Talk:Ballantyne's fire

Article Title

I think that Ballantynes' fire would be a better title than Ballantyne's store disaster. At the time of the fire the name of the store was Ballantynes - this name can be clearly seen on the verandah at the corner of Colombo and Cashel Streets in some of the archive photographs. The way Ballantynes is spelled with or without an apostophy before or after the s is inconsistent, even in the contemporary newspaper reports appearing in the same newspaper on the same day. Some contemporary newspaper reports use Ballantyne's while others use Ballantynes. The commission of enquiry used the Fire at the Premises of Messrs. J. Ballantyne and Company Limited while a book written in 1983 is titled The Ballantynes' Fire Disaster. Various articles on the Christchurch City Library website use Ballantyne's, Ballantynes and Ballantynes' freely, even on the same page, and that apostophy usage sometimes differs from the source material that the text has been transcribed from. Two letters to the editor in 1983 refer to Ballantyne's fire, athough the placement of the apostophy may be a copyeditor's decision rather than the letter writer's. In my personal experience the fire is Ballentynes' fire because that is how my father, mother, aunt and many others in Christchurch, including firefighters, referred to the fire (verbally) when I grew up there. While they would all agree the fire was a disaster they never called it a disaster, always a fire. Pretty much everyone in Christchurch of their generation had a Ballentynes' fire story to tell, where they were, what they saw, how they helped, how they got to the fire or got home afterwards. To them Ballentynes was, and still is, all that is needed to describe this department store at a time when the term was an americanism and would be like calling a MacDonalds a MacDonalds family restaurant - verbose and unnecessary. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 03:48, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Some further thoughts. At the time of the fire, Ballantynes was a major fashion manufacturer as well as a department store. Much of Ballantynes stock had been manufactured on its Christchurch site. The commission of enquiry noted that Ballantynes was subject to the Factories Act and the the Star-Sun reported at page 3 on 20 November 1947 that "Ballantynes had been making a three-piece ensemble" for Miss New Zealand, for example. To simply call Ballantynes a department store understates the reason so many people were employed on the site or why it covered an acre of land with buildings of up to 4 floor levels. While the ground floor and some of the basements and most of the first floor was devoted to retailing, around 150 of the manufacturing and back office staff worked in offices and workrooms on the second and third floors of the complex. In many respects, the Ballantynes complex was as much a factory as it was a department store. Also it was mostly the second floor office and manufacturing staff that were trapped and perished in the fire, while the customers and staff in the retail areas were all safely evacuated. To say this was a fire in a Department Store is a mis-statement about the full nature of the business that Ballentynes conducted at its Christchurch site. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 04:06, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I have moved the page. Schwede66 22:47, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Ballantynes store article

The store itself has no article, but the fire article is being used as one. They should be separated. pear 03:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pear285 (talk • contribs)

Good idea. Do you want to have a go at this? Schwede66 03:44, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Background section

In the section "Background", the following sentences could be made to flow more freely: "The buildings were considered as factory buildings (due to the amount of clothes made on the premises). This helped them to pass a Labour Department inspection in 1943. Two of the buildings had been constructed before fire escapes had been a mandatory building requirement and the Fire Brigade had not required any to be installed later. This happened despite a bylaw since 1930 where they could have directed the building owners to install fire escapes."

I propose the following: "The buildings were considered to be factory buildings due to the quantity of clothes made on the premises, which helped them pass a Labour Department inspection in 1943. Two of the buildings had been constructed before fire escapes became a mandatory requirement and the Fire Brigade had not required fire escapes to be installed later, despite a 1930 bylaw requiring it to direct the owners to install them." Akld guy (talk) 23:20, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

That seems like an uncontroversial change to me. You don't have to discuss those kinds of editorial changes on the talk page, but you can just go ahead and change the text. If anybody has got a problem, they can say so afterwards, or simply copyedit the text further. Schwede66 05:56, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Schwede. I've made the change, with perhaps an even better simplification of sentence 4. Akld guy (talk) 03:23, 23 August 2014 (UTC)