Anyone know any more detail on this?
I found out this reading the memoirs of a Home Office pathologist (who also worked on the victims of Summerland & Woolworths).
Murray House was (& still is) a multi-occupancy city centre building of offices above retail/leisure.
At the time of the fire it was certified under the OSRP and compliant with the standards of the day.
On the 5th floor 7 women worked an evening shift at the Northern Punch Bureau
A fire broke out on a basement fish & chip shop/cafe that was not open at the time under a work-top beneath the sandwich counter. Fire resistant construction & doors held it for a time until it broke into the main protected stair & became untenable quickly due to smoke & fumes.
A further external fire escape could be reached via the corridor off the stair that the offices were accessed from, yet it too became smoke logged and it was only at this stage that the office staff became aware of a fire. Although it was considered that the time the smoke was discovered the corridor may have been just tenable, the sight of smoke billowing into it put the staff off trying to get to the alternative stair and they retreated to the far side of the office, opened a window, and called the fire brigade.
Due to their hysteria and background noise and shouting neither the GPO operator or fire service control operator could make out an address, the background shouting & rising pitch of the caller's voice increasing until the caller screamed and the line went dead. It took a further 3 minutes before an accurate address was obtained from a 999 call from a passer by who noticed smoke from a window and could hear screams.
The fire service only took just over a minute to arrive, but by now screaming had stopped. Flames & think smoke now also issuing from from lower floors precluded the use of a 45' ladder that was immediately deployed and a turntable ladder and used the external stair (another reason for requiring the FR protection within 1.8m of the stair!) to reach the floor.
5 of the women were dead on scene, 2 died in A&E shortly after. cause of death carbon monoxide - no burns or marks other than smoke staining present.
Considering the death toll was almost as high as Woolworth's two years later and high by the standards of the time I'm suprised there isn't more mention of it.
If anything it shows the need for AFD in multi-occupancies (despite ADB & the BS allowing category M and only optional P detection) and also smoke seals, which is why in a lot of multi-occupancies we look for L4 as a minimum (as do increasing numbers of brigades in notices, especially where like above occupancy hours vary in different areas)
