The Fire Brigade Committee of the London County Council, on
the recommendation of the Chief Officer of the Brigade, have decided to award their silver medal to Fireman Reuben Studd for extraordinary bravery shown at the fire at Hyde Park Chambers on December 22nd. It appears that three women were on a ledge on the seventh floor at a height of eighty feet from the ground on the western side of the building, where there is a thoroughfare only fourteen feet in width, and that Fireman Studd, having scaled the ledge with a hook ladder in the dark, brought the women down to the parapet on the sixth floor. There he refixed the ladder, but, owing to an intervening cornice, the lower part of the ladder stood two feet out from the building. Having managed to swing himself into the window on the fifth floor, be was able by great efforts to pull the women off the ladder through the window. The Chief Officer stated that Stndd's action was the bravest that had occurred within his experience, and the record of his exploit, which we have given in an extremely condensed form, certainly bears out this high testimony.
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