Wyman, Margaret Burned to Death 1923

WYMAN

Posted By: Ernie Braida
Date: 8/28/2011 at 23:13:25

Another one of those terrible fatal accidents for which Marion County, has become noted during the past few years, and which have become so frequent as to attract state wide attention, occurred in Attica at about 7 o'clock Saturday morning, March 31 when Mrs. Margaret Wayman, an aged widow living alone, was burned to death as the result of kindling a fire with kerosene.

The circumstances are such that the real facts of the tragedy, how and, why, it happened, will never be known. All the evidence points to some mishaps with the kerosene, which was used in starting the fire, but all that can be certainly said is that the woman's clothing caught fire and was literally burned from her body, and that she was dead when removed from the smoking dwelling.

The first that was known of anything being wrong was at near seven o'clock in the morning when Mrs. Jane Harvey, a near neighbor of Mrs. Wayman, noticed that smoke, bearing a peculiar odor was issuing from the doors and windows of the Wayman home. She investigated the matter, but was unable to force entrance to the house. At that juncture, Ancil Neifert and Roy Robuck, men of the neighborhood, who were passing in an auto, arrived. They soon forced the doors and were met by such a cloud of smoke and heat that all efforts to enter the building were abandoned for the moment. As soon as the building was safe to enter without danger of suffocation, the two men hurried from the place of entrance to near the kitchen range, where they found the victim of the accident sitting in her chair and quickly removed the body and the chair out onto the lawn. At that moment it was noted that she was dead, both men are sure, however, that they heard moans in the kitchen when the door was first forced open.

Coroner P. N. Little was summoned from Knoxville at about 7:30 and arrived at the scene as quickly as was possible to make the trip. .According to his deductions the result of careful investigation, is possible if not highly probable that the aged woman suffered a stroke of apoplexy or paralysis after building the fire and was unable to move from the chair after sitting down near the stove to wait for the room to warm.

Mrs. Wayman was practically blind, unable to see objects at all clearly at only a short distance from her eyes. The coroner surmises that she spilled some of the oil on the clothing and that the hot fire ignited the combustible garments which burned fiercely from her feet to her chin. A gallon can, one-third full of kerosene, was still standing near the stove when the coroner arrived. Furthermore, it is noted that she was still in her night clothes when she built the fire, that evidence being plain in fragments of the nightgown still clinging to her back and hips, and on the seat of the chair. All the front part of the body from the feet to the neck was burned to what is known to surgeons as the fourth degree, sufficient to cause death within a few moments. The face was only slightly burned and only a portion of her hair burned, off.

In other words her face and head were scarcely disfigured. The worst burned were the hips, breast and arms, very extensive between the elbows and shoulders.

A queer circumstance of the fire is noted in the fact that only a small spot on the linoleum was burned and that the chair in which the woman sat had the varnish ruined on one arm only. The only real damage to the building was caused by smoke.

Marion County Newspapers 1923