Law Students Routed; Man Killed in Fire

Nine people, four of them Law School students, scrambled out of a two-story frame dwelling on Sumner Road at dawn yesterday before a raging fire that killed 65-year old William C. Gardner, operator of the rooming house, and seriously damaged first floor rooms.

Aroused by fumes seeping into her second story bedroom, Gardner's wife Laura raced downstairs at 5:15 o'clock and found the living room ablaze. She immediately roused her guests and then sounded the alarm, but the engines of the near-by Cambridge fire department arrived too late to save her husband, who, trapped in the flaming living room, tried vainly to escape through the window.

Law School Men Unhurt

Eight boarders, among them William Barton 1L, Robert Scheffield 1L, MacVicker Snow 1L, and Charles E. Stimson, Jr. 1L, escaped unhurt.

Former University students David G. Lyon '32 and Ernest Hampden were driven back by the intense heat and flames as they tried to push into the living room in an attempt to rescue Gardner. They too turned in an alarm and then battled the blaze unsuccessfully with a hand extinguisher.

Cigarette Started Blaze

"My husband must have lit a cigarette and fallen asleep sitting up for the dog," Mrs. Gardner stated yesterday, disclosing that their pet collie had been let out early in the evening and that Gardner had stayed up alone waiting for the animal.

Lyon and Hampden asserted last night that the flames were concentrated in the corner of the living room where Gardner had been sitting, and both agreed that an uncared-for cigarette had started the blaze.