Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1885 — A MAD HOUSE FIRE. [ARTICLE]

A MAD HOUSE FIRE.

One of' the Detached Cottages at the Kankakee (LI.) Asylum Burns to the Ground. Seventeen of the Unfortunate Patients Literally Roasted '■ to Death. [Kankakee (HD special. 1 A detached ward in the Eastern Illinois Hospital for the Insane was discovered on fire at '3 o’clock this morning by night watchman Cabbro. The cold was intense, the mercury marking 12 degrees below. The hour being late and no alarm being at hand the situation was appalling at the start. The watchman stood Almost paralyzed with fright as the probable outcome of madmen fighting fire and cold together flashed upon him. The building is a two-story stone and brick, with no wood about it except the floor and stairways. It was completed last August at a cost of $25,000. It was used as aft infirmary, with forty-five insane inmates, twenty-three on the first floor and twenty-two on the second. Attendants Brown, Rose and wife were sleeping on ftie second floor, attendants Reid, Williams, and Fireman Labarger on the first. The building was healed by hot-air furnaces. The watchman discovered the smoke issuing from the floor immediately above the furnace. He aroused the attendants. The smoke was drawn through the hot-air flue and along the halls and stairways to all parts of the build ng. The fire spread so rapidly that all efforts to save the building, in the absence of a fire alarm to summon help and for want of facilities to guard the'flames, were vain. Attendant W. A. Reid began dragging and carrying out the patients. Many were clad in their night clothes only. As soon as they were taken from the building they rushed bnck from the bitter cold into the building. Reid, at the risk of his own life, struggled on until twenty-one of his twenty-three patients were rescued, when he became exhausted and was carried to bed. On' the second floor attendants Rose and wife heard the alarm and escaped down the stairway just before it fell. Attendant Brown, sleeping on-the same floor, was aroused by the smoke. He attempted to save a patient in an adjoining room, but failed, and, sliding down a sheet from his window, jumped to the ground. Superintendent R. S. Dewey reached the scene and with a ladder climbed to the second-story windows, smashed them in and rescued some of the patients thereby. Almost all the patients refused to co-ope-rate in the efforts made To save them, and were only rescued by being dragged from the flames and held from returning. A marvelous escape was that of an inmate who fell with the second floor and struck the burning debris above the furnace and bounded through a window to the ground uninjured. The remains of the bodies of twelve patients have been taken from the ruins burned to fragments. They were only identified by the location of their bodies. The dead thus far identified, with ages and residences, are; From Chicago, Thoma's Herelev, 27 years old, brother of State Senator Hereley; James Colbert, 32 years old; M. Jordon, 30 years old; Thomas Hickey, 35 years old. from Springfield; F. Weymouth, 32, Peru; Henry Brown, 40, Rock Island; S. W. Galloway. 42, Saybrook; George Bennett, 24, Morris; J. J. Johnson, 35, Danville:, Matthew Haigh, 41, Chebanse; Theodore Hoehner, 63, Freeport. The following are missing inmates of the burned building, all of whom, no doubt, perished: Alfred Runyard, aged 50, Winnebago; C. M. Tyler, 45, Sheldon; C. Shotz, 65, Chicago; John Nathan, 42, Chicago; Orlando Ellis, 42, Pontiac. At the Coroner’s inquest this morning Superintendent Dewey testified that he had asked the Legislature two years ago for $2,500 to proteot these detached wards from fire; that SI,OOO wub allowed, all of which was used in mains and hydrants; that the amount was insufficient to answer the purpose suggested. He had recommended that the floors above the hot-air farnaoe be changed. It was shown in the evidence that they were but four inches from the outside and ten inches from the inside of the furnace to the pine joists. The Superintendent gave two reasons for the great nnmiier of deaths —first, that the patients were most all suffocated by smoke before they could be renched, and second, the inability or unwillingness of insane patients to try and help themselves. Night Watchman Cobbs testified before the Coroner’s jury that he registered a report of his calls every half hour. The register showed that he visited the furnaceroom at 3:40 o’clock and found it all right then. At 4:10 o’clock he discovered the fire. He said that the floor immediately over the furnaces had frequently been noticed by attendants sleeping there to be uncomfortably hot; that the furnace was roofed by sheet-iron, then by two layers of brick laid in mortar, with a’ space of but six inches between them and pine. Attendant R. C. Williams testified that five minutes after the fire was discovered it was blazing through the floor; that on being roused he ran outside and saw that the fire was only visible about and around the furnace. Attendant J. C. McFarland, outside night watchman, testified that he heard the cry of “Fire!” and roused the attendants of wards 5 and .6, and carried two ladders to the burning building front the earpentei shop 100 yards away. P. Skuily, foreman for Architect J. R. Willett of Chicago, who has charge of id) the hospital buildings, testified that he inspected the furnaces when completed and was satisfied with them then, but had not inspected them since. The air circulated bi tween the furnace roof and the pine timber. Thb hot-air. conductors were brick flues, no wood being about them. The hotair flues had four-inch walls and the smoke flues eight-inch walls. The remains of the bodies with one exception did not aggregate each a sufficient quantity of charred fragments to fill a man’s hat.

Robert Bonner, proprietor of the New York Ledger, Bays he bas on imigimiry censor in an old country Indy who reads the paper alond to her children, and objeots to finding a word in a story which she need hesitate at ont explaining to her little grandchildren when they ask what it means. A Chinaman near Rockland, Cal., last season shipped over 2,0( 0 horned-toads io China, where they will be converted into various kinds of very expensive medicine. Judge David Davis says that his worst friend is a woman whose poetry he once laughed at This was twenty-eight years ago, and she still hales him. r The permanent population of Washington is estimated at "12,000, and the transients in town at 10,000. Robert Browning,! the post, aged 73, is about to remarry. V