The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1885-05-22
SAD AND sIcKENNG.I
The Horrible Casualty in
Cincinnati.
HOW A YOUTHFUL HERO DIED.
Details of Thursdays Calamity in
Observation-Disclosures of the Killed
and Injured.
Shocking Fatality.

! CINCINNATI, Ohio, May 21.-This city
has had its share of shocking disasters,
but never has one happened. where such
a pitiful loss of life has occurred as to-
day, with so little occasion. In less
than fifty minutes after the fatal
| blunder began, sixteen or seventeen
persons persisted. Looking over the
scene after the event it is plain that
every life could have been saved, short
as the time was. There were displays
of thoughtful hereism that saved two
lives, but one of the heroes lost his own
life. AT 1.30 O'Clock this afternoon, ].
a. Green, city editor of the Times
Star, upon going up the stairway to his
| office, saw dense clouds of smoke
issuing from the rear windows of the
building numbers 10 and 81 West
Sixth street and Immediately telephoned
to the fire department. An alarm
brought the engines almost instantly,
and as the hremen could reach the
| building from the front and rear, it was
not fifteen minutes until the fire was so
much under control that Chief Engin-
eer Wisely was able to reach the top
! floor, but he was too late to rescue the
girls employed there, and to his horror
| he found ten dead bodies with their
hands to their faces and the faces
blackened and discolored in death The
chief said, in speaking of it: 1.-THE house
is not burned out IN fact the fire was
chiefly in the fifth story. l counted ten
| girls lying upon benches, tables and
iaother things, and some on the floor.
Their clothing was not burned, but the
skin ON the backs of their hands was
scorched. 1t was a terrible sight; the
worst ever saw in my experience The
girls lay where they had fallen in their
wild and helpless despair"
1t has now been fairly ascertained
that the fire started from can of ben
zine on the second floor near the eleva-
tor shaft. A Boy on the floor says he
heard shouts and instantly the fire
leaped to the elevator shaft and darted
up it. The shaft reaches to the top of
the building and from the third story
to the fifth it was encircled by wooden
stairway. which was the only means of
access TO those floors. The elevator
shaft, to add to its combustibility, was
encased with thin wooden lattic work,
The second floor, where the fire started,
was the press room; the third, the COM
posing room; the fourth the storage
and waste room, and the fifth was
/ the folding room. AS soon as the fire
started, John Sullivan, a young man,
cousin of the proprietor, ran up
/ the stairway to the fifth floor to give
warning to the girls. Instantly, almost,
he found he was too late to get them
down the stairway. and that his own
retreat was cut off. What he did for
the frightened girls could only be told
| him. through the smoking windows,
whence the girls had already leaped to
death. J. r. Kinsley's son and his fore
man had gone to their roof adjoining this
one, west. and knowing the girls were
imprisoned on the floor below, they
procured a rope and lowered it to the
window where Sullivan was He in
stantly grasped it, and, fastening one of
| the girls to it, he helped her out of the
window, and Kinsley and Shredder
lowered her safely to the sidewalk The
rope was brought again and Sullivan
quickly fastened it to another
girl and sent her down safely. The
rope came up the third time, and as
the other girls by this time were all suf-
| located. or were afraid to venture, Sui
Ivan fastened the rope to his own body
and was being lowered, when, as he was
half way down, the flames shot out of
the window and he fell head foremost
to the sidewalk in the presence of a
Mortified crowd of people, who had
witnessed his heroism. When the girls
were jumping from the window, large
celored man heroically tried TO catch
them and break the force of the fall
tempt. Within ten minutes after the
fire began the patrol wagons were
called into use to carry away the
wounded and dead. As well as can be
ascertained there were about fifty &C.
cupants of the building, ofwhom twenty
or twenty-five were girls on the fifth
story The boys were on the second
and third floor, and this accounts for
their escape.
All agree that the spread of the
flames was almost instantaneous. Mr..
Kinsley, who ran to his upper floors in
the rear, where the flames were in dan
ger of coming through his window,
found the smoke so dense that he had
to crawl on the floor to reach his win
dow and close it. All this while, there
was an avenue of escape which the
pan;c-stricken girls did not think of.
There was an opening in the roof which
they could have easily reached from a
bench standing beside the wall, and
once on the roof they could have reached
Tic OtllcI DulIuIiSS WIN pCAACCt CttSC-
Lack of ready access to this place lost
all these lives.
The fire was almost insignificant
The wooden stairway around the eleva-
tor shaft, is not burned so as to be use
less or unsafe, yet the flames seem to
have pervaded all the floors and to have
ruined all the paper and other light
combustible matter. Mr.. Sullivan esti-
mates his loss at from 5000 to $4,000,
with ample insurance. The loss to the
buildings is slight.
The scenes at Habig's undertaking
establishment, where the bodies were
taken and where the friends and rela-
tlves came to identify them, were Of the
most painful character. In one case, a
policeman of Covington. KY, identified
his sisters, Lizzie and Dollie Handel. who
were twins. Mrs. Muir found the body OF
her daughter and had to be led away
from the terrible sight. Mrs. LeabaD
had the awful experience Of finding her
three daughters among the dead.
The fatal list. as new made up. is:
Anna Bell, aged 40, wife Of P. Bell, No.