Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1878 — AWFUL HOLOCAUST. [ARTICLE]

AWFUL HOLOCAUST.

Fourteen Hundred People Burned at Tientsn, China—Terrible Scene* of Agony and Death. A letter from Tientsn, China, gives the following particulars of the fire in that city, by which 1,400 people lost their lives: The number of refugees wjio have been collecting at this point has been augmenting by daily additions until the aggregate was variously estimated at anywhere from 50,000 to 150,000. A few weeks since, an additional soup dispensary was opened on a piece of vacant ground known as the Flower Garden of the K’ang family. When this relief depot was established, the whole premises were surrounded with a strong fence of reeds and millet stalks, plastered with mud. As the place was to be occupied only by women and children, the greatest care was taken that all communication between the inside and outside be prevented. The alley on the west side was fenced up at its north end, and the only gate of the soup-yard was at the south end of the same alley—a gate about six feet wide. About 10 o’clock on a bitter-cold morning an alarm was given that a fire had broken out in this relief yard, roofed with inflammable mats, and crowded with human beings. Crowds of people began to gather on all sides of the yard and tear down the strong fence. The moment that communication was established between the inside and the outside, a considerable number of outsiders leaped into that part of the inclosure forming the alley to attempt to rescue those that were still straggling to escape. The scene within was awful. The long sheds had already melted into smoke and ashes, and only the poles were still burning—yet not the poles alone, for beneath stretched long lines of something only indistinctly seen, and which, between the gusts of flame and smoke, could be recognized as the heads, arms and bodies of human beings, all huddled within the limits of the former compartments, and just as they were caught by the fiery sirocco. Not one in twenty had time to move a yard before they were met by flames and suffocated where they chanced to be. In of the locked gate a large number of poor wretches were caught and imprisoned by the flames. Their wadded or skin garments caught fire and could neither be taken off nor extinguished. Scores of poor women were reduced to a condition too horrible to be described-—ab solutely roasted on one side, and utterly helpless to escape. The greater part of those who were burned must have perished instantly. Within five minutes of the time the fire broke out, it is probable that those who failed to escape were suffocated by the flames. Long after every scrap of mat and wood had been consumed, the bodies of the victims continued to burn and smolder. The corpses were most of them reduced literally to cinders, utterly beyond recognition. Many of the survivors, on the day of the lire and the three following days, while the bodies were being taken out, wandered about, uttering the most piteous lamentations, striving to discover their children ; husbands came to institute a hopeless quest for their wives. Nothing was left upon the ground but hundreds of horribly mutilated corpses, fragments of halfburned clothes and broken pottery. It is definitely ascertained that the Dumber who perished is somewhat more than 1,400.