Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1887-1895, 1893-06-09
SCORES DEAD AND DYING.
GOVERNMENT BUILDING IN WHICH
WERE 800 CLERKS coLLAPSES.

1t Was Ford's Opera House Where the
Assassination of Lincoln Occurred
Twenty-Eight Bodies Recovered at 1880
The Building Had Been Condemned
and Was Further Weakened by Excava-
lions in the Cellar A Singular Coinci-
dence Connected With the Horror.
WASHINGTON, D. G, June 9.-The old
medical museum, formerly Ford's thea
ter, where Wilkes Booth assassinated
President Lincoln, collapsed this morn
ing ABOUT $50 o'clock. About 800 peo-
pie were employed in the building.
The building was used as the surgeon
generals Office and the clerks had just
begun work when at 9:40, without
warning, the first floor collapsed, owing
to weakness caused by an excavation
which was being made in the cellar.
A few seconds later the other three
floors above gave way with terrible
crash, burying the inmates in the debris.
The fire bells were rung and all the
ambulances, police and fremen of the
city were quickly on hsnd. The scene
being heard above the noise made by
the surging thousands of people who
gathered about the ruins.
The secretary of the navy ordered out
all the naval medical officerSSfn the city,
and the naval hospital was opened.
The first body removed was that of
Howard S. Miller of Ohio. Then an un-
known man was taken out. He was
alive but unconscious and frightfully
injured. He died before reaching the
hospital.
Up to noon it was impossible to sta Q
how many had been killed. The clerks
OIL n mad cfato thof thoFn fIl1Iv
four hundred people in the building
when it collapsed. Hardly one escaped
without injury of some kind.
At 10 As eight dead bodies had been
recovered and removed to the morgue,
and most of them have not been identi-
fed.
Shortly before II o'clock General Sco-
field ordered two troops of cavalry sent
from Fort Meyer and two companies of
infantry from the arsenal.
At II o'clock eleven bodies had been
recovered. About this time colored
man succeeded in breaking his way out
of the debris and said that there were
twenty men in the cellar where he was
employed, not one of whom except him
self had escaped.
At 1880 twenty dead bodies had been
taken out and forty of the injured res
cued, Colonel G. NJ. Arnold, a promi-
nent G. A. R. man, is among the dead.
The iremen are making most heroic
efforts to reach those still in the building.
The walls are still standing, but
every window has been shattered.
The insecurity of the building had
frequently been reported and it was
condemned as un afe and unfit for the
purpose for which it was used. Senti-
ment prevented its destruction.
The excavations in the cellar,
| which was the immediate cause of
the collapse, were being made at the in
/ stance of the war department for the
purpose of putting in an electric light
plant. The building was heavily loaded
with records and pension papers of the
war department.
At noon it was reported that twenty
| dead bodies had been recovered and
! fifty rescued, many of them seriously
injured.
At 1870 twenty eight bodies had been
laid side by side in the morgue.
1t is regarded as a singular coinci'
dence that the catastrophe occurred just
about the time when the obsequies
were being held over the remains of the
tragedian, Edwin Booth, whose brother
| was the assassin of President Lincoln.