Somerset Hotel, Pulteney Street, c1960

State Library Catalogue Reference: PRG 1605/9/145

The Somerset Hotel, on the north-west corner of Pulteney and Flinders Streets, was established in 1851 and demolished in September 1991.

Gordon, Raymond Hier, 1909-2001, photographer.

'Thief's Bluff Aided Alleged Theft
While Mrs. Stella Margaret Kirkbright, wife of the licensee of the Somerset Hotel, Flinders street, was watching fire appliances called to a neighboring rectory—as a result of a thief's bluff—a £40 overcoat and money were stolen from her bedroom. When Mrs. Kirkbright re- entered the hotel, she is alleged to have seen a woman descending the stairs wearing a black overcoat which she recognised as her own. Mrs. Kirkbright chased the woman into the street. The woman was escorted back to the hotel by three men but jumped about 20 feet from a window and escaped. Later, at the City Watch house, a tailoress, aged 39, who resides at Henley South, was charged with stealing an over coat and money. The false fire alarm at the rectory adjoining St. Paul's Church of England, at the corner of Pulteney and Flinders streets, was the result of a bluff by a man who was found in the house by Canon A. E. Kain and his wife when they returned from the interstate football match. As Mrs. Kain was ascending the stairs the man rushed past her, exclaiming:—"There's a fire up there." Canon Kain chased the man into the street, calling for him to be stopped. When Mr. Jack Whittaker, of Ifould street, city, caught the man, he shouted:—"There's a fire. I'm going for the brigade.'' As Mr. Whittaker broke the glass of a street fire alarm the man escaped. It was found later that 30/ in money and stamps had been stolen from the rectory.'
The Advertiser, Monday 25 July 1949, p1

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