Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 February 1894 — FIRE IN A MADHOUSE. [ARTICLE]

FIRE IN A MADHOUSE.

Terrible Holocaust at the Boone Coonty (Ion) Poor Farm. Eight incurably insane paupers were cremated alive by the burning of the asylum at the Boone County (Iowa) poor farm the other night. Oniy one of the inmates escaped. The dead are: Mary Tucker, Johanna Sniggs, Anna Sonderberg,Christine Andersen, Christine Peterson, Mrs. Scott. Thomas Leaser, Joseph Craig. Mrs. Hibbard, a half-witted woman, escaped from the burning building and gave the alarm to Steward Hoicomb, who was in the main building adjacent. It was then too late to save the people, and the main building was saved only by great effort. The steward says tie banked the fires in the furnace abaut 9 o clock and dees not know how the firs originated, unless from a defective flue. The institution is situated in an isolated place and out of retch of even such apparatus as the town of Boon a could afford. By the time the alarm was given there was no time to do anvthing. The inmates could not help themselves, and waited for death, crying wildly as the fire burned in upon them. The building burnsd rapidly, and almost as soon as it was known in the city that tfie. e was a fi r e the whole place was consumed. ImmSM&iel? y, party hurried to the scene, bat too late to-agord say assistance whatever. The search for the nodies was begun ag soon as tbe ruins had cooled sufficiently to permit of it, aud the hopes of those who had thought that perhaps some of the inmates had escaped to the fields in t : he neighborhood and had concealed themselves were found to be baseless. Ail the bodies were either found or evidences were discovered lo show that they were in the smoldering ruins. If there had been somebrdy in the place able to force the inmates to leave it is likely that they would have escaped without serious injury, but nobody was at hand. The building burned was an old twostory frame structure, which was as dry as tinder. To add to the inflammable nature of the place many of the partition walls were padded with cotton, and some of the bedclothing was of cotton batting three inches thick. This was because only the incurable insane, who "had been returned from the State Asylum, were kept there. These patients were nearly all violent, and the great amount of cotton batting was to prevent them injuring themselves. The building was heated by a furnace, which was condemned last summer by a local expert as unsafe, but no attention had apparently been Eaid to this warning. It is thought to e certain that the lire started from a defect in the furnace, as there were no stoves in any of the rooms, and great care was exercised that no matches should be allowed in the building. Mr. Holcomb, the steward, says he first knew of the fire when alarmed by Mrs. Hibbard, the only inmate who escaped from the building. He was in the main building, which stands but three feet distant from the “crazy” house. When he got outdoors flames were bursting from all the windows of the frame structure and it was a mass of flames inside. He burst open a door, but was driven back by the flames, which in a few minutes burned the building to the ground. The main building was saved by pouring on water which the heat of tho fire melted frotn a huge snowdrift alongside the building. No one saw the eight people who wore burned to death, and whether they made any effort to escape can never be known. There seems to have been no attendant of any kind in the building where the insane people were locked up. « f. i