The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1908-03-12
CHILDREN BURNED TO DEATH
Playing With Matches and Bonfires-
Remedies Suggested

The "parlor" match burns to death
between 500 and 900 women and child
rem a year in the United States and
burns twice as many seriously or dan
gerously. This does not include
mothers who died from having their
clothing ignited while trying TO saw
their burning children. The number
of buildings fired by children with
matches was 2260 but that. compare
lively, seems unimportant. The NOR
tally is greatest in children of four
Five-siNths Of those suffering death
in this its most horrible form, We're
children playing with matches which
had been left lying about and the re,
mainder ONE whose clothing was
ignited by glowing sticks or flying
match heads.
The liability of the cottons. from
which the clothing of women and
children are largely made. to keep fire
and burn them to death deserves gen
eral II serious consideration. In
Ohio, where the statistics of loss of
life by fire are carefully kept, as died
from their clothes being lighted by
matches, 1G by stoves, 30 by CRATES
and 80 children by playing with fire.
This shows 1874 dead in the year in
that state from the ignition of cotton
clothing.
A professor in Scotland has found
by experiments that tiannelette, which
is muslin with a nap raised on it. is
no more and no less dangerous than
ordinary muslin or calico.
The easy and effective way to ter
inmate this slaughter of the i%nnocents
by roasting is to screen open fires and
for women to demand that cotton
goods for wearing be fi~re-proofed by
the manufacturers.
Perhaps 80 years ago the chemist i'm
Belleue Hospital Medical College, New
York. lost a boy from his pinafore TAX
ing fire. The professor. by experiment
found that phosphate of ammonia used
to saturate cottons made them perma-
nently tire-proof and spent years in eff
forts by lectures and pamphlets to get
the New England cotton mills to use
it.
This fire proofing can be done in the
web or after the goods is made up.
The Scientific American supplies the
following recipes: For light woven
fabrics: Sulphate of ammonium s
parts by weight. carbonate of am
monium 212 parts, boraX .. boracic
acid 3, starch 2. water 100. This is the
method which has stood the
test especially well.
The United States Consul at Mott
ingham, England. reports: I'm a
meeting of the society of dyers at
Manchester titanic acid was claimed
to possess remarkable fire proofing
qualities. An incipient fire in flannel
cite smouldered and went out refus-
ing to Ourst into flame. Cloth treated
with any one of these combinations
will shoulder but cannot blaze"
Boiling does not remove the chem
icalS and the cost of so fire proofing
linens, muslins and calicOs is but one
seventh of a cent a yard.
Let us hope that in the neal future
the "parlor' match will be displaced
by the safety which. because it can
be lighted only on the box. will be
kept in it and will not be thrown
about in reach of children. In the
meantime, teach the children the old
nursery rhyme:
THE dog bites. the kitty scratches,
Fire burns and so do matches"
And put the matches in metal boxes,
nailed above the reach of an eight
year old.
Frank A. Craft,
State fire Marshal.