In January 1929, when she was 7 years old, her adoptive mother Helen died in a house fire.
In 1822, Colton re-published a previous work on Napoleon, with extensive additions, under the title of The Conflagration of Moscow. In Paris he printed An Ode on the Death of Lord Byron for private circulation and continued to write.
This rubble was mostly ceramic material that had been created as the raw clay used in the daub of the walls became vitrified from the intense heat that would have turned it a bright orange color during the conflagration that destroyed the buildings, much the same way that raw clay objects are turned into ceramic products during the firing process in a kiln.
The oil-fuelled fire that followed raged for 18 days and was recorded as the largest UK conflagration since the Great Fire of London.
Their strategic position meant that both towns suffered badly in the Second World War, and the remaining residents were strongly supported by humanitarian aid from, in particular, the Swiss Red Cross in the years immediately following the conflagration.
Continuing resistance to border conflagration led to the launching of a campaign in 1582–1584 arranged and financed by the Stroganovs and led by the Cossack leader Yermak Timofeyevich, which began with the destruction of a Mansi war band that had invaded the Russian settlers territory and ended as a punitive expedition against the Pelym Mansi and their ally the Siberian Khan.