Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1893 — WHOLESALE HOLOCAUST. [ARTICLE]

WHOLESALE HOLOCAUST.

Forty-four Demented Wards of the Granite State Cremated. A Winter Night’s Horror—Cells Were Locked and AH but Four Inmates Perished. The county insane asylnm, four miles from Dover, N. H., was burned Wednesday night and forty-four lives were lost. When Watchman Will lam Oheevy made his 10 o’clock rounds into the asylum he found the fire coming out of the cell occupied by a woman and gave the alarm. William Driscoll, the keeper, Vtth his family, lived in the building and he at once broke the locks of the cells and tried to get the inmates out. Then lie got his wife and two children out. Of the forty-eight inmates only four escaped They were William Twoombfcv. Rose Anderson, William Daly and Frank Donschon. The latter walked two miles in a blinding snow storm with only his llElrt on to William Horne's house, where he was taken care of. The building was of wood, two stories high, with a bjg yard on each side. It was built twenty years ago and had fifty cells. One woman escaped to the yard hot was burned to death there. The building cost $15,000. The main building, hi which were over one hundred of the county poor, caught fire, but was saved by the heroic efforts of the inmates, who carried pails of water and extinguished the flames, although many were burned in so doing. The Dover fire department was summoned, but owing to the distance, tho blinding snow storm and the icy roads it took forty-five minutes to get there—too late to be of service. The smoking ruins, show the charred bodies still laying on their beds. How the building caught fire is a mystery.