Hull Home Fire

Have you heard about the Hull Home Fire, where 33 people lost their lives?

On February 23, 1948, at 6:30. in the morning, Isaac Hull, a fisherman turned boarding house keeper, was up & about.

It was a bitterly cold day, and he needed an early start at his fire-making.

His Home, located on the West end of New Gower Street, in downtown St. John’s, was jam-packed with 70 boarders, most of them government-supported poor, aged or infirm awaiting admission to public institutions.

Mr. Hull lit the kitchen oil range, then bustled next door to light another in the annex. By the time he was ready to leave the annex, the 15-year-old main building, where he had started the first fire, was doomed.

The kitchen range exploded, and flames spread, blocking the hallways.

On the third floor, boarder Alice Conners smelled smoke. She woke as many as she could.

One aged man and two aged women abandoned hope of rescue and plunged from the third-story windows to their deaths on the sidewalk below.

Firemen came in time to rescue six people through windows and down the ladders before the gale winds whipped flames that enshrouded the building.

The ailing, the infirmed and the bedridden in Hull’s boarding house had no chance.

An hour later, the water the firemen sprayed the building with was shrouded in ice. The building was completely gutted.

Inside, firemen found charred bodies, some of them piled near windows, others still in bed.

In all, 33 people had died. It was the worst fire in Newfoundland since the Knights of Columbus Hostel blaze that claimed 100 lives in 1942.

Two years earlier, the Fire Department and City Council had recommended fire escapes for Hull’s Home.

After the fire, the city launched an inquiry to determine why they had never been installed.

A letter to the editor in the Telegram dated April 24^th, 1948 titled, Enquiry into Hull House Fire, states:

By not issuing a license to the proprietors, the health authorities did not make the institution officially a nursing home. It was just a boarding house catering to those unfortunates, mostly under government protection because they were either aged and indigent with little or no family supporters. The government does not yet possess a building suitably equipped to handle such cases and all the public institutions and hospitals were filled to overflowing or taxed to the utmost with the available staff.

The letter ends with: It simply shows their ignorance, how little they know of the tens of thousands in our forgotten outports. We do not expect a bed of roses under Confederation, we do not expect an earthly paradise, or a Garden of Eden, but we know the great difference between Eden and Gethsemane, so we will vote for Confederation for richer for better. I cannot say for poorer or worse because I am convinced this would be impossible.

I am yours truly, Patrick Antle, Fox Cove, Burin East.