1927: Derry Fire Inquest
Londonderry Police Court was crowded yesterday afternoon, when the inquest on the seven victims of the disastrous fire was opened by Mr John Tracy, City Coroner. The deceased Annie Cowley, her daughters, Veroni, aged 7; Isabella, aged one year; Mrs May McCourt, aged 29, and Mrs Cowley's sons - James, aged four, and Edward, aged 16; and Lily McCourt, 10 months, daughter of Mrs McCourt and granddaughter of Mrs Cowley.
The Mayor (Senator Hamilton) occupied a seat beside the Coroner.
The Coroner said that was one of the most appalling tragedies that had ever taken place in the city.
Dr W A McCurdy said the deaths were due to suffocation, due to burning.
Constable H T Cairns stated that at four o'clock on Thursday afternoon he heard the cry of ''fire'' and ran to Butcher Street. Smoke was issuing from a flat above the drapers shop of Mr A Byrne and from the top storey. He saw what appeared to be a woman through the smoke at the upper window.
The woman, the constable continued, shouted ''murder.'' There were men with blankets in the street below calling to the woman to jump and throw the babies out. The woman made no attempt to jump, but suddenly she disappeared.
Witness tried to get through the hall, but could not as the place was a roaring furnace. Civilians procured a ladder and a fireman went up to the first storey. He was just able to go above the shop when he seemed to be overcome and fell down the ladder.
Witness then went up the ladder and broke a window on the second storey. He went into the house, and a civilian, Michael Phelam, came in after him. The ladder just reached to the window on the second storey. Below the window where the woman was seen witness and Phelam crawled about the room, which was full of smoke. They called out asking if anyone was inside, but received no response.
Owing to the flames and smoke, witness continued, they had to come out again. They then went to the back of the premises and mounted the roof, whence they reached a lobby on the top storey. They broke a window and tried to get through, but the lobby was a mass of flames.
All this occurred, witness said, before the arrival of the Fire Brigade. When they got to the street the Brigade had just arrived. Witness pointed out to a member of the Brigade the window at which he had seen the woman. The Brigade immediately put an escape up to the window and did all they could to obtain entrance to the room, but they were unable to do so until the fire was subdued.
A party of the Royal Ulster Rifles who had travelled from Palestine to spend a short leave at home, arrived at Belfast yesterday in the MV Ulster Prince. There were some 140 men in the party.
Although it was a wet, dismal morning - ''just like Ulster, but good to see,'' one of them remarked to a News Letter reporter - their homecoming certainly did not make them feel that they had been forgotten. The band of the 2nd Battalion was on the quayside to play them ashore with Off, Off, Said The Stranger, their regimental march; and a number of officers, beside friends and relatives, waited in the cold sheds to greet them.
Among the officers were Lieut-Colonel J Lucy, OBE, OC, of the 128th Training Battalion; Colonel H R Charley, CBE, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the RUR Association, whose son, Captain W H R Charley, arrived; Major D R Dunseath, MC; Major M L Cummings, NID, RUR; Captain D McIntyre, Adjutant to the 128th Training Battalion.
For those men who had to get to rail or bus station to complete their journey home transport had been arranged, and men who had some time to stay in Belfast were invited by Colonel Lucy to Holywood Barracks for a meal.
The men were under the charge of Major A M Gaffikin, the senior officer. When their leave, about 14 days, is completed, they will return to their unit at Donnington, Shropshire.
I got my first chain letter the other day - Bangor postmark, typed envelope, anonymous hand-written message inside, consisting of a prayer which will bring me luck if I send it on to six other people, and a great deal of ill-fortune if I break the chain. Someone died six days after he decided that the buck stopped with him, I have been warned.
The mixture of prayer and curse reminds me of a Christmas card which a Belfast sports writer once received from America, full of robins, holly, mistletoe, bells and everything. Inside were verses that began ''May the bleeding piles torment you, may the corns grow on your feet'' and went on to invoke maledictions.
The chain letter does not delineate in such detail the consequences of ignoring it. Its menace is more veiled, although none the less formidable, I am sure.
Well, I shall have to risk it. Most of my correspondents know that I am not even very good at matching one letter with another. As for six for one it is out of the question.
It's a pleasant exercise, all the same, to toy with the idea of choosing half a dozen recipients. They would not be people I like, because the threat in the chain letter is stronger than the promise of fame and fortune.
The fanatics who denounce me as an agent of Rome, Moscow and Gerry Fitt - at least one of them deserves the message and he would probably be daft enough to be worried by it. But then they have this phobia about putting their names to anything. You can't write to ''Anon, Bigotsville.''
Nor can you reply to the fellow - or babe - who sent you the chain letter, sort of hoist him or her with his or her own petard. Because he or she has failed to append his or her John or Jane Hancock.
Now that I have emerged from that bisexual maze, I realise that the most sensible thing to do would be to ferret out the names of six people in the Inland Revenue Department. If they could be put on to writing chain letters they mightn't have time to send out final demand notices.
But, of course, I shall not bother anybody, being altogether too nice a chap. Meanwhile I hope I have nothing to lose but my chains.
