The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1892-02-11
FATAL FLAMES.
Hotel Royal New York, Burns to
the Ground
There We're Over Two Hundred People In
1t Mt the Time-Only Five Bodies Re-
covered, and a Hundred Per-
sons Not Accounted For.

New YORK, Feb. S.-Sunday morning
ct $40 the guests of the Hotel Royal
, were awakened to the horrors of flame
and smoke. So sudden and fierce was
the fire, which started In the elevator
shaft. and then rushed through the
building, that the unfortunate men,
women and children, found themselves
surrounded by flames and smothered
with smoke before they had time to
even realize their danger.
The Hotel Royal was an old
building whose timbers were dry
as bones. Every condition essential to
speedy destruction-poor construction,
abundance of fuel ripe for burning
made the fire more of flash than a
flame. Within a few seconds Of the
alarm that came with the fierce shrek.
ing of an elevated road engine, the
whole house was in an uproar Guests
rushed wildly about in their night
close seeking some means of escape.
The stairs were ablaze. A few people
were wise enough to throw out the
ropes that were in every room, by
which they slid to the street
Before the fireman had arrived, guests,
mad with fear. were leaping to death
on the sidewalk, while others hung from
the windows crying for help
Above the roar of the flames
rose the shrieks of the dying,
and their apeals to God and man for
help. When the firemen appeared, they
proved themselves utterly careless of
their own lives in daring efforts
to save others. There was
bright side to the awful calamity
in the heroic acts of fireman and citi.
zens, who succeeded in saving many Of
the imperiled guests. The engineer on
the elevated road who slowed up his
train and aroused the sleeping guests to
sense Of their peril by the frantic
footing OF the whsle; the fremen and
citizens, who, with walls topping about
them, and smoke and flames beating in
their faces returned again and again
to the rescue, all deserved the praise
they have most modestly received
1t is impossible to even guess at the
mum Der of those who died In the doomed
hotel. Estimates vary from six to one
hundred The police believe that about
thirty people perish'd. There were 175
guests in the place when the flames
broke out There were also between
thirty and thirty-fve employees in the
hotel, making a total Of about 21O.
Only five bodies were yeoovered-two
women and three men. None Of these |
were taken from the ruins They were |
the unfortunates who leaped from the |
to the street
1t was surprising to persons who did
1ot know the character of the transient |
patrons of the Hotel Royal, how many
If the saved did not want their names
in connection with the affair.
)f the names on the register; of the
,otel, probably one-half were women.
There were more John Smith and
wife," John Brown and wife" entries
han you usually find on hotel regis
er. This assumption of fictitious names
md the care taken by certain of the res.
ued to keep secret the fact that they
we're in the hotel, will make it very
lifficult to ascertain definitely the
lumber of the dead until the ruins are
thoroughly cleared. There might be
hirty or fifty persons unaccounted for,
nd yet not one of them would neces-
arily have been lost in the fire. Work
o recover the bodies has been diligent
nd intelligent, yet none have as yet
'een recovered. The brick walls fall.
ng inward have buried the dead under
ons Of de bris and made their recovery
low and chances of indentification few.