South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 02 February 1952
Sad Homecoming for Denaby Mineworker
Mineworker Mr. Tom Booth, of 15, Barnburgh Street, Denaby, went to Doncaster on business on Wednesday. He stayed in town for a cinema show, and returned home at night. There he learned that his wife, Edith, had died in Doncaster Royal Infirmary three hours earlier, of burns.
Mrs. Booth (52), was blind, but attended to all her own housework. She would rarely allow her neighbours to help her, and because of her blindness, her husband always asked her to keep the front door locked when he was not in.
When Mr. Martha Rose chanced to look out of her front door across the street, she caught sight of Mrs. Booth in the kitchen opposite, with her clothes burning furiously.
Mrs. Rose ran across to help her but could not do so because of the locked front door. She went, instead, through neighbour Mrs. Mary Thompson’s house, and Mrs. Rose and Mrs. Thompson arrived at the back of the house to find that Mrs. Booth had run into the yard, her clothes still burning.
The women called some men, who beat out the flames and tended Mrs. Booth until an ambulance arrived. Mrs. Booth was taken to the hospital at about noon, with extensive burns and died some six hours later.