3-028-387 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ruins of the Star and Garter Hotel at Richmond, 1870. Fire in south-west London. 'Colonel Bull, of the 19th Surrey Volunteers, held the ladder and desired Simpson and Lever to lower themselves from the window above. Simpson did so, by means of a sheet...It was hoped that Lever would have got down in the same manner; but he was observed suddenly to disappear from the window, having probably been suffocated by the smoke and rendered insensible...There were eight engines, one a steam fire-engine; but not a drop of water could be got till four o'clock. A man had to be sent to Battersea, to the offices of the Vauxhall Waterworks Company, before the water was turned on at high pressure so as to reach the level of Richmond-hill. There was a tank on the roof of the hotel, but it was empty. No fire-escape ladder or service of that kind is provided by the local authorities. It was proposed, in August last, to station a fire-escape in the churchyard; but the Vicar, the Rev. C. T. Procter, refused to allow it, though requested to do so by the Vestry, because he thought it would be "a desecration of holy ground by secular and profane uses!"...Mr. Lever who perished in the fire, had been appointed manager but two or three weeks before'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.