2-888-522 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Great Fire at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1850. 'The premises consumed consisted of a building rented by shopkeepers, one portion being occupied as a grog-shop...Mrs. Craddock and her family found their retreat cut off by the staircase being in flames, and had to be lowered from the front gallery in a sheet..., the fire is not yet extinct; the engines still continue to pour in floods of sea-water from the wharf hard by...The Government Bonding warehouse, in the next block of buildings, was opened, and the rum, amounting to eighty puncheons, rolled to the quay, to be plunged into the sea, if requisite. The conduct of the lower orders exceeds all praise; nearly all the puncheons of rum were rolled away by women, and they performed at least an equal half of the duty in supplying the engines; and the next day scarcely an article was missing'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.