I was a witness of the combined disasters of earthquake and fire to the City of Kingston, which involved the loss of one thousand lives, mostly from falling timber, bricks and rubble, some hurled to their doom within or from out-falling walls, and some caught by fire in the ruins of buildings among which they found themselves penned. There was delayed action in some cases, when for example a diabetic patient succumbed to the shock to his system. I think such was the case of the illustrious merchant Charles deMercado, the head of the firm of Lascelles deMercado & Co. The 14th day of January 1907 was a crisp, cool day in Kingston. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, I left my office at No. 22 Church Street, and sauntered to the Railway Station a quarter of a mile away at the western extremity of Barry Street. There I met the incoming Railway Train from Montego Bay, which brought my sister-in-law and her four year old daughter on a visit to us. Despatching them by bus (the customary transportation, as the one-horse hackney carriage was called), I returned on foot to my office, and was barely seated at my desk, with our Clerk, Festus Agnew McKay, the only clerk, within sight at his desk in the outer office, and my Partner Victor Manton away at the Supreme Court in Duke Street instructing Counsel in the Case of Moseley versus Baker, when at about 3.30 p.m. I experienced a sharp earthquake shock. Warned by my experience of the previous November, when a slight shock of earthquake sent me unnecessarily hurrying out of the building, I resolved to stay put. But the shock continued, the building was heard to crack, and felt as if a giant was relentlessly twisting it until it should disintegrate. I rose from my chair, not knowing that immediately behind me the brick-wall of the building was crumbling and about to fall away, I made for the front stairway leading to Church Street, passing McKay, and calling to him to follow me. As I reached the Street, from a building on the opposite of the Street A. L. P. Lake and his young son Hal came tumbling out, dishevelled and alarmed, Hal imploring me to send for a Doctor, saying that his Father was mortally injured. I looked around for McKay, and there he was coming up the Street and surmounting a heap of rubble which had suddenly appeared in the middle of the Street, shaken from the neighbouring buildings. McKay was covered with dust and debris and looked haggard and aged. Instead of following me down the stairs, he had gone back into my room, and climbed through the gap in the wall into a sweetsop tree, thence into and through the lower floor, where he saw the tenant the merchant tailor Mudahy lying dead, felled by a falling beam. I at once made on foot for home a couple of miles away on the Brentford Road near Cross Roads, observing as I crossed the Parade smoke issuing from Dr. Ayton's building in King Street. For a few steps I secured conveyance by bus, but abandoned it on reaching a tangle of electric wires on the ground at the Junction of Orange Street and the Parade. I skirted this on foot and proceeded thus to reach home two miles away. At the various street corners, as I proceeded on my way I saw many well-known people, curious onlookers, for the widespread disaster in the city had not apparently seriously reached Slipe Road. But, so alert were my powers of observation, apparently induced by the shock, that I was able to report that I had seen such and such people alive and unharmed. I had not yet seen any dead or injured. In the city, they were buried in the ruins or later consumed in the city by fire. I found the family agitated but unharmed, and only plaster and ornaments shaken from the walls and pictures shifted. Our large dog had enjoyed a joint of beef stolen from the pantry safe as the doors flew open. Before dusk came, my wife and family, seeming reassured and free from injury or apprehension, and cheered by the visit of the neighbouring McLartys, I thought it advisable so to do and returned on foot to the city to see if I could be of use. By the time I reached Harbour Street, the fires were seen to be approaching from the West of the city. One fire had started in King Street at Dr. Ayton's Office, allegedly from a Bunsen burner, another from far away Princess Street and another from a nearby shop in Harbour Street. In Harbour Street, solicitor Frank Jackson asked me to help him trundle a wheelbarrow to a place of safety. In it was the recumbent figure of his Polo friend, solicitor Bertie Verley, well known to me, who had been struck down by a falling beam in the ruins of the Office of Harvey & Bourke, solicitors, in Harbour Street. When we reached North and Hanover Streets I learnt that we had been trundling a dead body. Similar events were happening throughout the city; and by next day the stench of charred bodies was distressing; and one was able to note dead bodies of people one had known. The city was a heap of rubble; but the authorities with ready helpers were at work cleaning up the mess; and many lives had been saved from the approaching fire. Solicitor Lascelve Simpson had his leg fractured at the ankle, Solicitor Honiball, the famous cricketer and a delightful personality, was killed near the same spot in Water Lane near Church Street by falling rubble. Some people had been killed within buildings, others, like the Merchant Nathan on a business visit from his home in England, as he ran out from the Barber's chair. Brick buildings, as a rule, especially those with unsupported side walls, collapsed entirely, as did also many two storey buildings. (A somewhat eccentric retired Indian Army Colonel F. B. White, returning from England shortly after the Earthquake, developed what he called the theory of "Ragacity", by which he proved to his own satisfaction that the brick walls collapsed because brick was not a good conductor of Ragacity. I was to use my knowledge of his brochure with great effect when later negotiating with him a settlement of one of his many lawsuits). In those and earlier days, brick and mortar, rather than cement and concrete, had been. the habitual method of construction. There were excellent brick factories turning out good brick at 4/- and cheaper brick at 2/- per 100. The Harbour Street and other shops in lower Kingston, mostly of two stories, collapsed, while the fires swept over the ruins; but many detached two storey buildings were destroyed by Earthquake up to North Street and beyond where the fires had reached. The brick-built Roman Catholic Cathedral in Duke Street, known as the French Church fell like a child's card-house. The Army and Navy Grocery in Harbour Street and other grocery and provision shops were destroyed by earthquake and/or fire. Dunn's grocery in upper Orange Street was among the few remaining with stock intact to supply the needs of the community in the following weeks, as was Henderson's detached lumber yard; and for some time there was shortage of supplies. My family in Montego Bay sent up grocery supplies to us, and other families in the country did the same, Madam's Chinese grocery shop at the corner of Slipe and Curphey Roads was our mainstay for a while. Stately dwelling houses in Duke and other streets fell. Myrtle Bank Hotel was in ruins. The front wall of the Jamaica Club in Hanover Street fell out. There Bradley, husband of one of the Verley girls, and a fine sportsman, lost his life. Nathan's two stores, Metropolitan House in Harbour Street and the Bee Hive in Church Street along with the other Harbour Street stores were destroyed, as well as the lawyer's offices in Church Street, and ours at No. 22 Church Street among them. The wall of Dr. George Vernon Lockett's home in Duke Street fell out carrying with it to her death his lovely Sister, before his eyes. A distinguished body of English visitors was assembled at the one floor building at Old Wolmer's School in Hanover Street discussing agricultural matters when the shock came and a stampede was averted by the voice of Archbishop Nuttall: "Gentlemen keep your seats". Fell also the building at the corner of lower King and Harbour Streets which housed the famous hardware shop of Emanuel Lyons & Son, depicted in a famous Hakewill aquatint, now the site of the Canadian Bank of Commerce building. It was reported at the time that when young Lucien Alberga, rising from the ruins, saw beside him also rising from the ruins the bearded face of old Hoffman Da Costa, he exclaimed "Father Moses", thinking that he was meeting the ancient Patriarch of our race in heaven. From the ruins also, chief clerk Leonard deCordova, was to escape to found along with T. N. Aguilar the famous hardware house of Leonard deCordova. At the time of the Earthquake, the Supreme Court was housed at Duke Street and Water Lane. The wall fell out behind the dais where the Chief Justice Sir Fielding Clarke was sitting, hearing the case of Baker and Moseley over the tenancy of the Titchfield Cottages at Port Antonio. My Partner was instructing Counsel on behalf of Captain Baker. He recounted that from under the table where they had taken shelter Barrister Stern was to be heard petulantly complaining that Barrister Oughton was treading on his gown. The shock of the disaster affected various people according to temperament. Herbert Delisser, Editor of the Gleaner, was heard lustily singing at the top of his voice in his backyard next morning "pour encourager les autres". A mini newspaper was immediately brought out by the Gleaner and the Daily Telegraph. Copies are probably to be found at the Institute at the West India Reference Library; and a photo of them appeared In that excellent book, "The Cruise of the Port Kingston" by W. Ralph Hall Caine, who was among the distinguished guests of Sir Alfred Jones on that historical voyage of the Port Kingston. In this book also are to be found among others the following speaking illustrations of the disaster: the ruins of Myrtle Bank Hotel, the Jamaica Club, Machado's Cigar Store, the Kingston Railway Station, a side street off West Street, the Garrison Chapel at Up Park Camp, ruins in Harbour Street, and Port Royal Street, the Marine Gardens Hotel, the statue of Queen Victoria in the Parade, shifted out of position, scenes of the putting out of the fires, the fallen wall of the Railway Station from which Cyril Lytteljohn, the Railway Accountant, was thrown and impaled on the railings below, to regain complete recovery notwithstanding his punctured lung, scenes at the Public Hospital, lighters in the harbour receiving the dead bodies, the Parade Gardens in a mess, with families encamped there, American blue-Jackets to the rescue, and many other speaking scenes and evidence of damage and destruction. Walter Durie (thirteen years later to be the Father of Alec Durie) proprietor of The Times Store, shipwrecked on his way from England to Jamaica, some seven or eight years earlier, with characteristic energy and enterprise, disentangled himself from the ruins of his shop In King Street, caught the first train out of Kingston at six o'clock that evening, presented himself to my Father in Montego Bay, was able to assure him that I and wife and family were safe, and raised a modest sum of £150 to help restart his business. . . . . The disaster of earthquake and fire affected various people according to temperament. My partner was seriously shaken; and when I saw him next day he was both saddened by the loss of life and also somewhat despondent about the future. The shock curiously enough stimulated my naturally sanguine temperament; and I realised that business-wise the destruction of property was bound to have in time favourable economic repercussions. O'Connor deCordova, Registrar of the Supreme Court, with his conventionally decorous outlook, looking around at the shambles of a city, saw it as the most favourable alternative to take his wife and family to the more favourable environment of New York, where relatives had long found distinguished and lucrative means of gainful employment. When Sir Fielding Clarke, a couple of mornings later, taking "Chambers" in the open at the old Wolmer's schoolroom site, looked around enquiringly for the Registrar of the Court, he was relieved to see O'Connor hurrying in, all travel-stained. "I knew you would be here". "Just back from Port Antonio, your Honour, where I placed my wife on board ship for New York". All about the city and its environs, daily life was resuming activity, as well as might be, while the ghastly cleaning-up operations proceeded. The first economic concern of businessmen was the status of their fire insurance policies. After the San Francisco earthquake-caused fire of a few months before, a Jamaican agency had advertised that its Head Office, an English Company, had been paying claims while the fire raged. Terms and conditions of the Policies were eagerly scanned and legal advice taken. The Companies had as a rule exempted themselves from liability on general conflagration hazards, among which liability for damage by earthquake caused fire was expressly excepted. But it was thought that some reasonable compromise arrangement would be arrived at. There was one policy which we handled, a very old one, In which the "earthquake clause" was not stated; and we readily collected the claim of £1000. On the other Policies, the English Companies unanimously rejected all claims. The Directors of the local Company, the Jamaica Cooperative, with business foresight, made a compromise arrangement, whereby they secured much goodwill and future business, bringing future premiums to account for some years to come. Many shopkeepers made a composition agreement with their English creditors of six shillings and eightpence in the £ plus insurance money pro tanto if and when recovered. In due course litigation ensued, and, as we had warned the Scottish Union, operating in a hostile country, with the onus of proof resting on the Insurance Company, Jury Verdicts on the test cases went against the Companies. Tootall Brodhurst Lee & Co. Ltd., an English Company trading in Jamaica, ill-advisedly elected trial before a Judge in England and got an adverse Judgment. Feeling ran high during the course of the Jamaican litigation; and, for many years after the event, Juries were habitually hostile to Insurance Companies. Frank Jackson, former managing clerk of W. Baggett Gray at £150 or £200 per year, in the shuffle after the earthquake, like many another clerk, mercantile and otherwise, set up on his own. He was instrumental in procuring the services of English Barrister Hemmerde. He had tried for the famous F. E. Smith, who, not able to come, had suggested his friend Hemmerde, for whom the sedate Henry Dickens and the ornate Tobin, who led for the English Insurance Companies, were no match. In the result, based on the decision of two of the seven selected test cases, claims and costs were paid in full, each solicitor handling a test case slated for (even if not reaching trial) being awarded £10,000 and each solicitor representing a claimant being awarded commission of 5% or 6% on the amount paid without suit. A claim against the Scottish Union (one of the test cases) was held by one of our Clients; but we were unwilling to act against our own old associates the Scottish Union. On the other hand, we would not act against our Client, the Claimant; so we passed over the case to Frank Jackson. We however collected on several policies without suit, and earned our commission. The onus of proof being on the Insurance Companies, on the positive evidence adduced by Policyholders and by reason of the difficulties of proof available to the Companies, it was easy for Jamaican Juries to reach an unimpeachable verdict in favour of the Policyholders. Hon. David Corinaldi, looking down at the building where the King Street fire originated, testified that shortly before the earthquake, he saw smoke from a fire originating in the very building. Tobin, unguardedly: "And did you, Sir, mention this remarkable fact to anyone?" The question let in a string of evidence favourable to the Policyholders. The Engineer on board the Port Kingston, off-shore on the way to Kingston at the time of the Earthquake was able to testify to seeing a cloud of smoke rising in the city just before the Earthquake. There was similar testimony from a resident on a hill residence overlooking Kingston. Hemmerde just stopped short of proving that it was the Fires that caused the Earthquake rather than the Earthquake causing the Fires. At the time of the litigation, the expression "Call Curphey" had "passed into a proverb". Thomas J. Curphey, father of Aldington, later Sir Aldington Curphey, was believed to have some particular knowledge as to the origin of the King Street fire, as he lived nearby. He consulted my Partner as to what information he was to give, as both sides had asked for a statement. "Tell the truth, or refuse to give a statement", was the advice of my Partner, who had a simple, straight outlook on such matters. In the result, each side was afraid of the testimony and failed to "call Curphey".