Fire which originated in a stationary cabinet Friday night in the division office of the Peabody Coal Co. in the Alexander building on the south side of the square did damage estimated at $3000 to the offices on the second floor and resulted in heavy damage due to smoke and water in the Alexander Bargain store on the first floor. As a result of the fire the bargain store dept. of the Alexander stores which occupy the entire first floor of the building was closed Sat. while an estimate of the damage was prepared. The blaze was discovered at 9:30 pm by Mrs. Warner Miller who was passing by the building and saw the fire and turned in an alarm. The fire dept. answered the call immediately and discovered the seriousness of the threat of damage to the entire business block and called Herrin. The Herrin fire department sent one of its trucks at once but it was not used. The cabinet in which the fire apparently started was located near the rear of the long corridor into which the various Peabody office rooms open. Destroying the stationery and records stored in the cabinet the fire swept upward eating into the wall and ceiling above. Smoke and heat from the blazing wood became concentrated in the corridor and was so intense that Peabody officials who reached the building soon after the fire was discovered were unable to make their way up the stairway to their offices. They were loud in their praise Saturday morning for Fire Chief Harry Cash and his assistants who finally succeeded in reaching the blaze. Assisted by volunteers Cagle and Dungey, Assistant Fire Chief Clint Boles crawled with a hose up the stairway and along the floor of the second floor corridor through the stifling smoke and the heat that was peeling paint from the walls and bursting glass panels of office doors. In that way the firemen got within range of the blaze and checked it. The fire itself was extinguished before it reached the front office rooms but the intense heat damaged office furniture, typewriters, engineer’s equipment, files, and other furnishings of those rooms in addition to burning doors, tables and wooden cabinets in the rear of the office suite. The heaviest damage to the building was upstairs although the building and merchandise were damaged in the room below. The ladies ready-to-wear store in the Alexander building was not damaged and was open for business Sat.

(Extracted from local newspapers and compiled by Harry Boyd, posted at  http://www.marionfire.us/ )