Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1885-05-27
FIRE AND SMOKE.
Terrible Lees Of Life s4 Cincinnati
FiFs-Wsrking Girls Imprisoasd On
tAs UpDor E1oor Of BurniHg Build
y Ag-Ieartssn PersoAs Lose their
IlvOD.

On the afternoon of the 21st dense
clouds OF smoke were discovered issu-
ing fom the rear windows of the build
ing 10 and 81 West Sixth Street, Gin
cinnAti, occupied by Sullivan 4 Co.'S
printing works, Orth, Wissell 4 Co.'S
dyehouse, the Ledger Postal News
Company, Parisian Dyeing and scour-
ing Company, J. r. Kinsley's gold,
silver and nickel-plating works. An
alarm brought the engines almost
instantly, and as the firemen could
reach the building from front and rear,
it Was not fifteen minutes until the
ire was so much under control that
Chiet Engineer Wisby was able to reach
the nth or top floor. But he was too
late 70 rescue the girls employed there,
and 10 his horror he found ten dead
Bodies lying with their hands to their
faces, which were blackened and
distorted in death. It has been
ascertained that the fire. start
ed from can Of benzine on
the second floor near the elevator
shaft. A boy on that floor says he
heard q report and instantly the fire
leaped to the elevator shaft, up which
it darted. 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 it's COM
bustibility, was encased with thin
wooden lattice work. The second
floor, where the fire started, was the
press room, the third the composing
room, the fourth q storing and waste
room and the fifth was the folding
room.
As soon as the fire started John
Sullivan, 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 stairs and
that his own retreat was cut off.
What he did for the frightened girls
could only be told by the glimpses that
could be had of him at the smoking
window whence four OF the girls had
already leaped to their death. J. r.
Kinsley and his foreman, Schroeder,
had gone to the roof of their building
adjoining this on the west,
and knowing the girls were i'm
prisoned on the floor below
they procured a rope and lowered
to the window where Sullivan was
He instantly grasped it, and fastening
one of the girls to it, helped her out Of
the window, and Kinsley and Schrn-
der lowered her safely to the sidewalk.
The rope was brought up and Sullivan
again quickly fastened it to another
girl and sent her down safely. The
rope came a third time, and as the
other girls by this time were all suffo-
Gated or were afraid to venture, Sulli-
van fastened the rope to himself, and
was being lowered, when, as he was
half way down, the flames shot out of
q window, and he fell head-foremost
to the sidewalk, in the presence of q
Mortified crowd Of people, who had
Witnessed his heroism. He was taken
up dead.
The complete list of dead numbers
thirteen girls and one man. There
were no injured except fatally, as those
on the fifth floor were either sufIocated
by smoke or killed by jumping. The
fire itself was almost insignificant.
The wooden stairway around the ele-
vator shaft is not burned so as to be
useless or even unsafe, yet the flames
seem to have pervaded all the floors,
and to have ruined all the paper and
other light combustible matter. Sulli-
van estimates his loss at $4,000 to
SIC, 900, with an ample insurance.
The loss to the building is slight.