27th October 1887

Collapsing chimney kills a girl

The channel was struck by hurricane force winds at the end of October 1887. Boats broke free of their moorings in Cornwall and were washed out to sea, telegraph poles were blown down, trees uprooted, and homes flooded.

In Jersey, the hurricane reached its peak between one and three in the morning, at which point it blew down the chimney on a house in Bagot Road, which fell through the house to which it was attached and crushed Florence Ahier in her bed. She was killed instantly, and her two aunts, who were sleeping either side of her in the same bed, were seriously injured, according to reports in The Cornish Telegraph the following week.

That wasn’t the only chimney blown down. A schoolmaster was injured when buried beneath the rubble of his own stack, and several churches lost their roofs.