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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Julie Turner of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Lewis Boam and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Firshill & Pitsmoor Road History Group.

“Fire-Watchers’ Fire”.

A few days before the incident which I will relate to you took place, I had a dream which was to come uncannily true. I dreamed that I found a woman’s head in a Typhoo Tea Box.

At this time I was engaged in fire-watching duties at the Brightside & Carbrook Co-op Chemists in Infirmary Road. My co fire-watcher was an elderly gentleman by the name of McClennan. One night he had stoked up the fire and we settled down for the night. He was reading the ‘Weekly News’ and I sat opposite dozing. When I awoke I smelled burning soot and tried to alert McClennan to this fact. However I had great difficulty, as he appeared to be asleep with he eyes open. Just as he came to his senses, there was a frantic banging on the backyard gate, which led into Gilpin Lane. It was four steelworkers who had seen that our chimney was on fire and had come to warn us. When we looked up, there were flames shooting out of the chimney pot. At this point, McClennan vanished only to reappear when the fire was out.

The four workmen and myself decided we would tackle the fire and proceeded to find the equipment needed. We found the stirrup pump didn’t work, and the bottom fell out of the bucket. I ran on the road to Westminster Bank and borrowed their stirrup pump and we managed to find another bucket which didn’t leak. By this time, three of the workmen had gone on their way leaving the one remaining and myself to tackle the fire, which we eventually did. At this point McClennan re-appeared. We decided to check the upstairs rooms to make sure nothing was burning up there as in some old buildings one chimney ran into another.

McClennan lent me his torch. I went up first and he followed. The upper rooms hadn’t been used for years and were very dusty and full of junk. We went into one room which was lit by moonlight streaming through the window. In a pool of moonlight on the floor was a Typhoo Tea box and in it was the head of a woman with long blonde hair. I stopped dead in my tracks, recalling with horror my dream. However on closer inspection it was nothing more sinister than the head of a dummy which must have been used in window displays. I must admit that at first it gave me a nasty fright.

McClennan’s reaction was to grunt and say, “Come on, let’s go,” at which he went back downstairs and proceeded to stoke up the fire again. Really we were lucky because if the A.R.P. had spotted the fire, we would have been in big trouble.

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