The pre-
sent peer married in 1844 Miss Watson, daughter of
Mr. James Watson, of Saughton, Mid Lothian, who
died in 1850 ; and secondly, in 1853, Lady Alice
Lambton, third and youngest daughter of the late
Earl of Durham.

Mr. Jour SEWARD, the eminent engineer, died on
the 26th ult. Mr. Seward's improvements in marine
engines, in the design and construction of which he
was extensively engaged, won for him a deservedly
high reputation.

THE BLOOMSBURY FIRE.

A TERRIBLE fire occurred in Gilbert-stree.;, Blooms.
bury, on the morning of Sunday last, whereby fifteen
lives were lost. The fire broke out in a small
house, No. 23, the upper rooms of which were in-
habited by three families, numbering in all twenty
persons, the ground floor being used as a carpenter's
workshop by a man named Stubbs. The fire was
first discovered by a policeman going his rounds ; he
instantly gave the alarm, and sent off to the Fire
Brigade stations. The flames, however, spread
so rapidly, that before the engines and fire-
escape arrived, the lives of all in the house
were in great peril. A builder's ladder was happily
found at hand, and placed at once against the first-
floor windows, from whence one family, consisting of a
man named Eastwood, his wife and three children,
were rescued by a man named Curl!, a glazier.
The flames were so fierce and the smoke so
dense, that all attempts to get at anyone else
failed, and though the fire-escape arrived shortly
afterwards, the flames had got such a complete
mastery over the front of the house that it could not
be used in that direction. An attempt to rescue
the other people in the house by getting in at the
back failed, because the house had been built without
back windows. Neither was there a trapdoor to the
roof. One young man, Smith, had thrown himself
from the top window into the street below, and was
so frightfully injured that be died shortly afterwards.
The engines arrived shortly, but the fire had ob-
tained such a complete mastery over the house that
the end was at hand. In a few minutes the roof fell
in, carrying with it the second and first floors, and
burying the fourteen unconscious inmates in the
ruins. In about two hours the flames were sufficiently
subdued to permit a search for the dead. Fourteen
bodies were found—viz., Richard Smith, aged 40
years; Harriet Smith, 41 ; Richard Smith, 17;
Harriet Smith, 15 ; Alfred Smith, 14 ; Henry Smith,
12 ; Walter Smith, 10 ; Thomas Smith, 7 ; Mary
Smith and Maria Smith (twins), 5; Jessie Smith, 2;
John Hedger, 53; Elizabeth Hedger, 50; William
Hedger, 20; and John Hedger, 13 :

The spectacle of their remains would shock the
stoutest heart, but, notwithstanding the hideous deformity
of countenance occasioned by tho subsequent action of the
fire and their entombment beneath the ruins of the fillet'
house, there was yet an almost pleasing development of
tranquillity and rest. The complete relaxation of the
muscles, the natural position of the hands and arms,
forcibly illustrated the composure and soundness of their

thighs.

327

sleep. The little children especially, if one could have
divested his mind of the fearful realization of death, were
in a posture indicative in the extreme of the naturalnestv
of infant sleep. There was no evidence of a struggle, or
an effort even to prolong life, but a manifest insensibility
to dangers which they never knew. The youngest child
seems to have raised its little arms as if suddenly aroused,
and then as suddenly to have become unconscious and to
have died. They in all probability, with two or three ex-
ceptions, died in sleep. The exception, however, is a pain-
ful one, in the case of Mrs. Smith, whose body, though
much more burnt than any et the others, indicates every
spoearance of having died an agonizing death. One foot
and a great portion of the leg were entirely consumed, and
the body so much charred as to be fearfully disfigured ; yet
there was a rigid contraction of the limbs, as if distorted
by agony, and a convulsive grasping of the hands and
fingers. Mr. Smith was evidently in a sound sleep, and
as he lay in his natural position in the bed, so he was dis-
covered in the ruins in which he and his family were thus
hurried to eternity. Mrs. Hedger, it is supposed, was en-
deavouring to meke her escape, as her body was found in
the narrow passage of the house.

As the bodies were found, they were placed in shells
and conveyed to St. Giles's Workhouse :

In one coffin lie two poor little fellows (Smiths) about
five years old, said to be twins, not much scorched, but
with bleeding wounds upon their foreheads, as if they had
been killed by the fall ; in another coffit, lies a boy, ap-
parently twelve or fourteen years old, whose wrists appear
to be a good deal scorched, but who also seems to have
been alive when the house fell in. This poor little fellow
has his trousers just drawn upon his legs, as if awakened
and preparing for escape, when death overtook him. In
another coffin lies Mrs. Hedger, shrivelled and mummy-
like, dead apparently from scorching and auflocation ;
and in other coffins lie other members of both families,
who appear to have received more injury from the fill
than the fire.
It is said that the whole building rested upon wooden
" story-posts," and when these were burnt tl,rougb,
it of necessity came down. The want of windows at
the back is also commented upon as a bad feature in
the construction of the house.

A coroner's inquest was opened on Tues-
day, but not the slightest clue to the origin of the
fire was obtained. Gas was not burned in the house,
and no light had been seen in the house after en
early hour in the evening, but two of the deceased
lodgers, Messrs Hedges and Smith, appear to have
come home at a late hour on Saturday night. The
evidence of the man Eastwood was extremely in-
teresting; he lived on the first floor, and was sleeping
with his family in the back room :
My wife woke me in bed, and said, " Hark John, there's
a row : what's that cracking noise ?" When I bad opened
my eyes, I said " Dear me, the place is full of anioke." We
slept in the hack room. My wife, myself, and one child
were in the back room, and my two other children in the
front room. I jumped out of bed, opened the door between
the two rooms, and saw the reflection in Gilbert•street. I
then went up to the front-room window looking into the
street. When I got there I saw the flames curling up to-
wards the room next to ours, which was directly over the
carpenter's shop. I then went back to the bed room door,
and said, "My dear, jump up. for it's our place on fire." I
then ran on to the landing, but directly 1 opened the door
the flames rushed in. I immediately shut and locked it to
prevent my wife, in her excitement, from attempting to
escape that way, as it was quite impossible to do so at ttlst
time. I then rushed to the front window and opened it,
got out over the balcony railing in front of it, and callttl
out for help. Before I went the first time I had heard the
policeman's rattle. That was immediately after my wife
had sue me. I pointed to a ladder opposite, which wrs
in my sight, but not in the sight of the people below, anti
they went and got it. When it was raised up, we all got
out in safety. When I got my last little boy ..ut the room
was full of smoke, but by stooping down I could ree, auii
as I left the room the last time, I could see the flames
coming through the door.

This witness "firmly believed " that the fire origin-
ated in the carpenter's shop, and grounded this
belief upon the direction from which the flames firAt
appeared to him. Stubbs, the cat penter, who occu-
pied the ground•floor, had not been there since
Saturday morning. There were no combustibles in
the shop, but there were " shavings" and " a box of
lucifers." Kennings, a fireman attached to the
Chandos-street station, said ho had seen "many
hundreds of houses burned," but he had never seen
one fall in "so quickly." The coroner extracted from
this witness the fact of there being no organizatiera
among the different fire-brigade stations, so ~v, in
event of fire, to secure rapid communication front
one station to the other. After a lengthened ex-
amination of several other witnesses who were present
at the fire, but none of whom threw any light upon
its origin, the inquiry, w order to admit of a post
mortem examination of the bodies, was adjourned till
Tuesday, the 13th of April.

From additional information obtained, it appear;
tbat when Richard Smith, the younger, was in the
University-hospital, he was asked by Mr. Jessett, the
assistant house-surgeon, how the accident bad
happened, and that be replied "that there had heed
a fire, and that he had jumped out of the thst floor
window." This statement is in direct
the statement of Daniel Sullivan, '

The boy, tco, was much burned about

ct opposition to
the policeman.
tt the legg and