The record-union., 1899-12-23
TERRIBLE
TRAGEDY
IN ILLINOIS
Awful Fate BefaIIs Chill
dren at Quincy
VIM Were Rehearsing for a
Christmas Entertainment.
Eleven Burned to Death and Many
Others Seriously Injured.

QUINCY QlL), Dec. 22-An awful
tragedy occurred here this afternoon.
While the school children of st. Francis
parochial school, Seventeenth and Vine
streets, were rehearsing for an enter
tainment to be given next Tuesday
evening, one of their dresses caught
on fire from a gas jet, and ten min
utes later four of them were burned to
death, two died an hour later and five
others died before midnight. Halt a
dozen others were burned more or less
severely
Dead: Irena Freiburg, May Waiver
ing, Mary Althoff, Bernadino Freund,
Colletta Middendorf, Mary Hickey. Will
helmina Guttendorf, Olivia Timpe, Addie
Futterer, Josephine Bohne, Margaret
Warner. All are between and IL
years of age.
Helen Soothing and several other
teachers and Father Nicholas and Pro-
fessor Mushold were painfully burned
in trying to save the children.
The fire started in a little dressing
room. Three or four little girls were
there dressing for the rehearsal, and
laughing gaily among themselves. A
dozen others were grouped in the wings
of the stage near the foot of the stairs
descending from the dressing room. The
girls in the dressing room had nearly
completed their costumes, when one of
them brushed against the gas jet.
A touch of the flame was
sufficient, and in an instant
her dress of common and light cloths
was ablaze. She screamed and ran out
of the room, spreading the fire to the
others as she ran. A blaze jumped out
of small window into the stairs lead
ing to the stage and down the stairs.
A flaming torch she was. as she almost
fell down the stairs and rushed into the
groups standing in the window. They
were all clad like her, in fancy cos
tunes of cotton, lace and silk, and the
fire spread with incredible rapidity from
70 he
children in the cast of the Christmas
entertainment, and only a few escaped.
1t was all over in ten minutes, and in
that time four persisted. seven were
fatally burned and others more or less
severely injured.
The children were panic stricken, and
rushed this way and that, screaming
with pain. But the agony was brief.
Only a few minutes, and then four of
them sank to the floor dead. Others fell,
too, but they still lived, suffering great
agony.
The school hall was filled with chill
dren, and many more would have been
killed in the panic which followed, had
it not been for the prompt efforts of the
teachers and Sisters, who were in
charge of the entertainment, and were
present. The children rushed, but
prompt efforts quieted them, and no one
was hurt in the rush.
Frank Mushold. teacher of the
school, was standing at the foot of the
stairs from the dressing room, when he
heard the cry Of FIRE" and, turning to
where it came from, saw the flash of
flame in the dressing room. He was
halfway up the stairs at one bound,
when he met child rushing and tumb-
ling down, a mass of flames from head
to foot. Tearing off his coat. he threw
it around the blazing child and endea-
vored to extinguish the flames, but
crazed by pain and fright, she jumped
out of his arms and rushed on down
past him, still wrapped in his coat, into
the group of other children standing
about in the wings of the stage.
The shrieks and screams of the in
jured were agonizing. The little ones
lay helpless and impotent on the hoor,
and writhed about in their agony. The
dead were charred in most cases beyond
recognition. The home of peaceful
pleasure had instantly become
charnal house. The doctors hurried on
their mission of mercies, seeking to
supply soothing lotions to those VINO
were still alive, and seeking also &c
cover the charred bodies of the dead
with blankets or other covering.
The excitement outside the building