Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1905 — PERISH IN FIRE. [ARTICLE]

PERISH IN FIRE.

Score of Persona Burned to Deatk In New York Tenement, At least a score of persons were burned to death, several were so badly hurt that they may die and forty others received slighter injuries in a fire that destroyed a five-story New York tenement house early Tuesday. The fire had gained great headway before it J>ecame known to most of the tenants and many of them were cut off before they conld make an attempt to save themselves. Scores were carried from the blazing building. Firemen dim bed tjie jjfllls on their ladders, braved the flames tw reached the imperiled tenants. Crowded fire escapes in the rear of the tenement house were largely responsible for so many deaths and injuries among its population, which approached 200. The scenes about the building after the fire when the search for the dead was begun were heartrending. Nothing so pitiable had been seen in New York since the Slocum disaster. The fire started in the basement, occupied by Isaac Davis, his wife and three children. Davis had been out Monday night and returned to his home early Tuesday morning, went into bis store on the same floor just in time to see a kerosene lamp in the rear explode. He awoke his wife and both tried to put out the flaming lamp, but without success, and then gave all their attention to getting their children out of the building. A policeman who heard the cry of alarm rushed to the scene and every effort was made to rouse the sleeping persons in the house. Meantime the flames had spread with startling rapidity, and when the persons who had been asleep on the upper floors awoke they found themselves confronted by a wall of flames on nearly every side. On some of the fire escapes the rubbish was packed so closely that it became impossible to pass certain points, and men, women and children stood literally roasting to death as the flames roared through windows around them. Many women flung their children into the arms of men standing on the sidewalk. A frenzied crowd gathered in front of the police station, weeping, wailing and lamenting for the dead. As rapidly as possible they were permitted to examine the bodies in the court yard, where their laments grew louder. Unable to recognize their missing relatives in the charred, almost formless bodies they saw before them, many turned away, faint and sick at the awful sight.