Boys who Catch Fire

I have returned to the Misery Farm story, picking up speed to about 2 pages a year, I’ll be finished in oh, four hundred years.

I am constantly distracted by, eg, the photocopies I took of relevant articles in the Dover Express and East Kent News, but it’s the little items tucked away on the same page that mesmerize


Here’s one

Dover Express and East Kent News, Friday 16th August 1928

SHEPERDSWELL-

VICARS PROGRESS- We are pleased to announce that the REV. E.C. Robinson is progressing favourably after being burnt on the hands in helping a boy who had caught fire on Wednesday last week. His duties at the church on Sunday last were carried carried out by the Rev P Wilson, who will also conduct the services on Sunday next,



And I can’t stop thinking about this- (of course I found out when I started researching this story last year that accidents illness and death rate in kent in the 1920s were heartbreaking, the accident rate in Snowdon mine itself makes a tour of duty in Iraq look pretty attractive, but on top of that people are dying of infections in the hospital, of a lack of waryness of motorized vehicles, all sorts )

However this newsbite's tone suggests that a boy catching fire is such an everyday occurrence that that there is no need for any How? Where? Who?- Further there is no report on the boy’s condition- I hope that’s because he fared better then his rescuer -But you can’t help thinking that maybe the nuisance caused by burning boys is such that the Express’s readers aren’t too concerned by the fate of another careless hobbledehoy.


In fact come to think of it, my maternal Granny (a Brixton girl who had been hoppicking in Kent 20 years earlier, and a repository of stunning information of questionable use) was quite keen that I learn the proper way to put out a burning person. You wrapped them in your coat and rolled them on the ground, this was fast (cut off oxygen to the fire) and avoided injury to your hands. Gran said it was no use hesitating and worrying about coat loss. Possibly the Rev didn’t have his coat in August. It is fortunate that I have never needed this particular piece of knowledge until now-