Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1893-03-18 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

GREAT FIRE AT BOSTON.  A conflagration which caused extensive damage broke out in Boston on Friday, and was of greater magnitude than any fire which has occurred there since Thanksgiving Day, 1889. It lasted nearly four hours, and destroyed more than a complete square of buildings, including E,ome of the finest of the new structures erected on the site swept clear by the great fire just mentioned. The flames broke out at the Horace Partridge Company's establishment in the Ames Buildim2, and spread with great rai iditv. The Boston firemen were unable to cope with the conflagration, and assistance was hastily summoned from the suburban brigades and the neighbouring cities. The employes of the Horace Partridge Company and of the other firms having premises in the Ames Building passed through a terrible experience. The usual avenues of escape were cut off, and the inmates fled in panic to the windows and the roofs, whence they called frantically to those below for help. Some on the lower storeys escaped by sliding down the tall telegraph poles, others by leaping into blankets and nets, but one or two jumped from the sixth and eighth storey windows on to the pavement with nothing to break their fall, and their bodies were terribly mangled. Others, it is believed, fell back into the flames, or were suffocated by the dense smoke. A great crowd quickly gathered in front of the burning blocks, and the Governor ordered a force of Militia to the scene to preserve order and prevent the firemen from being hindered in their work. Meanwhile the fire continued to spread rapidly from building to building in spite of the immense quantities of water poured on the flames. While the Ames Building, an immense structure, was burning there were repeated explosicns, which, mingled with the shouts of the firemen, the clanging and puffing of the engines, the crash of falling walls, the rumble of hurrying teams, and the surging of the vast crowd, made a scene of indescribable confusion. When at last the conflagration was got under conbrol, three dead bodies were found, and many persons are still missing. The injured number 30. 'The total damage is estimated at 3,000,000d01. Of the killed, the names have as yet been ascertained of only two, namely, Mr. Leonidas Redpath, of Messrs. Redpath Brothers, shoe manufacturers, and Mr. Frederick Meadowcroft. They were both killed by jumping from high windows,  We learn that the Attorney-General and Sir R. Webster each receives a fee of 1,500 guineas as counsel for Great Britain in the Behring Sea Arbitration.—Law Times.  Baron rollout, at the Essex Assizes on Saturday, sentenced Charles Bruce, 30, blacksmith, to 10 years' penal servitude for the attempted murder in December last of Mary Wink, whom he had waylaid as she was driving from Epping Railway Station, and at whom he deliberately fired three shots from a revolver. The poor woman hovered between life and death for several weeks.  Guiseppe Vella, a gunner in the Royal Malta Fencible Artillery, who in January last was found guilty of the murder of a seaman named Goodwin, belonging to her Majesty's battleship Colossus, was executed on Monday.