Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1885-05-27
FIRE AND SMOKE.
Terrible Loss of Lifo at "a Cincinnati
Fire--Working Girls Imprisoned ON
the Upper Floor of q Burning Build
ing-Fourteen Persons Lose Their
Lives.

On the afternoon Of the 21st dense
clouds of smoke were discovered lssu-
ing from the rear windows of the build
ing 9 and 21 West Sixth Street, Gin
cinnati, occupied by Sullivan & Co.'s
printing works, Ortiz, Wissel & Co.'s
dye-house, the Ledger Postal News
Company, Partisan Dyeing and Scour-
ing Company, j. r. Kinsley's gold,
silver and nickei-plating works. An
alarm brought the engines almost IN
stantly, and as the fremen could
reach the building from front and rear,
it was not fifteen minutes until the
fire was so much under control that
Chief Engineer Wisely was able to reach
the fifth or top floor. But be was too
late to rescue the girls employed
there, and to his horror be found
ten dead bodies lying with their
hands to their faces, which
were blackened and distorted
in death. Ithas been ascertained that
the fire started 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
it darted. The shaft reaches to the
top of the building, and from the third
story to the fifth it was encircled by a
wooden stairway, which was the only
means Of access to those floors. The
| elevator shaft, to add to it's cOmbusti-
bility, 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 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 eff.
| What he did for the frightened girls
could only be told by the glimpses
| that could be had of him at the smok-
ing 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
imprisoned 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 O. 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
window, and he fell head-foremost
to the sidewalk, in the presence Of a
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 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 rs 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
$4,000, with an ample insurance.
The loss to the building is slight.