Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1885-02-13
The Terrible Story of the Fire as
Told by One Of the
Attendants.
An Internal Attempt to Throw a Pas
senger Train Off the Track
in louisiana.
The Sunny South Gets a Taste of a
Regular Old Style
Blizzard.
Aims House Burned.

broke OUT IN the insane department OI
the county almshouse, West Philadel-
phia, tonight. The flames spread rap
idly, and before the 300 inmates could be
released nineteen of them were burned
to death. Others were left to roam about
the grounds at will, and many of them
were picked up by the police throughout
the city. The buildings at II tonight,
pre- still burning, and other departments
are in great danger.
Eighteen raving maniacs were burned
to death IN the insane department of the
Blockley almshouse, west side Of the
Schuylkill river tonight, in the confa-
grafton which needed nothing to make it
the most horrible disaster of the kind
ever known in the history of the city.
Attendant Schroeder gives the follow
ing history of the horrors Of: the dread
ful night:
I unlocked the doors on the first floor,
but the smoke in the upper stories was
so thick that breathing was impossible.
While I was getting the men out below
attendant William Strain was doing the
same for the inmates on the second floor.
I met Hanna, night watchman, who was
also helping, and we went up to the third
story, but were driven back by the flames
which had forced their way through the
stairway and were creeping along the
cells of the doomed inmates. We ran
around to the other stairway near the
new buildings on the west, and by the
time some fremen had arrived all the in
mates had been gotten out of the second
story, so there remained about twenty
eight on the third floor; twenty in cells
and eight in the large common room at
the west end. The following are the
names and ages of the occupants of the
nineteen cells in ward N, near where the
fire started, all of whom are supposed to
have been suffocated or burned to death
with the exception of three who were
rescued by the fremen:
James D. Dechason, IS; James Mccoy,
40; John Lyden, SO; Isaac Oneille, 35;
Charles Scott, colored, 80; John Dwyer,
40; James Burk, 81.
This man killed three of the inmates of
the institution during the twenty-five
years he was confined there. For twenty
years his hands were chained to his body.
Thomas Rusk, so; Michael Wroth, 36;
Robert Cunningham, 45; Charles Nolen-
berger, 60; Thomas Jones, 81; John Her
RIGGS, 48. Herriges, is the man who was
discovered in 1870, in a shanty at Fourth
and Lombard streets, where he had been
confined in chains by his parents for
twenty years. John Kechler, 60; Thomas
Smith, SO; Edward Murphy, 48;
Charles O'Brien, 36; Phillip Newburg, 60;
Jacob Glossman was rescued by the
watchman. The bodies of Dechason,
Wroth, Jones, Burk, Koehler, Herriges,
Scott, Lyden, Newburger and Nolenber-
ger had been taken from the ruins and
removed to the dead house by midnight.
The unfortunate occupants Of the cells
were being smothered to death by smoke
and perhaps blistered and burned By the
flames. Their cries were heartrendlng.
Some Of them cursed and swore, others
laughed hideously, and others yelled
with pain, with such awful cries as
would have appalled, the stoutest hearts.
A fireman, myself, and patient named
Rafferty,, crawled on our hands and
knees to such of >the men as we
could reach and dragged out four
teen, eight Of them alive, four sufocated
to death and two so horribly burned that