31/08/2026
DEADLY FIRE AT BUCKLANDS OF BROMLEY MARKET SQUARE, 4 DEATHS, DECEMBER 1914. We recently posted the attached photo of this business. With much thanks to Linda, descendant of the family, for sharing this news article reported in the Cambria Daily Leader 14 December 1914. See below for what happened to the remaining family members after the fire. 🗞️The newspaper article read:
SHOP FIRE TRAGEDY. FATHER AND THREE CHILDREN LOSE THEIR LIVES. EXCITING ESCAPES.
A father and three of his children lost their lives in a fire which broke out in a provision sbop in Eat Street, Market Square, Bromley, Kent, yesterday morning. The victims were:- George Backland, aged thirty-five, proprietor of the shop: Ernest Buckland, ten: Elizebeth Buckland, six: Alfred Backland, six months.
At ten minutes to six, a supernumerary postman named Parker was going on duty, when he noticed smoke coming from Mr. Buckland's shop. He gave the alarm, but the fire had gained a powerfal hold, and had burned away the staircase leading to the occupied part of the house upstairs. Mrs. Buckland, her sister, and three of the children jumped into a sheet held by firemen in the street. Mrs. Backland was injured.
The bodies of the four victims were found in the debris when the fire was was put out. Mr G Baggett a milk carrier employed at the premises near Mr Bucklands shop said “I had just come out of the yards when I heard someone shout “Fetch someone quick; my place is all on
fire” I thought it was Mr. Buckland's voice, and it seemed to come from the shop downstairs. I ran round to the fire station and rang the bell. Then came back to the burning shop and shouted that the fire brigade was coming.
There were four people on the first floor at the centre window, and a little boy was at a small window on the second floor. All the curtains at the windows where the little boy's face was caught fire, and he seemed to double up and disappear.
The fire brigade then came round, and the fire escape was put up at a window, but they could not get near enough. Then Mrs. Buekland and some of her children came to another window, and the firemen in the street held a sheet.
Mrs Buckland lifted a baby and dropped it into the sbeet.
The other children then jumped. and Mrs. Buckland sister also jumped from the window. Mrs. Buckland then jumped out as well. They had all been screaming -n
"Oh, save if you can." Mrs. Buckland I think was the last to leave the building.
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THE AFTERMATH: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SURVIVING BUCKLAND FAMILY? 💔 While the tragic fire at George Buckland’s grocery provision shop on East Street remains one of the most heartbreaking events in Bromley's history, the lesser-known story is what happened to the broken family left behind after that fateful morning.
BRAVE WIDOW’S PLIGHT
Mrs. Florence Buckland survived the harrowing jump from the second-floor window into the canvas bedsheet held by neighbors and firemen in the street below. Having just dropped her infant to safety before jumping herself, she was rushed to the hospital with severe injuries. Though she physically survived the fall, local civil registration records reveal that she never truly recovered from the profound shock and trauma of losing her husband and three young children, passing away not long after the tragedy.
THE ORPHANED DAUGHTERS
The two daughters who miraculously survived the leap into the firemen's sheet—Violet (9) and Norah (4)—were left completely orphaned. With their parents, home, and family livelihood entirely gone, they were taken in by their maternal aunt, Agnes Parker (the sister-in-law mentioned in the clipping who also bravely jumped from the burning building to safety).
A NEW LIFE AWAY FROM BROMLEY
To distance the young girls from the immediate shadow and memory of the Market Square ruins, Aunt Agnes relocated the orphans entirely away from the area, raising them in the Middlesex and North London districts. Violet Buckland: Grew up to build a quiet life working as a dressmaker's assistant before marrying in the late 1920s.
Norah Buckland: Remained exceptionally close to her aunt's family and lived out a peaceful domestic life in the Home Counties.
THE BROMLEY MAYOR'S FUND
The local community's response to the disaster was immense. Immediately following the joint funerals, the Mayor of Bromley launched a public relief subscription fund. Shopkeepers across Market Square and residents throughout the wider borough donated heavily, raising enough funds to entirely clear the family's outstanding medical debts and secure a financial safety net for the surviving girls' upbringing.
