Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1888 — FOURTEEN LIVES LOST. [ARTICLE]

FOURTEEN LIVES LOST.

Thirteen peopfa were burned to delft h ill a six-story brick building in the rear of 107 Bowery, New York, Friday, Six more, burned so badly that they will probably die, were reifioyed to the various hospitals. The house was a ramshackle affair hidden in the middle of the block, the only entrance so it being a narrow alley way from the Bowery*. In fronted it was”a four-story Thiifdfng'on the first floor of which was a saloon. Adjoining is Harry Miner’s People’s Theater. In the rear of the burned building were two houses hemming it in on the Christie-st. side. In this caged-in l,)uilding lived about 150 people. Each of the six floors was occupied by a single family, the head of which was a tailor who made clothing'for the cheap wholesale elothing'houses and employed from ten to fifteen men, women and children in addition to his own family, in making up the clothing.* They were all Polish Jews, and employer and employed worked, ate and slept in the. crowded rooms of tlie dingy* tenement.

About 4:15 o’clock, while all the occupants of the building were busily at work in the closing hours preceding their Sabiath eve, flames b.roke out on the lower floor. The fire had, when first discovered, already gained such headway that- it was in full possession of the stairway and escape seemed impossible. The police reserve was called out and in short order 100 blue-coats, in charge of Inspector AVilliams "were on hand, ready to assist the firemen. Many of the frightened inmates rushed down through the flames and escaped to tile narrow court yard with clothes ablaze and hands and bodies burned. Six of them were so burned that they were taken to the hospital and may die. There were fire escapes on the front and.rear of the house, perpendicular iron ladders running down the front and rear of the building, hut before any ofthe inmates had tried to escape by* them the flames had ascended through the house and were reaching from the windows, so that the descent by fire escapes was impossible. One man, already half burned to death, leaped from a fifth story* window, and fell a mangled mass of flesh in the little courtyard. Othersjumped from the second story* windows and escaped with bruises. One poor woman lay upon her back in a little store in the Bowery, with not only* her clothing, but the hair of her head burned off. She was unconscious, and the surgeon said she would not live to reach the hospital. Another young girl was delirious with pain. She was not so badly burned as the others, but in a mad jump from one of the windows she had received internal injuries, and also cut a terrible gash in the side of her head, from which blood gushed forth, giving her a ghastly appearance. The spectacle as the various ambulances received their human freight and drove rapidly away was a sad one, and attracted an enormous crowd. A. H. Sheldon,manager of the People’s theater, on discovering the fire, sent out an alarm and the firemen responded, but when they arrived the flames already had complete possession of the house, and nothing could be done to save it and little to save its inmates.

Charles Norman, property man of the Peopled theater, with several of his comrades ran to the roof of the theater, carrying a small ladder which they stretched over to a window of the burning building. A woman with her hair and clothing already ablaze appeared at the window and Norman called to her to cross over an the ladder. She cried back that she could not leave her two children. Norman tried to cross over on the ladder, hut the flames drove him back and he could not save her. Afterward the charred bodies of mother and two children were , found in the building. When the firemen had at Tlast drowned the flames so that they could enter the house, they searched floor by floor as they ascended, and on the third floor they found the burned bodies of a man, -woman and ja boy. 7On the fourth floor they found five bodies so badly burned that it was impossible to tell whether they were those of men or woman. On the fifth, floor no bodies •were found, but on the sixth five more bodies were found, and they also were burned so that it could not he told whether they Were bodies of men or women. This made thirteen bodies found in the building. That of the man who leaped from the fifth story window increased the death list to fourteen, while it is feared that the death of some, if not all of those in the hospitals, will make the number greater. Several of the bodies were burned so badly tfiat they fell apart when moved, and the firemen were obliged to lower them from windows in nets.