Fire in The Octagon, Dunedin, kills twelve
- When
- 1879
- Where
- Cafe Chantant, lower Octagon
- Episodes
- 1
A fire broke out on 8 September 1879 in the Cafe Chantant located in the lower Octagon, Dunedin. The blaze spread to other properties within the Ross Building. The Octagon is an eight-sided plaza in Dunedin, New Zealand, serving as the city centre.
Episodes
Background and detail
Background. The Octagon is the city centre of Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand. It is an eight-sided plaza with a circular one-way carriageway, bisected by the city's main street. The area was originally designated as a reserve and colloquially known as the Octagon, though officially called the Square of Moray Place at that stage in Dunedin's history.
Incident. On 8 September 1879, a fire broke out in the Cafe Chantant in the lower Octagon. The fire spread to other properties within the Ross Building. A legacy record associates the event with twelve victims, but the supplied passage does not state any casualty count, so the death toll remains unverified.
Sources
- The Octagon, Dunedin Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-28
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.