An intense, early morning fire at Bowral on January 17, 1890 destroyed four Bong Bong Street shops. That the fire did not spread further and no loss of life occurred were due entirely to the efforts of townspeople, there being no local fire brigade.
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The Bowral Free Press published a detailed report of the fire, most of which was quoted in last week's article. It concluded by noting that the premises consumed were owned by John G Morris, a local auctioneer and alderman, who at the time was away down the coast. One of the destroyed premises was his auction mart, managed by William Stokes, in which Morris kept an office containing an iron safe. After the fire, the safe was secured from the debris, its contents severely scorched.
In the same issue of the paper, Messrs Murray, Pember, Howarth, Jones, Alford, Wallace, Waters, Eames and Prior tendered their thanks "to all those who in any way rendered their valuable assistance in saving goods and property, and endeavouring to extinguish the flames of the large fire".
Read also: Bong Bong Street ablaze in 1890
JG Morris and Co had a new, two-storey auction mart and offices erected on the site. When the building opened in November 1890, erected immediately to the north of Murray's butcher shop where previously stood Prior's saddlery.
A week after the January fire, an inquiry was held at the Grand Hotel before Coroner Andrew Badgery and a jury of 12 men. The inquiry's proceedings, published in the BFP, included the following:
Henry Pember, fruiterer, deposed that he slept at his Wingecarribee Street nursery on the night of the fire as he intended going to Sydney. He went to the station at 3.15am, talked to the porter till 4am (the train was late), and when he went outside he saw smoke going straight up from the Mart. He ran up at once to his shop window but saw no fire in his place. He went on and found Mr Tonks' shop in a blaze, the fire having broken through the window. He went past the Mart but saw no fire there. He gave the alarm up and down the street, and when he got back Messrs Gavin George and JD Sherriff were there, the latter ringing a bell.
William Stokes deposed that he was manager of the Mart; he closed at 6.10pm on the 16th and there was no fire or light whatever left on the premises. The shop was lit entirely by gas chandeliers, with no kerosene used on the premises.
Samuel Tonks, tailor, deposed that he was lessee of one of the shops destroyed. On the 16th he returned at 6pm from an afternoon at the races. When he left his shop again at 7pm the kerosene lights were burning in a chandelier hanging from the ceiling; he returned at around 11pm, and two of the three lamps were then burning; he put the two lights out and went to bed. As Mrs Tonks was in Melbourne, there was no one else on the premises except the Frenchman, who worked for him, sleeping on the back verandah. Being awakened by a terrible crash like the breaking of glass, Tonks went up the passage towards the front shop but, the smoke being so dense, he went back, aroused the Frenchman, and then ran across to fetch his friend Charles Baylis, who was residing at the Royal Hotel.
They saved what they could from the bedroom until, ten minutes later, the fire broke out on the outside of the building and through the roof. When asked about the chandelier in the shop, Tonks said it was fastened to a hook in the ceiling, not by a chain. To the best of his knowledge the lamps went out when he turned them down, but it was possible they did not. There being no shade over the lamps, it would have been possible, if one of them flared, for the blaze to have caught the ceiling.
After all the witnesses were examined, the coroner stated to the jury that the witness Tonks showed gross carelessness in not being able to say positively whether he had put the kerosene chandelier lights out. The jury's verdict was that the premises were totally destroyed by fire; that the said fire originated in the premises occupied by Tonks but how the fire originated, whether accidentally or otherwise, the evidence adduced did not enable them to say.
The 1890 blaze highlighted the critical need for local town fire brigades, Bowral attaining the first for the district in 1893.
- Berrima District Historical & Family History Society - compiled by PD Morton. Part 3 of a 3-part series.
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