Rensselaer Democrat, Volume 1, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1898 — TOWN FIRE SWEPT. [ARTICLE]

TOWN FIRE SWEPT.

BailneM Section of Attleboro, Mu*., la Destroyed. The business portion of the town of Attleboro, Mass., thirty-one miles southwest of Boston, burned early Wednesday morning. The loss runs up into the millions. In three hours seventeeh jewelry manufacturing concerns were burned out, nearly thirty buildings all told. The .fire started at 12:15 in the morning in the watch case factory of J. M. Bates, and in an hour sixteen buildings were destroyed;' entailing a loss of 11,000,000. At 2:30 the flames were spreading rapidly and the whole of the center of the town was doomed. Taunton, Fall River and New Bedford were appealed to for help. The fire apparatus at hand was wholly inadequate to the task before it. At 3 o’clock three more large jewelry factories were in flames and the conflagration was as far from being subdued as an hour before. Fire engines arrived in the town over the road from the surrounding towns and two engines were sent over from Providence on a special train, sixteen miles away. Fall River and Taunton also sent engines on special trains. Attleboro is the largest cheap jewelry manufacturing town in the world, and it stands second only to Providence, R. 1., in the manufacture of costly jewelry. The factories employ thousands of people, who are thrown out of work by the fire. The population is 20,000, half of whom work in the factories. Fully 5,000 people living outside the town are also employed in the shops. Nearly all the manufacturers have branches in New York, Chicago and St. Louis.