Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #153: GEC and the Fourth Floor Girls (The Mansion House Fire)24/11/2021 
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67 Queen Victoria Street as it looks today
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE:
Today’s episode is about a fire in an old building fitted with modern innovations to ensure its workers safety, and although everyone should have survived, it was the old-fashioned attitude towards one particular group of workers, which led to ten unnecessary deaths.
THE LOCATION
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MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End. Today’s episode is about a fire in an old building fitted with modern innovations to ensure its workers safety, and although everyone should have survived, it was the old-fashioned attitude towards one particular group of workers, which led to ten unnecessary deaths. Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide and this is Murder Mile. Episode 153: GEC and the Fourth Floor Girls. Today I’m standing on Queen Victoria Street by St Paul’s Cathedral; the furthest east we’ve been so far, being two streets north-east of the hanging of God’s banker Roberto Calvi, but very little else. Situated by Mansion House tube, sits the busy intersection between Cannon Street and Queen Victoria Street. It’s a dull vague space with little to see, so you’re more likely to pass through it, than to stop. Like most junctions, it is dotted with every conceivable safety measure to ensure you’re less likely to get hurt having not paid a basic level of attention for doing something as simple as walking. Therefore, there’s signs which say stop, go, slow, no-stop, no-go, no-slow, exit, entry, one-way, no-way and naff off. There’s hand-rails to hold, foot prints to follow, bollards at a good height to rest your bollocks on, and even a flashing green man to show you when to walk and (for the real thickies) how to walk. Often, this over-cautious molly-coddling by the Health & Safety Executive does feel like we’re one step away from every pedestrian being fitted with an inbuilt system which issues a cacophony of warnings each second of our lives; like ‘look left’, ‘mind the car’, ‘avoid poop’, ‘oh-oh charity mugger’, ‘BO ahead, limit breathing’, ‘cake is a no-no fatty’, ‘warning potentially unnecessary purchase ahead’, and for a certain niche subset of man-servants ‘get Eva her 3pm cocktail now, or feel her wrath you loser’. It may seem like over-kill, but what we forget is that before any laws are changed and measures are set-up, usually a tragic accident will have happened first. Pedestrian crossings and speed-cameras are often as a result of a loss of life, being a grim memorial to a life lost and the price we pay for progress. At 67 Queen Victoria Street now sits a six-storey concrete building. The original has long-since been demolished, but the third and fourth floors were once owned by GED, the General Electric Company; an innovative maker of electrical devices (like fire alarms) in an era long before electricity was standard in many homes, who prided themselves on their practices designed to ensure the safety of its workers. So, when a fire broke out on the second floor, everyone should have survived... only they didn’t. As it was here, on Monday 9th June 1902, that although the company’s methods were modern, their old-fashioned attitude towards the fourth-floor girls led to ten easily-avoidable deaths. (Interstitial) In 1901, Queen Victoria died, and although the country was gripped in grief for our then-longest reigning monarch, the impending coronation of Edward VII would mark the start of a modern era... The final years of the Victorian era saw many innovations we take for granted today; beginning with the first electric light bulb invented by Joseph Swann in 1878, the first electric iron by Henry Seeley in 1882, the fuse by Thomas Edison in 1890, the first electric kettle by Arthur Leslie Large in 1891, and the first transmission of radio waves in 1901, with many more modern inventions to swiftly follow. Electricity heralded a new era of innovation, it was rightly seen as the way of the future, and although most of London’s street-lamps had been converted from sodium and gas to electricity lamps by 1881 – the same year that Britain built its first public generator at Godalming - the country’s power supply wouldn’t be standardised and co-ordinated until 1926. By 1919, only 6% of homes had electric lighting, a prohibitive luxury reserved for only the most affluent. So, by 1901, even Buckingham Palace had only had been illuminated by electricity for the last thirteen years. But it would come to the masses. One such company ahead of the curve was GEC, the General Electric Company; a business similar in name and in spirit with the American multinational partly co-founded by Thomas Edison. Established by German immigrant Gustav Binswanger, G Binswanger & Co was already a successful electrical goods wholesaler, when in 1886 he partnered up with entrepreneurial salesman Hugo Hirst to produce the first catalogue of electrical appliances; such as bells, telephones, switches and wiring. Trading all across the world, the General Electric Company Ltd was formed, it became a private limited company and established its head-office on the top three floors of 67 Queen Victoria Street in London; with admin and executives on the third floors, and product assembly and packing on the fourth. Innovations in electricity was progressing at a previously unparalleled speed, as each company strove to be the first to invent the next mass-market appliance for the modern household. But electricity was dangerous and everybody knew it, as a single spark could ignite a devastating fire, especially in a city like London with so many old buildings constructed out of highly flammable materials. As a stark reminder, GEC was just half-a-mile from Pudding Lane, the epicentre of the 1666 Great Fire of London. It takes an event of such devastation to change laws, and – although the blitz helped form today’s fire brigade - between both of those events, little innovation had been made to prevent and control fire. It was said “firemen were asked to fight twentieth-century perils with nineteenth-century machinery”. As modern methods of construction meant that buildings grew ever taller, the out-dated appliances the fire crew used remained the same. The ineffective Factory and Workshop Act of 1895 had left the installation and regulation of safety equipment to the companies themselves, and - until 1938 and the creation of the Auxiliary Fire Service - fire crews were privately owned, many by insurance companies. Therefore, the fire-crew’s job wasn’t to protect lives, but to protect the buildings and its contents. Thankfully, GEC was a modern company who were better prepared to defend against fire than most businesses in that era, and even by today’s standards. Proudly proclaiming to be makers of ‘all things electric’, GEC was one of the first buildings in London to be fitted with a fire alarm, with ‘break glass buttons’ on every floor and in every stairwell, it had heavy iron fire doors between buildings, the staff conducted fire drills on a weekly basis, they had their own fire hoses connected to an endless water supply being two streets from the River Thames, and just 100 feet away was their own fire brigade. If a fire were to break-out at 67 Queen Victoria Street, everyone should have survived... ...but not every worker at GEC was treated as equally as the others. The day was Monday 9th June 1902 and the weather was bright with very little wind, as before 8am, a flank of workers exited the Metropolitan District Railway at Mansion House station. For the executives and admin staff employed by GEC, the location was perfect as this five-storey half-block wide building was both the train terminus and their workplace, with a Spiers & Pond restaurant above for luncheon. But for those less-well-paid workers - like the assembly girls on the fourth floor - many would arrive by public omnibus or by foot, dressed in a neat pinafore with their sandwiches wrapped in a cloth rag. The ground, first and second floors were occupied by Messrs Murdoch Nephews - purveyors of fancy goods, the kind of frivolous non-essential trinkets used to make a modern home look nice - with an enclosed central stairwell leading to the top two floors, owned by the General Electric Company. Being typically hierarchical, execs and admins were on third with the manual workers on fourth. Each floor was split, with the seniors sat by the windows and the juniors stuck in the shadows. This was not uncommon as being in keeping with the very Victorian class system; separate bathrooms, eating areas and even entrance doors ensured that those deemed important weren’t sullied by less vital staff. Only the workers wouldn’t have time to worry about things as trivial as equality, as with King Edward VIIth coronation two weeks’ away, GEC had to finish an order of electric street decorations. Desperate for cheap labour, they keep costs down by hiring the poor, the young and – of course – females. Hidden away on the top floor was the work-room, where GEC’s products were assembled and packed. In the middle, a large spiral staircase split the room in half; with the men sat separately, as - being staff – both their sex and seniority afforded them a better place to sit, beside the wood-burning stove. Where-as the thirteen young girls sat at a long bench, silently assembling the light’s floral wreaths. That day though, there was only one man at work, David Eveson, who managed the thirteen girls, many of whom – hired very recently - were new to the department, the company and its practices. Around the bench included 18-year-olds Violet Hodgson from Peckham and Florence Amor of Forest Gate, 17-year-old Mabel Amos from Clapham, 16-year-olds Mable Garrett from Camberwell and Lily Mansell of Brixton, 15-year-olds Jessie Hastie of Camberwell and Ada Steel from East Ham, and fresh out of school, 14-year-old Phyllis Elliott from Hackney and Gladys Chambers from Clapton Park. All were young girls earning a pittance to help their struggling parents feed and clothe their siblings. The most senior there - but far from the oldest - was 15-year-old Alice Thompson; one of four from Brixton who was hired 18 months earlier as an Electric Light Assistant, with her role to screw together the brass and porcelain parts before packaging a dozen completed lamps into a cardboard box. But that day, Alice would be forced to undertake a new job... ...one she hadn’t sign up for, but if she hadn’t, more girls would perish. As inequality at GEC wasn’t just as simple as what door you walked in or who sat nearest the stove, as the temporary staff and especially the young girls were not given the same basic training as the men, this included the assembling of lights, the repairing of circuits and – most important of all – fire safety. On the surface, GEC looked like a modern progressive company, but not everything was as it seemed. Fire escapes had recently been introduced to the UK from New York where they had been successfully used on inner-city tenements, so they could have fitted one to the building’s flat-front and thin ledges, or even at its unseen rear? But they didn’t. It was considered an eye-sore and an unnecessary expense. It’s true that GEC was one of the first companies in London to fit a fire-alarm system, only – two years since Pearson’s had installed it – they were yet to connect the switchboard to the local fire station. So, although the alarms would sound, no fire-fighters would be alerted until someone saw smoke. And that included their own fire brigade, situated two doors away at 71 Queen Victoria Street. They were a small crew of part-time fire-fighters working as full-time engineers whose ancient equipment was designed to cope with fires at a time when commercial premises were three-stories high, not five. And yes, each floor had been fitted with a ‘break glass’ button in case of emergencies, but only senior staff were trained and authorised to use them. To the regular workers, these were just decorations. Fire drills were regularly held, but only after working hours when most of the staff had gone home, and with the fourth-floor girls only ‘temporary staff’, they weren’t deemed ‘essential’ enough to train. So, in a company where different bells were used to communicate between different departments – with bells for deliveries, phone calls, tea-breaks or shift changes - only those deemed important to the company knew how to differentiate between the office bells, the warehouse bells and the fire bells. As an employer, GEC was regularly assessed by the Factories Inspectorate and each time they passed with flying colours, but as the fourth floor was not officially a designed workspace - it was really just a storage room repurposed for producing decorations for the King’s Coronation – it had no emergency signage and was the only floor in the building with no copies of the evacuation procedure on the wall. As the longest-serving of the girls, 15-year-old Alice Thompson was savvy enough to eavesdrop on the men’s chatter and pick-up a few titbits. So, she knew about the three ladders hidden under the bench in the packing room, but she didn’t know about the trapdoor leading from the fourth floor to the roof. And like the other girls, Alice had neither heard of nor was informed that – in case of an emergency – each floor had eight designated ‘fire police’ whose job it was to ensure that the staff were evacuated. Theirs was a man called John Tyndall; but they had never met him and they had never heard of him. This was a disaster waiting to happen... and it is about to get worse. Working with Messers Murdoch Nephews to create the coronation lights, the boxed-up floral wreaths on the second-floor were made of a mix of linen and wax. They were pretty, durable and waterproof, but when exposed to a naked flame, the wreaths didn’t just blacken or burn like any other decoration, a single heat source would cause them to explode in a flash of brilliant white light, like gunpowder. When questioned at the inquest, other than the electric lights and wires in the store-room, there were no other heat sources, but some staff did admit to smoking on the premises – which was forbidden. But that wasn’t the worst. As in that room, GEC had stored what they described as “a small quantity of liquid”, but was actually 76 kilos of Commudine – a highly flammable and very combustible fluid. The fuel had been stocked, the touchpaper had been set. and it was only a matter of time... ...before someone would die. The day had been uneventful for the girls on the fourth-floor. Assembling the wreaths had kept them busy and with all but a handful of the men no-where to be seen, they could chatter a little louder. One floor below, the admin staff were packing-up, but the assembly workers still had a few hours to do. At roughly 5pm, a fire broke-out in the second-floor stock-room. Whether its ignition was caused by an electrical spark or a carelessly discarded cigarette is unknown, but nobody noticed the blaze and the alarms wouldn’t activate until someone pushed a button, having seen a fire or smelled the smoke. So, for the next fifteen minutes... nothing happened, except the swelling of an angry inferno. At 5:15pm, a fire alarm was tripped, and the building echoed to the shrill of a persistent piercing bell. Trained to react, David Eveson, who managed the girls, recognized the bell and swiftly left via the stairwell, taking fourteen-year-old Stanley Chapman with him, but leaving the thirteen girls behind. Having never heard that particular bell before and smelling no smoke, being too afraid to leave their posts for fear of losing their badly paid jobs, the girls took a tea break and stayed on the fourth floor. With alarms ringing, four of the eight designated ‘fire police’ on shift began to evacuate the building’s 200 employees. They were methodical and calm to ensure no-one got hurt. Only John Tyndall, whose job was to clear the fourth-floor, only made it as far as the second step up the stairs, from where he shouted “Fire! Fire! Evacuate!”, except his words which were lost amid the alarm’s din. And ordered by his seniors to undertake a more vital task, he assisted in shuttling the accountancy ledgers across the street to the City & Midland Bank - putting a few books full of figures over the lives of the girls. It was a journey he would undertake three times, before he realised his tragic mistake... ...thankfully, there were others who took their roles seriously. The second the alarm sounded, the 25-strong crew of GEC’s own fire-brigade sprang into action, being co-ordinated by its captain, Max Byng. Alerted towards the second floor stock-room, Charles Frederick Trippe passed through the heavy iron double door connecting 67 and 69 and witnessed the inferno. The second floor was the epitome of hell; as acrid air swirled with thick black smoke which whiffed of gunpowder, heaving waves of reddish orange flames licked the dark peeling walls like the devil’s own tongue, and stacked boxes of wreaths exploded in white hot flashes, making breathing impossible and the stairwell impenetrable, even for a moderately experienced fire-fighter like Trippe. Outside on Queen Victoria Street, a crowd had begun to gather; a crew of fire-fighters, numerous nosy bystanders all gorping at the flames, and an excitable mess of close-to 200 employees, all recounting their own exciting tale of what might have been... but wasn’t. Doing his job, Captain Byng asked the lead of the ‘fire police’ “is everyone accounted for?”, and he was told they were, but this was untrue. From the street, through the rising flames and up beyond the thickening smoke, bystanders began to scream, as at the windows of the fourth-floor, the terrified faces of thirteen young girls peered down. The girls were trapped by smoke and heat which slowly filled the stifling room. Taking control, although only 15, Alice had led the girls down fiery stairwell towards an exit, but as they descended – being blinded by smoke, choked by fumes and with the sizzling hot metal of every handrail and door-knob scorching their skin – they were forced to retreat back-up to the fourth floor. Ironically, they had three ladders (which Alice knew of) and an escape route was just a few feet away. But having never been told of the trapdoor leading up-and-out to the roof, here they were trapped; stuck on the top floor of a flat-fronted building with no fire escape and windows with very thin ledges. The terrified girls of the fourth floor could do nothing but rely on the fire-fighters... ...a team of courageous but badly-funded and tragically equipped fire-fighters whose hoses had only enough pressure to pump water to the third floor, whose ladders could only reach to the second floor, and – having been only partially installed by Pearson’s two years earlier – the system wasn’t connected to the switchboard, which meant that the professional fire-fighters were not aware of the fire. Innovation had failed, but having been notified by Captain Byng, within minutes the professional crews of both Watling Street and Southwark fire stations were alerted and some were already on the scene... ...but even that wouldn’t be enough. Created and funded by an amalgam of 36 insurance companies, the Metropolitan Fire Brigade and the London Salvage Corps had what was described as “a deplorable lack of equipment”, with engines so old-fashioned that only “a museum would be glad to get London’s archaic fire-fighting appliances”. Their ladders were also ten-feet too-short; their engines lacked the necessary pressure to hit their marks, their hoses struggled to fully extinguish the flames and the ‘jump sheet’ (a twenty-foot-square patch of canvas designed to make a fall from a five-storey building survivable) - that was missing, But this didn’t prevent their bravery. Fighting the intense heat and smoke, one officer crawled on his belly to rescue Emily Johnson, dragging the unconscious girl up to the roof. Another called Hillman, dangled precariously from a wire, grabbing one girl from a burning window and lowering her to safety as the flames shot out. Calling out in the darkness and seeing the skylight beginning to collapse, Officer West succeeded in rescuing 17-year-old Mabel Amos from the flames, but she was so taut with terror, the young girl died of heart attack. With the heat and smoke becoming too intense for the firemen, they were unsure if any would survive, and with a 70-foot ladder on-route from Southwick, by the time that arrived, it may be too late. With quick thinking, a bystander ripped the tarpaulin off a fruit-vendor’s cart and gripped tight by two dozen firemen, they had made a makeshift ‘jump sheet’. “Jump!”, the crowds willed the girls, “Jump!” they called, but through the smoke, five-stories high, the sheet looked no bigger than a postage stamp. Five were trapped, four girls and a boy; as the flames licked their skin, the heat caused their clothes to combust and the smell which stung their nostrils was the scorching of their own hair. All wept and all prayed, as these children were given an impossible choice – burn to death, or jump into oblivion? It takes real courage to make that kind of life-or-death decision... ...so, it’s no surprise that the first to jump from the burning building was Alice. Smashing the far-west window, Alice perched herself on the thin window ledge; shutting her eyes tight, with her back to the world, she rolled backwards and from five-stories up, she disappeared into the dense smoke. (END) Hitting the sheet dead-centre and escaping with only cuts and burns, as the crowd erupted in cheers, Alice’s bravery encouraged the others to follow. Norah Jones, Emmeline Ambrose and Dora Cutter all survived. Jessie Hastie jumped, as her burning blouse streaked the sky like a firework, and she too was one of the lucky few. But having fainted before she could leap, Phyllis Elliot died inside, and 21-year-old Arthur Paget, a clerk with a widowed mother, jumped but missed the sheet, and died of his injuries. The 70-foot ladder arrived shortly afterwards and rescued those who were trapped on the roof, having escaped via the trap-door. And with the fire extinguished within twenty-minutes, the bodies of seven young girls were later recovered from the charred remains of the building and buried; Mable Garrett, Ada Steel, Lily Amelia Mansell, Gladys Chambers, Phyllis Elliot, Violet Hodgson and Florence Amor. An inquest was held two days later, at the Coroner’s Court in Golden Lane. 65 eyewitnesses gave their testimony, including Alice Thompson who spoke eloquently through her burns, cuts and trauma. After twelve days of testimony, on the 29th July 1902, the court found the London Building Act of 1894 to be inadequate, and recommendations were made to cover existing buildings. No-one was found guilty of manslaughter and although GEC admitted to negligence, a criminal trial was not requested. Except for a privately-funded plaque to two of the girls, a memorial to the dead was never erected at 67 Queen Victoria Street. Today, it is occupied by an office and a Sainsbury’s. And although forgotten, this little-known fire helped to shape many of the innovations and processes we use today to prevent more deaths. So, next time you hear a fire alarm? Forget about how this is a slight inconvenience to your busy day, and instead, think of the tragic souls who have already given their lives to save yours. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. As always, for those of you who enjoy listening to the wibble-wobble of a tubby loser droning on about pointless shit? Join me for a little quiz and some extra details about this case in Extra Mile. A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, who are Tom Gillett, Sarah Freer and Sophie Chadwick. I thank you all. I hope you’re enjoying all the exclusive online treats, the lovely thank you card of goodies you will have received in the post, and (even while Murder Mile is off-line in January & February, when I do my research), you’ll still be receiving lots of goodies to keep you entertained. If that sounds lovely, you too can join Patreon and support the show, via the link in the show-notes. Murder Mile was researched, written and performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Thank you for listening and sleep well. *** LEGAL DISCLAIMER The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. *** LEGAL DISCLAIMER Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totalling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk
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AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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