Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1892-02-13
FATAL FLAMES.
Hotel Royal. New York, Burna to
the Ground.
There We're Over Two Hundred Peopf Ia
1t at the Time-Only Five Bodies Rel Nj
covered, and n Hundred Fer
sons Not Accounted For. 4

New YORK, Feb. s. Sunday morning
at $40 the guests of the Hotel Royal
were awakened to the horrors of fieme
and smoke. So sudden and fiercevas
the fire which started in the elev,tor
shaft, and then rushed through the
building, that the unfortunate uen,
women and children, found themselves
surrounded by flames and smotheed
with smoke before they had time to-
even realize their danger
The Hotel Royal was an old
building whose timbers were Cry
as bones. Every condition essential to
speedy destruction-poor con sssas,soi.-
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 shriek-
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 tiremen appeared, they
proved themselves utterly careless Of
their own lives in daring efforts
to save others. There was a
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 tc
sense of their peril by the frantic
footing of the whsle: the firemen 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
number of those who died in the doomed
hotel. Estimates vary from six to one
hundred. The police believe that about
thirty people persisted. There were II;
guests in the place when the flames
broke out. There were also between
thirty and thirty five employees in the
hotel, making total OF about 2l0
Only five bodies were recoyered-twc
women and three men. None of these
were taken from the ruins. They were
the unfortunates who leaped from the
windows to the street
1t was surprising to persons who die
not know the character of the transien
patrons of the Hotel Royal, how many
of the saved did not want their names
mentioned in connection with the affair
OF the names on the register of th'
hotel, probably one-half were women
There were more John Smith ant
WIFE" John Brown and wife, entries
than you usually find on hotel regis
ter. This assumption of fictitious name
and the care taken by certain of the res
cued to keep secret the fact that the,
were in the hotel, will make it yer,
difficult to ascertain definitely th'
number of the dead until the ruins ar
thoroughly cleared. There might b
thirty or fifty persons unaccounted for
and yet not one of them would neccs
sarily have been lost in the fire. Worl
TO recover the bodies has been diligen
and intelligent, yet none have as ye
been recovered The brick walls fall
ing inward have buried the dead unde
tons of debris, and made their recover
! slow and chances of indentifcation few