Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1892 — MANY FOUND DEATH. [ARTICLE]

MANY FOUND DEATH.

VICTIMS OF THE HOTEL ROYAL FIRE NOT COUNTED. Some Figures Mwo 100—Lowest Estimates Are Thirty Beneath the Ruins—Bodies Being Hunted—Therh Were 130 or 140 Guests In the Hotel. . i-‘ ' Thrilling Stories of Escape,A Are began in the Hotel Boyal, in New York, at the northeast comer of Fortieth street and Sixth'avenue,’ at 4 o’clock the other morning, and caused the loss of many lives. It swept through the building like lightning. The guests had no warning of their danger until awakened by the crackling of the flames and by the suffocating smoke. They rushed to the halls and were driven back by the fire that even then was buring through the walls and doors of their rooms. They ran to the windows. There was but one stationary fire escape. Not all the rooms were furnished with the rope escapes that the law requires. Because of almost criminal slowness in sending out the alarm there were no firemen with ladders to aid the frightened people when they came to the windows. Numbers leaped out. Five were killed instantly outside the walls. Dozens were hurt. There wore 165 or 175 persons in the hotel when the fire started. Not all their names are known, because a thief stole the register when the Are first broke out. But even the register would not tell the story, for many of the transient guests at the hotel were of the kind who register under aliases. The list of dead is not complete, nor will it be for some time. The walls fell in, and the bodies of those burned are under the debris. It may be that the dead will not number more than twenty. They may number twice as many. The list of missing telegraphed numbers forty. A large proportion of these persons are probably safe, though they may never be publicly accounted for. With five corpses in the morgue, eighteen persons recorded as injured, forty as missing or inquired for, and fifty-two as known to be safe, there are fifty persons still of whom nothing has been heard of one way or another, if there were 165 persons in the house. It is probable that nearly all of these fifty escaped. The flames seemed to break out of the whole roof at once and t heir glare lighted the street like day. There were one or two frantic persons at every window in the house. They held out their hands appealingly. They it aned out and over the sills, clutching at the air. Here and there was a cool cne, probably a dozen in the lot. They knew enough to use the rope fire-escapes that were in the rooms and clambered out and slid down them. Here and there a man or woman leaped upon a window sill and stood a moment and then sprang wildly off. Two men dived head first from the third floor on the fortieth street side. One fell flat on the pavement and was picked up with every bone in his body apparently broken. The other struck sidewise on his head and that was smashed and crushed shapeless. Two women leaped from ene window on the third floor on the same side. They had stood a moment clasped in each other’s arms. They jumped still clasped together. They fell apart, one dead, one unconscious on the pavement. From the same window leaped two men. One shrieked wildly as he cut through the air. He did not move after he fell, and he was dragged away dead. His companion landed on his feet and sank down and fell over. He writhed about on the pavement just a moment. Then he leaped to his feet and dashed off across Fortieth street. He was not seen again. Probably his name or his alias is in the list of missing. The fate of those who fell could be seen by those who clung to thoir places in the windows, and made some of them hesitate to follow. Some who leaped escaped unhurt. Some of them turned and shouted to the others to hold their places and not to jump. The excited crowd in the streets shouted “Jump!” and "Hold on!” in turn.

The ladders reached only to the third floor at first. One that touched the fourth floor was put up finally, and men and women were carried down that. But there was no help for the unfortunates on the fifth floor. Little could be seen of them from the street; The smoke that came from the lower floor seemed to rise to the top and hang f there like a great cloud. Occasionally a gust of wind would clear it away for a moment, and forms could be seen hanging from the windows. The people there screamed to the firemen, but their cries were not heard. In the excitement on the other floors every one seemed to forget that there was a floor not reached by the ladders. 'Once, when the smoke cleared away, a woman was seen to dive headforemost out of a window on the top floor. Her companion, a man seized her skirts. They held a moment, and then slipped from her. She fell on the balcony. The man climbed out of the window, hung from the sill, and then dropped. A rope escape was hanging from the window under him, and he managed to seize that and checked the force of his fall. He landed on the balcony beside the woman’s body. Picking her up, he climbed on the ladder and was coming down with it. A policeman took the body from him. He leaped then himself from the ladder and dashed across the street. .He was W. L. Harmon. He was nearly suffocated, but was otherwise unhurt. This couple were the last that got out of the building. There were no more faces at th 3 windows. Indeed, it was not possible that any one could be in the building and be aliVfe. The whole house was a mass of flames. The building was a fire-trap, Chfef Bonner said. The lightning rapidity with which the flames ate up the interior, and the readiness with which the walls fell down go to prove the statement. The New York Building Bureau was stricken dumb by the disaster.