In the dark of dawn on an early spring day in the year 1908, Nina Larocque finished breast feeding 7 month old Willard. She laid him, sleeping, in his bassinet, turned the flame down on the kerosene lamp and went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for her husband Jim.
Twenty four year old Jim, a grocery store owner, followed by the family dog Laddie, came into the kitchen just as Nina was putting his breakfast on the table. He asked Nina if she was going to join him for breakfast, but she said she wanted to get a load of laundry done so she could hang it out before Willard awakened. She would eat after that if time allowed.
Jim left the house most mornings near seven AM or there abouts. It took a good twenty minutes to a half an hour to walk up to his store on Ford St.; giving himself time to get things ready before he opened at eight o'clock. When he left, Laddie was asleep under the kitchen table, Nina was already out in the back yard hanging up the clothes, and Thelma, his oldest, was still upstairs asleep.
When he closed the door behind him, as he left the house, Thelma heard the door close and came down the stairs at a run calling after him wanting to say 'bye. The commotion woke Laddie who came running to see what Thelma was yelling at and as he came by Willard's bassinet his vigorously wagging tail struck the oil lamp knocking it on the floor spilling kerosene all over the carpet and under the bassinet and caught fire immediately. Thelma frightened out of her wits ran to the kitchen yelling to her mother only to find her mother not there. Nina, hearing all the yelling, called to her that she was in the yard. Thelma rushed out through the back door and told her mother in a rush of breathless words that the dog had set the floor on fire under Will's bed.
When Nina rushed in to the baby's bassinet she found it fully inflames and Willard's cries/ screams were bone chilling.
Labels: mag 34 willard james Nina larocque fire kerosene lamps
posted by rel at 3:09 PM
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