FLAMING FLANNELETTE.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "Specraroa."] SIR,—Might I crave the indulgence of your widely read paper at a time of year when many charitable people are providing gifts of clothing for the poor (and more especially for the children of the poor) in our midst, in order to raise a word of warning against the use of flannelette, unless they be sure to use the really non-inflammable kind ? Any one caring to assure himself as to the terrible danger run by clothing a child in the ordinary fluffy, cosy-looking, and cheap flannelette, and then allowing it to go near an open fire, or even a candle, need only take a bit of the material so largely stocked by the drapers and put a match to it, repeating the same experiment with a piece of "Dr. Perkins's Non-Flam." The evidence of his own eyes will, I venture to say, be instructive, and also, I imagine, final in determining which kinds to avoid and which to buy. It cannot be too often impressed on people that most of the flannelette now found on the market flames up like paper, while the safe kind, known as "Dr. Perkins'" (owing to a special method of preparing the material invented by this gentleman), merely smoulders if brought in contact with a fire or lighted candle, much in the same way as, for instance, a heavy flannel might do, but it never, as far as my experience goes, breaks out into flame. If I am not mistaken, 61d. is the lowest price per yard; the quality, however, is such as to outlast the "fluffier," cheaper makes, which look threadbare once the attractive fluff has worn away in the wash, and its ever-present danger to ignite has only increased. Now, the preparation used to render "Dr. Perkins's" flannelette non- inflammable does not wash out, in spite of what several drapers have assured me; on the contrary, it has the advantage of becoming more and more incorporated with the material the oftener it is washed. Many of your readers, Sir, may doubtless have seen Mr. George R. Sims's eloquent appeal to the public upon this very subject in the columns of the Daily Chronicle not long ago. And one has only to watch the lists of weekly casualties to note bow those caused by fire and terminating fatally are oftenest in the case of children traceable to the flannelette danger. All for the sake of a few pence this "holocaust of the innocents" is allowed to proceed increasing week by week as the winter advances, the would-be cosy little garment becoming instead, in only too many cases,
the poor mite's shroud.—I am, Sir, &c., A. B.
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