Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1905 — A Sad Occurernce at Lowell [ARTICLE]

A Sad Occurernce at Lowell

Two Telephone Girls Smothered to Death by Smoke. A sad ocourance took place at our neighboring town of Lowell, some 30 miles northwest of Rensselaer, |early l.ust Tuesday motning, as a result of a fire. The fire was in a brick building owned by John Hack, the well known contractor and occupied mainly by our former townsman Prank L. Hunt, as a drug store. The second story of the building had the Lowell telephone exchange in front, back of that a room oc

copied by the telephone girls, and where they slept nights and still farther back another room used as Jyiing rooms. A fire started in this living ro >n s. burned a large hole in the floor apd through this hole burning material fell down into the rear part of the drug store below, right upon a large stock of paints, oils and other very inflamable and volatile goods and also as stated a larger quantity of ammonia. The fire in them produced a dense and very suffocating smoke which passed upward through the hole in floor and filled all the rooms above including that in which the two telephone girls were sleeping. When the fire was discovered about three o’clock a. m. these up per rooms were so full of smoke and vapor'that at first no one could enter. Finally a fireman ventured in with a rope around his waist, and removed the bodies of the two girls, One.of them had never arote from her bed; but the other had got up, probably in a dazed and half unconscious condition and after going a few steps, had ran against some boxes, and then fell and expired. Neither of the girls had been reached by the fire at all, their deaths having been caused entirely b/ suffocation. They were sisters n vmed Abbie and Mabel Simpson, and 23 and 20 jears old. The fire was extinguished before it had greatly damaged the building but the drug store stock is understood to be greatly damaged by heat, smoke and water.