Gravestone leads to 1968 Portsmouth tragedy: 'There wasn't a chance to save those kids'

Sherry Wood
·4 min read

Uncovering overlooked history is a regular part of contract archivist Roland Goodbody’s work at the Portsmouth Athenaeum as he organizes and catalogs papers from the past. But recently, he was reminded that there are forgotten stories everywhere, often hidden in plain sight, perhaps because they are too painful to remember.

Roland frequently runs in the South Street cemetery. One day, cooling down after a run, his eye was caught by a gravestone that looked different from those around it. Most of the graves in the older section of the cemetery on the knoll above Clough Field are a dark gray color and made of thin slate.

This stone, on the other hand, stood out because it was made of white granite and was clearly newer and more substantial than its neighbors. Its other distinguishing feature was the uniform list of names it bore, all with the same death date.

Portsmouth Athenaeum contract archivist Roland Goodbody gazes at a gravestone in Portsmouth's South Cemetery bearing the names of five members of the McLaughlin family who died in a fire just days before Christmas in 1968.
Portsmouth Athenaeum contract archivist Roland Goodbody gazes at a gravestone in Portsmouth's South Cemetery bearing the names of five members of the McLaughlin family who died in a fire just days before Christmas in 1968.

Five children between the ages of 4 months and 8 years old had perished on the same December day in 1968. Clearly, something awful had happened. But what?

It was a question Roland carried around with him unanswered for a long while, but eventually he shared the information with a colleague at the Athenaeum, who immediately encouraged him to pursue the story further. Using the institution’s resources, he was able to discover the answer to his question relatively quickly.

On Dec. 22, 1968, fire destroyed the home of the McLaughlin family at 765A Islington St. The former site of the house is circled in red. It is across the street from Hannaford at Plaza 800 on Islington Street, and next to Gallagher's Place.
On Dec. 22, 1968, fire destroyed the home of the McLaughlin family at 765A Islington St. The former site of the house is circled in red. It is across the street from Hannaford at Plaza 800 on Islington Street, and next to Gallagher's Place.

A few nights before Christmas, tragedy had struck the McLaughlin family at 765A Islington St., adjacent to present-day Gallagher’s Place in the West End. A fire destroyed their house and with it five of their six children − Scott, 8, Patricia, 7, Kimberly, 5, Annette, 2, and Kelly, 4 months.

Another daughter, Robbin, 6, only survived because she had woken up around 1 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 22. Seeing flames coming out of the floor grill above the gas furnace, ran screaming to her parents a few doors away to alert them that the house was on fire.

That night, the parents had gone out at 10:30 p.m. and left the children with an 11-year-old babysitter, then returned at 12:30 a.m. and let him go home. Then they went to a neighbor’s home about 10 yards away for coffee.

The deaths of five McLaughlin children were reported on page 1 in the Dec. 23, 1968 Portsmouth Herald. Deputy Fire Chief Donald Lane told the newspaper that he "never felt more helpless in my life" when firefighters arrived at the burning home on Islington Street and realized the children couldn't be rescued.
The deaths of five McLaughlin children were reported on page 1 in the Dec. 23, 1968 Portsmouth Herald. Deputy Fire Chief Donald Lane told the newspaper that he "never felt more helpless in my life" when firefighters arrived at the burning home on Islington Street and realized the children couldn't be rescued.

The story, reported in the Portsmouth Herald on Monday, Dec. 23, 1968, makes for gruesome reading. Flames were seen shooting out of every window in the house, and “surrounding homes were bathed in a bright orange light from the blaze.”

Deputy Fire Chief Donald Lane said that he had “never felt more helpless in my life.”

"There just wasn't a chance to save those kids," he said.

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A neighbor told the Portsmouth Herald that the children'sP mother, Margaret McLaughlin, asked for a ladder to get in a rear window of the burning home, while her husband, Frederick McLaughlin, tried to break in through the kitchen.

"She kept running back and forth screaming for Scotty to jump," said Mrs. George Crew. "When her husband couldn't get in, he started throwing snow on the house trying to put out the fire."

A later investigation by the state fire marshal’s office reported that the fire was “probably caused when the floor furnace … set flammable materials, which were accidentally left on the grill work, on fire.”

The Portsmouth Herald reporter interviewed neighbors Frank Lavalley, 9 and his brother Joe, 8. The boys had been playing with the McLaughlins the Saturday afternoon before the fatal blaze.

"We went sliding on the ice, then we made a snowman, and then we went on the (Tarzan) swing in my back yard," Frank said. "They were all nice kids."

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He added, "We were talking about Christmas and we were all excited."

Frank described the McLaughlin children as "our best friends."

"Now we have no one to play with," he said.

A little more than three years after the fire, Frederick McLaughlin died at 34 on April 26, 1972.

The surviving daughter, Robbin McLaughlin Merchant, made it to age 37, when she succumbed to complications from diabetes on May 5, 2000.

In a May 9, 2000 Portsmouth Herald story headlined "Woman denied last request," reporter Susan Maddocks detailed how Robbin had asked to be buried with her siblings at their grave site in Cotton Field, near the South Street entrance to Portsmouth's South Cemetery.

The South Cemetery marker of Robbin McLaughlin Merchant (1962-2000) is not far from the burial site of five of her siblings who died in a fire in 1968 in Portsmouth.
The South Cemetery marker of Robbin McLaughlin Merchant (1962-2000) is not far from the burial site of five of her siblings who died in a fire in 1968 in Portsmouth.

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The request was denied by a cemetery trustee because Robbin was not a Portsmouth resident (she lived in South Berwick, Maine) and the Cotton Field section of the cemetery was reserved for the indigent.

Several of her family members came to the Portsmouth Herald to tell her story. A May 13, 2000, editorial titled "The rules must sometimes be broken out of decency" described how a compromise was reached so that Robbin could be buried near a family member in the Harmony Grove section of South Cemetery.

"Robbin McLaughlin Merchant didn't need to go through this one last fight," the editorial concluded.

The Portsmouth Athenaeum, 9 Market Square, is a membership library and museum founded in 1817. The research library and Randall Gallery are open Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 4 p.m. Masks are required. For more information, call 603-431-2538 or visit portsmouthathenaeum.org.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: 'There wasn't a chance to save those kids': 1968 Portsmouth tragedy