Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Society for the Protection of Life from Fire, 5th type, bronze (P.C. William Martin Furness, Ashton-under-Lyne, 5th June 1906.) nearly extremely fine £240-280

Provenance: R. W. Gould Collection, Dix Noonan Webb, September 2002.

William Martin Furness and fellow Police Constable J. W Rollinson were each awarded the Society for the Protection of Life from Fire Bronze Medal, together with a gratuity of one Guinea, ‘for saving six lives from a fire at the Ashton Hotel, Warrington Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, on 5 June 1906’ (Case no. 15,080).

‘It was fortunate that Constables Furness and Rollinson were passing the hotel at about 3.40 a.m., and noticed water trickling underneath the front door on to the step. Suspecting something wrong they at once aroused the occupants just in the nick of time. The water, it turned out, came from the lead piping passing under the floor of the store-room to the bathroom, which, melted by the flames, allowed the water to escape through the roof of the concert room immediately underneath, the floor of which was flooded, the water ultimately finding its way out into the street. Mrs Philburn was the first to awake on hearing the knock, and hastily arranging her attire she hurried downstairs and admitted the constables. The fumes had then found their way into the bedrooms and there was grave danger of the sleepers being asphyxiated.

The Constables, greatly concerned as to their safety, at once entered, and Mrs Philburn ran across the Market Ground in alarm, and gave information to the officer in charge at the police station. The fire bells were rung, and the fire escape at once dispatched, followed immediately by the float and a contingent of firemen, who played upon the flames by powerful jets of water from the mains in Cotton-street and Katherine-street, and after working about 60 minutes the fire was extinguished.

The first thought naturally was as to the safety of the other sleepers. They were awakened by the shouts of “Fire! Fire!” and all rushed downstairs in their night attire with the exception of the little boy Gilbert Philburn, who was sleeping peacefully in a room by himself. Constables Furness and Rollinson with commendable heroism faced the fiery barrier which separated them from the boy, and, darting up the stairway, through the all-devouring mass of flames, along the corridor, Rollinson reached the room, and, snatching up the boy whilst yet asleep, he passed him to Furness, who shielded him as well as he could from the suffocating fumes by means of his thick tunic, and commenced his hazardous return to the foot of the stairs. The flames waged fiercer, and greater difficulties presented themselves, and on the return the plucky constable’s moustache was almost completely burned off, and his nose and face badly scorched. The boy was also scorched about the head’ (North Cheshire Herald, 9 June 1906 refers).

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