​​The man who died in the Sandon fire

The fire that destroyed most of Sandon on May 4, 1900 was widely reported. It was also the source of all sorts of folklore and misinformation.

One example: various sources couldn’t agree whether anyone died. And if there was a fatality, they couldn’t agree on who it was or how it happened. And if they did agree on those points, there was still the question of whether it was accidental or murder.

Photographer Richard Trueman was in Sandon when it was destroyed by fire. While no photos are known to exist of the actual blaze (which occurred at night), he did capture the smoking ruins. (City of Vancouver Archives AM1589-:CVA 2-90)

Sandon had two newspapers at the time, The Paystreak and The Mining Review, which teamed up to publish a special fire edition immediately after the blaze, pictured below. (The Mining Review’s office was destroyed, while the Paystreak’s survived.) While the extensive property losses were carefully enumerated in the joint edition, there was no mention of any casualties, from which we might infer that there were none.

The Nelson Tribune stated the following day: “It is a source of deep gratification that no lives were lost in the fire. Up to the present time no fatalities have been reported.” The standard Sandon reference book, Silver, Lead & Hell (1992), also says “miraculously, no lives were lost.”

However, this is at odds with what Dave May wrote in Sandon: The Mining Centre of the Silvery Slocan (1985): “Someone devised that by dynamiting the railroad station, a fire break could be made to save the upper residential section of the town. One man lost his life doing this.”

The man was not named, but a display in the Sandon Museum agreed that this happened. “There was only one fatality the entire night — one man who had been standing too close when the dynamite in the CPR station was detonated. The fire itself never actually killed anyone.” (The same words appeared in a 2002 Sandon Historical Society’s publication, also called The Paystreak.)

In fact, one man did perish in the flames, so it’s perplexing that he has been forgotten.

Miles Rombough was a professional gambler whose death was first reported by the Nelson Daily Miner two days after the fire. He had only just arrived in Sandon from Kaslo, and it was “remarked that he was the merriest and happiest person on the train.”

After having a drink, Rombough (also spelled or misspelled “Rambough” and “Rambaugh”) went to bed in the Clifton House hotel. In the chaos, no one realized he was missing until it was too late. His body, found the next morning, was only identified thanks either to a ring he was wearing or a watch found on top of him.

Vancouver newspapers followed up over the next few days by providing a few more details about Rombough. One account said he came to BC about 12 years earlier, i.e. 1888, and worked as a clerk in a New Westminster hotel and at the Savoy Hotel in Vancouver. Another said he had been in the logging business until about three years prior to his death and lived in New Westminster, where he had “a large circle of acquaintances. Both there and in [Vancouver] he was known as a generous friend and had the reputation all round of being a pretty ‘square’ fellow.” He was also called a “big, large-hearted, open-handed fellow.”

His friends initially speculated that he must have simply been so tired that he simply slept through the fire.

No death registration was filed for Rombough. The Nelson Tribune claimed that he was buried in Sandon, but The Paystreak explained that was not the case. Rombough belonged to the Knights of Pythias and the Fraternal Order of Eagles, who arranged for his remains to be brought back to Vancouver.

Funeral notice for Miles Rombough, Vancouver Daily World, May 9, 1900

A large contingent of his fellow lodge members turned out for the funeral, which the Vancouver Daily World described as follows:

The services were conducted by the Rev. John Reid, Jr., of Knox Presbyterian church, after which the procession formed and slowly wended its way to the cemetery. Upon the casket rested two beautiful floral tributes. There was an immense wreath of white carnations and yellow roses, in the centre of which was an anchor. This was sent from Victoria by the employees of the Savoy. A large pillow of cream roses and Easter lilies rested at the head of the casket, a tribute of remembrance from the Savoy employees in this city.

What I didn’t know until a few years ago is that Rombough’s grave in Vancouver’s Mountain View cemetery is marked, and what’s more, his headstone mentions that he died in the Sandon fire. I finally had a chance to visit it, as seen below.

Compared to the other markers around it, it’s huge! The concrete slab takes up the entire length and width of the grave. My wife and I had no trouble finding it, because it sticks way, way out and can be spotted from a distance. The inscription spells (or misspells) his name “Rambough.”

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Miles Rombough was born in 1869 in Stormont, Ont. to Jacob and Mary Rombough, the fifth of their seven children, of whom at least three had already predeceased him. Prior to coming west, he had lived in the community of South Finch.

I can’t find any contemporary evidence of him in BC until 1894, when he’s shown as staying overnight at a hotel in Nanaimo. In 1895, the Williams civic directory listed him as a logger residing at the Depot Hotel at 803 Columbia in New Westminster, but he disappeared from the directories thereafter.

According to the Vancouver Daily World:

Miles Rombough did not know the meaning of fear. He was a brave man, and at the time of the big Westminster fire [of 1898], at the risk of his own life, he saved two women and several children, being badly burned in his heroic effort.

Incredible if true, especially given the way he ultimately died, but I can find no other mention of him in connection with that fire.

At the time of his death, Rombough had a brother, David, living in Spokane, and a cousin, James McMillan, living in Vancouver, who were said to be his only relatives in the west. Another brother, James, sent a letter of thanks to the Eagles lodge, seen below.

Vancouver Daily News-Advertiser, June 1, 1900

The Mountain View cemetery register reveals that Miles Rombough was buried in what was described as the “Rombough Family” plot within the Eagles section (Range 4, Block 3, Plot 7, Subdivision 4, Lot 12). The only other person clearly part of the family plot is John Parnell, who died later in May 1900 in Vancouver, of tuberculosis, age 30. For some reason, his body was later reburied elsewhere in the same cemetery. What relation he was to Miles Rombough, I haven’t the foggiest.

The cemetery register lists Rombough as 36 (not 31 as indicated on his gravestone), born in Ontario, died at Sandon on May 4, 1900, buried on May 10, single, and Protestant. Cause of death: burnt. His grave plot cost $5, which was twice as much as normal, but I don’t know why. Maybe that included the concrete marker?

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The day after Rombough’s funeral, disturbing stories appeared in the Victoria Daily Times and Vancouver Daily World. They stated that Rombough’s friends in Vancouver had asked for an investigation into his death, fearing he had been murdered.

The World said this was based on the gruesome position his body had been discovered in and that he was known to have had between $400 and $500 on him (apparently in coins) when he arrived in Sandon, which was not located after the fire. The Eagles wrote to the police at Sandon and sent a delegate there to “do all in his power to see that the matter is given the fullest investigation.”

The most suggestive fact in connection with the affair is that it was the building in which Rombough slept where the fire originated. It is known that the dead man had been drinking little, if any, liquor, and was perfectly sober when he retired for the night … [I]t was said that a Vancouver detective would leave tomorrow for Sandon.

The Times added the following day: “He had evidently been murdered for money, which he had been displaying conspicuously. The murderer probably fired the building to conceal the crime.” In fact, the fire did not start in the hotel, but rather between the opera house and Brown’s store, making it hard to conceive how it could have been lit to cover up a murder.

The story about Rombough meeting his end at the hands of an unknown killer made the rounds in newspapers as far afield as the San Francisco Call, which claimed he had “showed his money freely, although advised to keep it out of sight owing to the prevalence of tough characters.”

But nothing appears to have come of the investigation, for there probably was nothing to the rumours. The lost coins likely lay in a melted heap somewhere within the ruins of the Clifton.  

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One other thing that I didn’t know until recently: Rombough’s sister-in-law Annabell was pregnant at the time of his death. When the baby was born in Stormont, Ont., on July 17, 1900, he was named John Myles Rombough. Unfortunately, like his namesake uncle, Myles was also cut down in his prime. He died in 1919 during the flu epidemic, age 18.

Myles was the eldest child of Annabell and her husband John Rombough. Their youngest child, Della, only died in 1992. It’s startling (to me, anyway) to consider that a niece of the Sandon fire victim was still alive that recently.

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Being named Miles (or Myles) Rombough seems to have been a difficult burden to bear in general. In October 1925, “model citizen and prominent engineer” Miles Rombough was said to be facing constant threats of being shot by Los Angeles police.

Why? Because his face, clothes, and car all looked disturbingly like those of Martin Durkin, a Chicago car thief being hunted for the murder of an FBI agent. Rombough had reportedly been shot at three times by officers mistaking him for the gunman before a special police guard was assigned to protect him. (The story seems suspect, though, for it erroneously claimed Durkin was accused of killing four police officers.) 

Durkin was caught in 1926. I hope Rombough had a nice quiet life thereafter.

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One final postscript: while Miles Rombough was the only person killed in the Sandon fire, there were at least two other injuries: Ted Eyton cut his foot on broken glass and Joe Palmer broke his right leg when hit by a fragment from one of the buildings blown up to stop the fire’s spread.

I suspect the latter incident led to the later statements that someone had died in those circumstances

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