Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1885 — FATAL FLAMES. [ARTICLE]

FATAL FLAMES.

A Young Woman and Two Children Burned to Death in a Building in Cleveland. • l > [Cleveland (Ohio) dispatch.) The occupants of a two-story frame tenement house in Broadway, near the Nickel-i’late Railway station, awakened by a smell of smoke. A feW minutes later the building was in flames, and a terrible panic ensued, A number of families occupied the building, and the thoroughly frightened people fled by the stairways and ladders. All but three escaped, The unfortunates were Fannie and Sarah Rosenberg, aged 8 and 11 years respectively, daughter of a widow, and Rosa Meisel, their cousin, who was spending the night with them. Mrs. Rosenberg and her eldest daughter, Esther, who had been in the same apartment with the three who lost their lives, were rescued with much difficulty. Rosa Meisel was to have been married next week to Theodore Frau, who slept in the same building, Frau was almost beside himself, and rushed madly through the flames and smoke in search of his affianced bride. Again and again he called her name, but received no response. He pounded on her bed-room door, but was not admitted. The flames were every second growing fiercer and the smoke more suffocating. He was about to give up in despair when he stumbled against a female figure in the hall. Hb thought it was his Rosa. Lifting the girl i(n his arms, he rushed to the window and sprang out, the girl pressed ~to his, breast In the leap he broke his arm and received other injuries. Once upon terra firma, he looked into the face of the maiden he had rescued. It was not the face of his affianced wife, but a girl named Cohen, of the same age, and same build as his sweetheart. At that very moment Rosa Meisel was struggling with death in her room above. The noise and confusion had not awakened Rosa and her two room-mates, the Rosenberg gir s, until it was too late. While the other occupants of the building were leaping from the windows or being rescued by ladders, the cry ran out that there were three girls in a rear room. The firemen scaled ladders, climbed into the windows, and attempted to search the second floor, but amid the flames and they found no trace of human beings. Some time afterward a search was made, and the three victoms were fonnd in their room, showing unmistakable evidence of a desperate struggle. It is reported that Frau has gone insane from grief.