Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 April 1878 — Details of the Terrible Catastrophe at Bath, N. Y. [ARTICLE]

Details of the Terrible Catastrophe at Bath, N. Y.

Bath, N. Y., April 8. The building of the Steuben County Poor-House burned Saturday night was a brick thirty by forty feet, two stories high. Nearly all the windows were grated, and there was but one mode of egress from each story. No night watchman was employed about the building, and there was no fire-appa-ratus. The County-House is two miles from Bath, and the Fire Department did not go out. An insane epileptic from Hornellsville, named Ford, who was locked up in a cell on the first floor, set fire to his bed with a match, probably obtained from a fellow-pauper. All the partitions were of pitch pine, and burned like tinder. The cries of Ford roused the other inmates only after the building was filled with blinding smoke. An inmate who had Ford in charge opened Ford’s door, and the flames burst out and ran along the partitions and up the stove-pipe hole, into the second story. Ford could not be seen on account of the flames. He had forced his head between the bars of a window, and, unable to pull it back, was crying for help. The flames poured out or the window around his head and he perished. The upper story was occupied by twentyfive women and children, and the lower story by eighteen men. A majority were idiotic, cripples, or very aged. Five on the first floor and ten on the second were burned. At the first alarm Eli ’Carrington, the keeper, rushed out of the main building with >n employe, and knocked in a door at the foot of the stairs leading from the second story. Eight or ten women were piled up at the foot of the stairs and a cloud of suffocating smoke rolled down. The women were pulled out, and Carrington started up-stairs, but was driven back by the smoke. In five minutes from the time of the alarm the paupers ceased coming out, and in half an hour the root fell in. The first-floor door, leading from the men’s department, was never locked, and no one in the building was locked in a cell except Ford. OnSunday the blackened remains of five bodies were taken from the ruins, and to-day about two-thirds of the debris were dug over, and more remains were found. Altogether they would about fill an ordinary-sized . coffin. Heads, legs and arms were entirely burned off, and in most cases but a very small portion of any body can be found. No blame Attaches to any one, but the county is severely censured for providing such a man-trap for the occupation of its paupers. Before the fire there were 140 paupers in the CountyHouse. < Edward Hudson, aged fifty-six, a paralytic, who crawledoutof the building with his clothes one mass of flames, djed to-day.