Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1911-03-31

opy to the tagging below. Her sisters,
who followed, famed through the air
like rockets. Their path could be tol-
lowed, but hardly heard.
1t was eighty-fve feet from the eighth
floor to The ground, about ninety-ive
feet from the ninth floor, rs feet from
the cornice of the roof and the upward
rush of the draught and the crackle of
the flames drowned their cries.
Six girls fought their way to a win
dow on the ninth floor over the bodies
of fallen fellow workers and crawled out
III single file to an eight-inch stone ledge
running the length of the building. More
than 100 feet above the sidewalk they
crept along their perilous pathway to a
swinging electric feed wire, spanning
Washington place.
The leaders paused for their compan-
ions to catch up at the end of the ledge
and the six grabbed the wire simultane-
ously. It snapped like rotten whip cord
and they crashed down to their death.
A 13-year-old girl hung for three min
utes by her finger tips to the sill of a
tenth foor window. A tongue of flame
licked at her fingers and she dropped
into a life net held by fremen. Two
women fell into the net at almost the
same moment. The strands parted and
the three were added to the death list.
A girl threw her pocketbook, h her
hat, then her furs from a tenth story
window. A few moments later her body
came whirling after them to death.
At the ninth loor window a man and
a woman appeared. The man embraced
the woman and kissed her. Then he
hurled her to the street and jumped.
Both were killed. Five girls smashed a
pane of glass, dropped in a struggling
tangle and were crushed into a shapeless
mass. A girl Oh the eighth floor leaped
for a freman's ladder, which reached
only to the sixth floor. She missed,
struck the edge of a life net and was
picked up with her back broken.
Life Nets Useless.
From one window a girl of about -
years, q woman, a man and two women
with their arms about one another threw
themselves to the ground in rapid sue
c~ession. The little girl was whirled to
the ETew York hospital in an automobile.
She screamed as the driver and a police
man lifted her into the hallway. A
surgeon came out, gave one look at her
face and touched her wrist.
"She is dead" he said.
One girl jumped into a horse-blanket
held by firemen and policemen. The
blanket ripped like cheesecloth and her
body was mangled almost beyond recog-
milton. Another dropped into a tarpaulin
held by thre men Her weight tore it
from their grasp and she struck the
street, breaking almost every bone in
her body. Almost at the same time q
man somersaulted down upon the shout
der of a policeman holding the tarpaulin.
He glanced off, struck the sidewalk and
was picked up dead.
Within the building a a OIL the
eighth floor stationed himself at the door
of Ole 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 a time. They were rushed
down as fast as possible.
The call for ambulances was followed
by successive appeals for police until 500
patrolmen arrived to cope with a crowd
numbering tens of Thousands mixture
of the morbidly curious and of half
crazed relatives and friends of the vic
tins. A hundred mounted policemen had
to charge the crowd repeatedly to keep
it back.
Led by Fire Chief Croker a squad of
firemen stormed the stairways and
gained access to the buildings. Two
s~earchlights from buildings opposite
lighted the way of the fire fighters as
they assembled to the top floors. Fifty
roasted bodies were found on the ninth
floor. They lay in every possible pos
ture, some so charred that recognition
was impossible. A half dozen were nude.
with the flesh hanging in shreds to tie
bones.
New Morgue Opened.
Women with their hair burned away,
with here and there a limb burned en-
tirely off and the charred stump visible,
were lifted tenderly from the debris,
wrapped in oilcloth and lowered by pull
legs to the street.
Across the street there rested on the
sidewalk a hundred pine collins into
which were placed the bodies. As fast
as this was lone the collins were carried
away in any kind of a vehicle that could
be pressed into service to the morgue at
Bellevue Hospital and to Charities Pier
morgue, opened for the first time since
the Slocum horror.
Hyman Mescher, a cutter, slid down
the elevator cable ten stories and was
found alive at the bottom, standing in
water up to his armpits. His hands
were lacerated and his forehead cut, but