Climo, Photo.
Hardly had the people recovered from the disaster of 1837, when another scourge came upon them causing nearly as much destruction as before. This was in August,
1839, when a fire started in Nelson Street and burned the entire north wharf, both sides of Dock Street, Market Square, with the exception of the house standing on the site now occupied by the Bank of British North America, and a house on Union Street west, occupied by Mr. Hegan. It didn't cross Prince William Street. The old Government House, Union Street, escaped.
The spring of 1841, 17th March, was the scene of another fire, when four lives were lost and much excitement prevailed. Mr. Holdsworth, of Holdsworth & Daniel, (London House) perished while endeavouring to keep off the sparks from the roof of his store.
On the 26th August, a £30,000 fire in Portland carried off sixty houses; and on the 15th November, 1841, a fire broke out on the South Wharf and burned the whole of that wharf together with Peter's Wharf, south side of Water Street, and the large brick Market-house in Market Square, which was occupied by butchers in the ground flat, and used for the civic offices in the second story. This building could have been saved, and was lost through gross carelessness. Incendiarism was rampant and the greatest excitement filled the public mind.
In 1845, 29th July, forty buildings were burned from a fire which took its start in Water Street, and in 1849 the famous King Street fire broke out in a store in Lawrence's building. The Commercial Hotel, then kept by the late Israel Fellows, father of James I. Fellows, Chemist, was destroyed, together with the Tower of Trinity
Church, which had to be pulled down that the Church might be saved. Pilot Mills climbed to the cupola and secured the fastenings by which it was brought to the ground.
The fire in Prince William Street of March 8th of the present year, which broke out in the building owned by the Ennis and Gardner estate, and resulted in the loss of seven lives and nearly two millions of dollars' worth of property, is still fresh in the minds of our readers.
Thus the reader will see that St. John has had a goodly share of the great fires, which, in a moment lay prostrate a city, and plunge her inhabitants into almost hopeless ruin. We come now to that day of our last and greatest tribulation when the city was shook to its very foundation and was well nigh thrown out of existence.