An account of a most terrible fire

that happened on Friday the eighth of September, 1727, at a barn at Burwell in Cambridgeshire : in which by computation about one hundred and forty persons were assembled at a puppet-show, of which number no less than eighty persons perished, or received such injury by the flames as to expire soon after : taken in part from the parish-register of baptisms and burials belonging to the said town, and more largely from the relation of Mr. Thomas Howe, who, being at that time about sixteen years of age, was present in the barn, and an eye-witness of the dreadful calamity : to which account are subjoined some serious and important inquiries relating to the melancholy event, and some observations designed as a practical improvement of the awful catastrophe