The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-03-27
THOUSANDS CROWD MORGUE TOIDENTIFY
 CHARRED REMAINS
CONTINUED FROM PAGE II

flesh on a little girls finger made iden- tifcation possible where all other means would have failed. A man who had stood in line six hours wandered aimlessly among the bodies seeking his missing daughters until with a groan he identified a heap of charred clothing as their gar ments. He collapsed and sought to kill himself, but the police prevented him and he continued the search for his wife, also missing.
 Pathetic Scenes
 A pale girl bent over a misshapen mass, long and doubtingly. Then, with a final effort she grasped a hand which pro- truded beneath the canvas and with a shriek collapsed. The blackened mass. she sobhed had been her sweetheart. to whom she had become engaged the night before the disaster. A ring on his finger told of his identity She asked if the dead man had had watch. They brought it to her. she opened it and gazed on her own features.
 Twenty Sicilian women became hysteri- cal upon recognizing their kin in the pine collins. A man whose face was marked by a scar of flame, found his brother among the dead. The two had worked side by side pouring water on the fire. A cutter identified his dead sweetheart by their engagement ring and her purse. It contained her weeks wages, s. The bodies of two sisters, horribly man. gled, sat propped up in their collins while q sobbing brother left them to search for his aged mother who had perished also. The fire left him without a relative. Picked up by a fireman on the floor a blackened hand still clinched a pitiful purse in it's grip. They pried the fingers away and released the bag It contained d. small sum of money, keys and re- cept made out to A. S. Smmela. A young man found his sweetheart burned and bIackened and fell across the coffin in a faint.
 Women Hysterical
 Sobbing women became so hysterical that an improvised hospital ward was fit- ted up on the pier ny nurses lroh belle- vue hospital.
 The coroner and the grand jurymen began their investigation today before the embers died on the burned building. They touched shoulders with the district at torneys, building department agents, with Fire Chief Crocker, with Fire Commis- sioner Waldo and their helpers. There will be a thorough probing and a fixing of the blame, if blame can be fixed.
 Said District Attorney Whitman: If
 
 then some one is criminally liable, and whoever it is, whether it be one or a dozen, shall be prosecuted. I never saw anything more horrible in my ife''
 ''There are many buildings in this city in which even worse conditions prevail ' declared Commissioner Waldo "On this building there was only one outside iron balcony fire escape with treads IS incnes Wide, and so constructed that persons entering on the fire escapes by windows would have to close the iron shutters be- fore they could escape. There were two inClosed fireproof stairs, only sufficiently wide for one person to descend at time, and with winding steps at the turns. En- frances to the sairs were blocked py partitions. From indications gates and doors appear to have been locked at the time of the fire.''
 The building itself, said Commissioner Waldo. seems to comply with the law governing the erection of flreproof srruc- tures The owner of the building. J. J. Asch, of South Norwalk, Conn. appar- ently had observed the regulations of the building department he said.