Women Did Die From Clothes Catching Fire

I'd always heard women died when their clothes caught fire, but thought that happened in the 18th century. Well, it wasn't a problem just in the ancient past. Willie Ruth Reyno Varner died in 1958 from third-degree burns after her clothes caught fire when she brushed against a wood stove.

The Gilmore Mirror tells the whole sad story. On 12 February 1958 she was holding her sick two-year-old son when it happened. She kept her wits about her, wrapping a blanket around herself, only to have it catch fire too. She ran outside and rolled in the snow and that killed the fire. By sheer chance her husband came home very shortly after she put out the fire, and drove her to the hospital. She received many blood transfusions, but medical science wasn't advanced enough then to save her.