Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1901 — SOUTH CHICAGO HORROR. [ARTICLE]

SOUTH CHICAGO HORROR.

B:ve l Dead and Many Hurt in a Teuj* , ment House Fire, Seven dead and eight seriously injured is the record of a fire that raged through an okl frame tenement house 'at 9316 Marquette avenue, Chicago, early Sunday morning. While the flames ravaged the structure, • driving the frightened inmates either to desperate leaps for life or overcoming and consuming them in the smoke-laden rooms, succor, although at hand, was of no avail. Barred from the bqrnin& structure, police and fire apparatus stood useless and helpless waiting for th® crew of a long freight train to clear a passage at the crossing. Not until the crew was placed under arrest was this a;compljshed and in the interim human lives had succumbed. Nor was this, the only remarkable incident of the fatal-blaze. John Schmidt, a young boy living next to the burning structure, was on the spur of the moment transformed into a hero. Clad only in a night dress, he cast’a clothesline into the upper windows of the tenement, rescuing five persons from certain death. One of these proved to be a Dowieite, who added to the terror of the situation by refusing to allow medical assistance to go to the aid .of his burned and bruised wife. He adopted the same tactics with his little girl, who was forcibly taken from him during a struggle, in which the burned flesh was torn from her tiny arm by the grasp of her frenzied father. Inexplicable circumstances surround the origin of the fire. On Saturday night there had been a fight between some of the occupants of the structure, and the police had been appealed to. Later quiet was restored. Supnday morning, shortly before daylight, Joseph Zraminski; a 16-year-old boy, noticed flames in the building while passing it on the way home from a dance. The fire seemtd to be under the stairway and was spreading rapidly. The boy shouted loudly, and while the imprisoned inmates rushed to the narrow windows and plunged out or fell exhausted where they stood, the clang of the tire bells was heard. When the firemen reached the Zook tenement there-was nothing to do beyond stopping the further spread of the flames and search the ruins for the dead. Christensen’s injured wife and child were removed to a neighboring house. It was here that Christensen created a scene when an attempt was made to supply medical attendance. Christensen had to be knocked down before the injured child could be taken from him. He cursed liis rescuers, the police and the doctors, and created such a seene that he was finally locked up.