The Superior times. [volume] (Superior, Wis.) 1870-1912, 1885-05-30
FIRE AND SMOKE.
Terrible Loss of Life at a Cincinnati
Fire-Working Girls Imprisoned on
the Upper Floor of "a Burning Build
ing-Fourteen Persons Lose their
Lives.

On the afternoon of the 2lst dense
| clouds OF smoke We're discovered issu-
| ing from the rear windows of the build
ing IS and 2l West Sixth Street, Gin
cillGati, occupied by Sullivan & Co. s
printing works, Orth, Wissell & Co. S
| dye-house, the Ledger Postal News
Company, Partisan Dyeing and Scour-
ing Company, }. K. Kinsley's gold,
silver and nickel-plating works An
| alarm brought the engines almost
| instantly, and as the fremen could
reach the building from front and rear,
1t was not fifteen minutes until the
| fire was so much under control that
| Chief Engineer Wisby was able to reach
the fifth or top floor. But he was too
late to rescue the girls employed there,
| and to his horror he found ten dead
bodies lying with their hands to their
faces, which were blackened and
distorted in death. 1t 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 a report and instantly the fire
leaped to the elevator shaft, up which
top OF the building, and from the third
story to the ifth it was encircled by a
wooden stairway, which was the only
means Of access to those floors. The
| elevator shaft, to add to its com
bustlbllity, was encased with a thin
wooden lattice work. The second
| floor, where the fire started, was the
press room, the third the composing
room, the fourth a 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 X.
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 Schru-
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 q third time, and us 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
a 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
We're no injured except fatally, as those
on the fifth floor were either suffocated
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 anC
other light combustiblematter. Sulli
van estimates his loss at So, 900 tc
$4,000, with an ample insurance
The loss to the building is slight.