St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-05-22
Flames in the Cincinnati Times
Star Building Do Appalling
Work.
Fourteen Employees Lose Their
Lives, and Others Fatally
Injured.
Heroic Efforts Made to Save the Girls,
Whose Crie5GOr Help We're Heart
rending.
The Fire Spreading With Lightning Ra-
pidity, Their Escape Was Et-
feotually Gut Off.
~zrIru1 and Touching scenes at the
Morgue-Relatives Identity
ing Their Dead.
Winnipeg Struck by Cyclone Which
Destroys Houses and Injuries
Several People.
Another Horror.

Of life has occurred as that OF to-day, with
SO little occasion. In less than fifteen
minutes after the fatal blunder began six
teen or seventeen persons perished. Look
ing over the scene, after the event. it is
plain that every life could haYe,been easily
saved. Short as was the time there were
displays of thoughtful heroism that saved
two lives, but one of the heroes lost his
own. At 1:3O 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 Nos 10 and 21 West Sixth
street and Immediately telephoned the fire
department An alarm brought the en-
gines almost instantly. and as the tiremen
could reach the building from front and
rear it was not fifteen minutes before the
fire was so much under control that Chief
Engineer Wisby was enabled to reach the
fifth or sixth floor, but he was too late TO
SAVE THE GIRLS
EMPLOYED. and. to his horror, he found ten
bodies lying with hands to their faces, and
faces blackened aud distorted 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. In the smoke L counted
ten girls lying upon boxes, tables and other
things. and some on the floor. Their cloth
ing was not burned. but the skin of the
hands was scOrched. 1t was 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 a can of benZine on the second floor,
near the elevator shaft. A boy on that floor
says he heard report, and instantly the
fire leaped to the elevator shaft and up it.
The shaft reached to the top of the build
ing. and from the second to the fifth story
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 q
thin wooden lattice work. The second
floor. where the fire started, was the press
room, the third the composing room, the
fourth the storage and waste room, and the
fifth was the folding room. AS soon as the
fire started, John Sullivan, young man.
son 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 seen of him
at the smoking window, whence four of the
girls had already leaped to their death. j.
R. Kingsley, son, and his foreman had gone
to the roof of the 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
tying one of the girls to it helped her out
of the window. and Kingsley and Shredder
LOWERED HER SAFELY
to the sidewalk. The rope was brought up
and Sullivan again fastened it to another
girl and sent her down safely. The rope
came third time and, as the other girls by
this time were all Suffocated or were afraid
to venture Sullivan fastened the rope to
himself and was being lowered when, as he
was half wax down. the flames shot out of
a window and he fell, head foremost, to the
sidewalk, in the presence of Mortified
crowd of people who had witnessed his
heroiSm. When the girls were jumping
from the window large colored man hero
.icaIly tried to catch them and so break the
force of their fall. He nearly lost his own
life III the attempt. Within ten minutes
after the fire began the patrol wagons were
called into use to carry away the wounded
and killed. As well as can be ascertained
there were about
FIFTY OCCUPANTS
of the building, of whom twenty OF twenty
five were girls, in the fifth story. The
boys were on the second and third floors.
and this accounts for their escape. All
agree that the spread of the flames was
almost instantaneous. Mr.. Kingsley, who
ran to his upper floors in the rear, where
the flames were in danger of coming
through his windows, found the smoke so
dense that he had to crawl ON the floor to
reach his window and close it. All this
while there was an avenue of escape which
the panic-stricken girls did not think of.
1t was an opening in the roof. which they
could easily have reached from bench
standing beside the wall, and once ON the
roof they could have reached the other
buildings with ease. The lack of ready
access to this place lost ~
ALL THESE LIVES.
The fire was almost insignificant The
wooden stairway around the elevator shaft
is not burned so as to be useless or even un-
safe yet the flames seem to have pervaded
all the floors and to have ruined all the
paper and all other light combustible mat
ter. Sullivan estimates his loss at $4,000
to $4,000, with an ample insurance. The
loss to the building is slight. The scenes
Hibeg'S undertaker's establishment, where
the bodies were taken and where friends
and relatives came to identify them, were
OF the most painful character. In one case
q policeman, of Covington, identified his
sisters, Lizzie and Dollie Hande. who were
twins. Mrs. Meir found the BODY of her
daughter and had to be led away from the
terrible sight. Mrs. Leaban had the awful
experience of finding her three daughters
among the dead. The fatal list, as new
made up, is
ANNA BELL, aged AZ, wife of David P.
Bell living at rs Lock street.
DOLLIE and LIZZIE HANDE, twin sisters
aged 20, resided at 713 Scott street, Coving-
ton.
FANNIE JONES, aged 22. lived at corner of
Liberty and Freeman streets.
DELLA, KTTTIE and MARY LEABAN. sis
ters, aged %, IA and 16 respectively, lived at
2o6 Sixth street.
KATIE LOWRY, aged 20, lived at Newport.
LIZ IE M1ER, aged 16, resided at 345 Broad
way.
ANNIE MCINTYRE, aged 20, lived at 90
East Sixth street.
FANNIE NORTON. aged "a.
KATIE and MARY PUTNAM, sisters, aged
% and 19 respectively.
JOHN SULLIVAN, aged 22, lived at s95
Broadway.
LILLE wYAN, aged 20. lived at IS East
Fifth street.
The injured are:
WILL BISHOP. PRIMER, aged 90, lived at