144 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1745. 



hair, and of the nerv^es, whose principal seat lies there : and besides, because in 

 the face there were many places open, out of which the flames might pass; as it 

 happened in the time of the Roman consuls T. Gracchus and M. Juventius, 

 when a flame came out of a bull's mouth, without hurting the beast, by not find- 

 ing any resistance to its way. 



Extract from a Pamphlet, entitled, " Fire from Heaven burning the Body of one 

 John Hitchell, of Holnehurst, in the Parish of Christ-Church, in the County 

 of Southamptom, the 26th of June, l6l3." By John Hi I Hard. Printed at 

 London, l6l3. N" 476, p. 461. 



John Hitchell having been, on Saturday the 26th of June last, at work at 

 the house of one John Deane of Parly Court, where he truly and painfully 

 laboured at his trade, being a carpenter, and having ended his day's work, went 

 home to his house. After being in bed with his wife and child, in the middle of 

 the night, the lightning came on so fiercely, that an old woman, named Agnes 

 Russell, his wife's mother, being wakened by a terrible blow on her cheek, cried 

 to the said John Hitchell and his wife to help her: but they not answering, the 

 poor old woman started out of her bed, and went unto the bed where they lay, 

 and awakened her daughter, who was on a sudden most lamentably burnt all on 

 one side of her, and her husband and child dead by her side. Yet nevertheless 

 his poor wife dragged him out of the bed into the street; and there, by reason of 

 the vehemency of the fire, she was inforced to forsake him ; where he lay burn- 

 ing on the ground for about 3 days after. Not that there was any appearance of 

 fire outwardly to be seen on him, but only a kind of smoke ascending upwards 

 from his carcase, till it was consumed to ashes, except only some small part of his 

 bones, which were cast into a pit made by the place, 



yin Extract from the Minutes of the Royal Society, of Nov. 8 and 15, 1744, 

 concerning the IVoman at Ipsivich, who tvas found burnt to Ashes on April lO 

 preceding. N° 476, p. 463. 



The first account of this extraordinary accident was in a letter from Mr. R. 

 Love to his brother, Mr. Geo. Love, apothecary at Westminster, dated Ipswich, 

 June 28, 1744, which was laid before the Society by the president, on Nov. 8, 

 following; wherein Mr. Love says, " That it appeared, on the Coroner's Inquest 

 concerning the death of this woman (at which he attended), that she, having 

 gone up stairs with her daughter to bed, went down again from her, half undressed ; 

 and that the next morning early her body was found quite burnt, lying on the 

 brick-hearth in the kitchen, where no fire had been, with the candlestick stand- 

 ing by her, and the candle burnt out, with which she had lighted herself down ; 

 and that the daughter could assign no reason for her going down, unless it were to 



