Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1911-03-27

the sixth floor. She missed, struck the
edge OF a life net and was picked up
with her back bronen
one girl jumped into a horse blanket
held by hremen and policemen. The
blanket ripped like chcsecloth and her
body was mangled almost beyond recos-
| milton. Another dropped into a tarpaulin
held by three men. Her weight tore
| il from her grasp and she struck the
street, breaking almost every bone in her
body.
| Almost at the same moment man
somersaulted down upon the shoulders of
a policeman holding the tarpaulin. He
glanced off, struck the sidewalk and was
picked up dead
Within the building n man on the eighth
floor stationed himself at the door of one
| of the elevators and with a club kept
back the girls who had stampeded to the
wire cage. Thirty were admitted to the
car at time. They were rushed down
as fast as possible.
The call for ambulances was followed
by successive appeals for police. until
nearly 6o0 bluecoats had reached the
scene Five hundred patromen drew a
line two blocks in each direction from
the burning building, and COPIED with Il
crowd numbering tens of thousands-a
mixture of the morbidly curious and of
|half-crazed relatives and friends of the
victims.
\ hundred mounted policemen found ii
necessary to charge the crowd repeatedly
to keep them back
Led by Fire Chief Croker. squad of
firemen stormed the stairways and gain
ed access to the building at o'clock.
Beams of two searchlghts from build
ngs opposite played on the building,
lighting the way of the fire fighters as
they assembled to the top floors.
Fifty roasted bodies We're found on
the niath floor. They lay in every
posture. some SO charred that recngni-
ton was impossible. some with the
death agony stll on their features. y
half dozen We're nude, with their flesh
hanging in shreds to thair bones.
Women with their hair burned away,
with here and there a limb burned ell
tiley off and the charred stump Vis-
bic. were lifted tenderly from the debris,
wrapped in oilcloth and lowered by
pulcyS to the street
Within the three flaming floors il was
as frightful. There flames enveoped
many SO that they died instantly. When
Fire Chief Croker could make his way
into these three floors he found sights
that utterly staggered him-that sent
hir'. man used to viewing horrors,
back and down into the street with
Guivoriag lips,
The floors We're black with smoke,
And then he saw as the smoke drifted
away bodies burned to bare bones. There
was skeletons bending oveH sewing ma
chimes.
Nor We're these--burned without a
chance To save themselves-the full ex-
preston Of the awful thing that had
occurred. When the flames had shot
Their way into the elevator shaft so
that the brave young men IN charge of
the cars no longer dared to go up for
fear the heat would snap the cables.
men and boys 10y the dozen. utterly
craz,d, threw themselves into this shaft
There was no reason i'll it. They were
sure tn perish. Hut it was the only
place of escape from the red hell be-
hind. II WIS the only place they could
breathe
Madly they flung themselves down
the Shaft. 1t offered just another breath
of life Police ana firemen turned away
sick at the sight Of these elevator shafts
piled with the outflunS, distorted bodies
of the dead
On the tenth floor Of the building
adjoining the burning structure is the
law department of the New York Uni
versity Here 20 odd students were
listening to a lecture on law by Frank
n. Sommer, former sheriff of Essex
county. New Jersey. Prof. Sommer
saw the smoke, saw the human fire
brands falling like rain and saw the
girls trapped on the roof.
He led his class to the roof of the
university quarters. There they found
two ladders. The boys seized these,
bore them down two flights to the roof
of an intervening building, swarmeG
out of the windows and raised them to
the room of the burning structure
Forty girls were brought down to
safety.
There were so many spectacular in
cdents, so many horrible scenes, so
much pathos and suffering, that the
minds of onlookers were stunned.
Across the street there rested on the
'iNi' VAIN NV piilt tolllilS, Ill WHICH
We're placed the bodies. As fast as
this was done the collins were carried
away in patrol wagons automobiles
any kind of vehicle. that could be
pressed into service--to the morgue
at Bellevue hospital and to the Chart
ties Pier Morgue. opened for the first
time since the Slocum horror. AS each
coffin was borne away, policeman
shouted to the huShed crowd of thous-
ands description of the victim and
of the trinkets found in the clothing.
Long after the fire was out and
every window sill of the three fatal
floors dripped rivulets of water. the
Sruesome work of recovery went on.
Fw" binding beams from scarchight
engines below threw it all in pitiless
relief.
Ropes swung from the roof would
tauten and something black would
sway uncertainty from a window,
shooting downward in cropping plunges,
then through the huddled tarpaulins
could be made out a womans form.
One hundred and six bodies had been
taken from the building and 20 injured
had been whirled away to ST Vincent's
hospital at 10 o'clock. OF these three
ultI soon 81 tfar admit pn.