Horrible Affair at Spaniard’s Bay

DEATH OF A CHILD BY FIRE AND WHAT FOLLOWED.

TILTON, This Afternoon.

The community of Spaniard’s Bay was startled yesterday by the occurrence of another casualty of a horrible and fatal nature. This time it is a little girl four year’s old who is the victim, and who has lost her life, through a want of forethought in leaving children alone with the means of doing themselves an injury.

A woman named Barrett of the above place, having occasion, yesterday morning to leave her home for a while, took her three children -a boy and two little girls-to a neighbor’s house, and there placed them in charge of its only occupant, a young girl. The mother, having left, this girl went to ‘the woods close by to gather fuel, leaving the children alone in the house.

About an hour afterwards a man named Mercer, living within two hundred yards, at work potato digging, was called by the little fellow, who said his sister was on fire. Mercer at once ran to the house, but, to his horror saw a pig, that bad forced in the door, crunching with its teeth the fleshless arm of the child’s remains. The girl in whose charge the children were left says there was no fire in the stove, and the boy can tell nothing of how it originated.

It is supposed that the child must have got matches and accidently set its clothes on fire.

oct 25 1887

Parents have left their children with young people for probably as long as we have existed. Countless generations have been looked after and raised by babysitters. This may have been curiosity on the young girl’s part, children play with matches, if the poor thing did play with them, how long was she gone before the Mercer gentleman was summoned by the boy. As greedy as pigs are, I doubt they would eat something on fire. There was more to this story that this brief disturbing account.