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Written as a Letter to the Editor — The Bulletin — Sydney, NSW, 5 January 1889

Man was given the earth to live on, but in the city Greed demands that he should live above it and beneath it, because one square inch of land costs gold, and gold is dearer than human life. Man can live a certain depth below the surface of the earth, and Greed demands that he should do so. Hence the thousands that live in the cellars and dens of our great cities. The day has yet to come when dwellings may be dug so deep that mechanical means may become necessary to supply the dwellers therein with air. We may yet have to pay for the air we breathe or have it cut off like gas. But Greed is never satisfied; a house may be twelve storeys high, and yet the very space within the roof is coveted. The ingenuity of the architect is taxed to save every inch that can yield rent, and thus we have rows of garret windows with the sinister look of evil things.

It may be contended that garrets are not a source of danger in case of fire, but that on the contrary they often facilitate the escape of such inmates as may be cut off from below, by affording them a passage to the roof. This is very true in cases where the roofs are provided with parapets or other means of escape, but even as we write we can see a row of three garret windows that would afford to fire-imprisoned inmates a passage to a more damnable trap than Satan could invent. A roof so sloping that a cat could not climb it, with three garret windows out of reach of the ridge and of one another. The roof, unprotected by a parapet, goes down to a line of flimsy guttering that would scarcely bear the weight of a hen, let alone afford a footing for a man. Beneath this is a wall forty or fifty feet high, unbroken by a balcony or roof of any kind. The number of garret roofs and walls of this description is unlimited; you may see them in every Sydney street.

Adjoining the house of which we have just spoken are the blackened walls and rafters of the building that was the scene of a terrible fatality on Christmas morn. The incident is not likely to fade quickly from the minds of those who witnessed it.

The sun is just rising on our sunny Christmas Day when the people of Church Hill are aroused from their slumbers by terrible cries that ring out clear across the house-tops. A man, surrounded by fire and smoke, is clinging to a garret window, caught in the awful trap that the carelessness of landlords and builders has made for him. In a voice that sounds like the voice of a madman he calls on man and God for aid. Men who see him there shudder, and women faint, or wrap clothes around their heads to shut out the terrible cries that shall sound in their ears for many long years to come. The poor fellow on the roof gallantly endeavours to draw up the other man, who has just climbed out of the window. A parapet or bar of iron connecting these windows with the adjoining roof would now save two lives, but these things cost gold, and gold is dearer than human life.

The last man slips and falls headlong. The other, stupefied by the shock and exhausted by heat and smoke, soon ceases his mad endeavour to tear up the slates and is seen to totter. Then turn your eyes away. They are carried out limp and crushed and bleeding, but if their death will be the means of bringing architects and builders to a sense of their responsibility, or the Government to a sense of theirs, it cannot be said that they died in vain.

And now a word about the Fire Brigade. The Brigade people will probably shirk at the responsibility of their late arrival and the absence of the fire-escape by saying that the people of the boarding house failed to report the fire in time — that they wasted time in the hopeless endeavour of trying to extinguish it. But do the Fire Brigade people always expect to be informed of that which it is their duty to know? Where is the watchman, the lookout and the alarms? Is it not a shame that in these days of mechanical science a house may burn for half-an-hour without a single Brigade being aware of it? Let the Brigade people and their admirers say what they like, the facts are the same: two men had been killed at the burning of the Wentworth boarding house and a woman saved before a brass helmet was seen in the distance. It’s time people got to know that it is sheer nonsense to expect the inmates of a burning house to do the right thing at the right time. But it is hopeless to expect the Government to attend to these matters in days when the citizens have to roll up in a mob and threaten Parliament House in order to make their representatives do their duty.