Home People Accidents Dog Saves 10 People – “10 Minutes More, We Would Have Been Burnt to Death”

Dog Saves 10 People – “10 Minutes More, We Would Have Been Burnt to Death”

April 1951

South Yorkshire Times April 14, 1951

Dog Saves 10 People

“10 Minutes More, We Would Have Been Burnt to Death”

A dog barked, a man shouted “Fire!” And a Mexborough family of 10 awakened early on Wednesday morning to find part of their home in flames. “10 minutes more and we should all have been burnt to death,” one of them told a “South Yorkshire Times” reporter.

“Sandy’s” Bark the dog who bought was the family whippet, “Sandy,” the man who shouted “Fire” was head of the family Mr Ernest Thompson, 54-year-old ex-miner of 67, Addison Road, who was aroused at 3:30 a.m. by Sandy’s bark.

Downstairs he found the front room blazing. Upstairs is family were in bed. From the bottom of the stairs he gave the alarm on the back bedroom’s son, William, and his daughter-in-law Irene, awoke with their 2½-year-old son Philip.

“I got out of bed, grabbed hold of the youngster, and went to the bedroom door,” 30-year-old William said on Wednesday. “As soon as I got to the door smoke and flames met me. I tried to get downstairs but couldn’t, so I try to get through the bedroom window. I got halfway house and onto the ledge below, but I was carrying Philip and the drop was too deep, so I climbed back in again. I was afraid and might cripple the boy.”

Back in the bedroom he heard his father call that it was safe to go down the staircase, so he and his family escaped that way.

The fibre cables, 21 year old Mrs Mabel Rhodes (daughter of Mr and Mrs Hobson, senior) who ran in her nightdress to the telephone kiosk just up the road. She had been sleeping in the front bedroom with her husband Mr George Rhodes (20), and their three year old daughter, Christine, and nine-month-old son Brian.

“I ran downstairs with the baby and ran to the phone box,” she said.

Dreaming She Thought

When 54-year-old Mrs. May Hobson heard her husband shout “Fire” she thought she was dreaming. Even when she smelled the smoke and had climbed out of bed she thought “It can’t be” and got back in again. But not for long.

Soon she, too, was downstairs and helping the other adults to fight the fire until the arrival of the Brigade

They carried buckets of water from the kitchen and threw the water through the, front door.

Only “casualty” was 15-year-old Donald, younger son of Mr. and Mrs Ernest Thompson, whose ears were scorched when he passed the front room door. A few hours later, however, he was back at his work at Manvers Main Colliery.