The Penn's Grove record., 1912-01-12

1900 -@AAS 4 AAOAA ~ A0L|"
dows and forced them to retreat. Az
most simultaneously the section of the |
roof back of the three men collapsed
and went down into the building. The
flames then gushed up from the fur
mace a block in size. The heat was
so terrific the three men could not
stand it. They knelt on the coping,
prayed for a few seconds, and two of
them leaped outward. They landed
on the pavement in Cedar street and
death was instant. The third man
stood up on the coping, staggered, fell
backward and plunged head-long into
the volcano that ragged beneath him
in the interior of the building.
William Giblin, president of the
Mercantile Safe Deposit Company,
was one of those injured. He narrow
ly escaped death. When the news of
the fire reached him in his home he
was sitting up with his wife, who is
critically i'll. Hurrying to the Equita-
BILE building he entered one of the
vaults, containing S6,000,000 of securi-
ties, for the purpose of carrying them
out. He was accompanied into gthe
to the vault were left outside when
it had been unlocked. While the men
were in the vault the door was showed
to by falling Wreckage, the spring lock
was snapped and the two men found
themselves prisoners with the fire
above them and the wreckage piling
up around their prison. When final
ly they were discovered it was impos-
sible to get the door open. Giblin
and the other man pleaded with the
firemen to hurry and save them from
s~uffocation. 1t was not until several
of the bars of the vault had been
sawed through with a hacksaw and
then pulled outward by many fremen
manning ropes that had been attach
ed to the several bars that Giblin was
released. Meantime Father Mclean,
a chaplain of the Fire Department,
had knelt neal the men and prayed for
their deliverance. Giblin was hurried
to a hospital. The man who was with
him in the vault was suffocated and
was dead when carried out.
A grisly token of the toll of death
taken by the fire was in plain view
all day in the frozen doorway of the
Mercantile Safe Deposit COMPANY.
mans hands, covered with ice, clutch
ed the bars of the door that had stood
so long as an advertisement of the
strength of the company's vaults.
They belonged to William Campion, a
Waterman, who met his death while
he, and President Giblin of the com
pany, were trying to escape, having
locked themselves in by mistake.
1t is practically impossible to exag-
gerate the enormous property losses
involved in this fire. Aside from the
valuable building, and the contents Of
the many richly furnished offices, lot
to speak of ~innumerable law libraries
belonging to tenants, there were lost
the great law libraries of the Equita-
Bile Society and the Lawyers Club,
both of which were numbered among
the finest collections of legal records
in the country. All of the 1,600,0 600 re-
cord cards of the Equitable Life As
| surance Society, which were kept in
thin steel cabinets in the s~ecretary's
office, have been destroyed. But for
~tunately a duplicate set of these cards
was kept in the Hazen building. 1t
will take five years to copy off anoth-
er duplicate list, however.
The business of Wall Street was
It'd up for hours. The fire threatened
early in the morning to sweep across
narrow streets and seize upon the
| Chase National Bank, the Clearing
House, the American Exchange Bank
and the Amrican Surety Co. building.
E. E. Rittenhouse, of the Equitable
| Company, said that the securities in
their own vaults amounted to between
$3.50, 900, 900 and $500, 0O0, 900. The
cash in the vaults consists of $4,000
900, belonging to the Equitable Trust
| Co., and $4,000, 900, belonging to the
Mercantile Trust Co.
Among these buried securities are
what is said to be the bulk Of the Benz
mont and the E. H. Hartman ~estaeesS
Here is the list:
Gould estate, $780, 900, 900.
Equitable Trust Co, $50, coo, 600.
Hartman estate, SIPS, 00O, 900, in the
Mercantile Trust Co.'S vaults.
Thomas F. Ryan, 800, 900, 900.
August Belmont, $4,000, 600, in the
Belmont vaults.
Knbn roeh & On s100 a 000
Kountze Bros, $40. 000, 900.
VIM. A. Read & Co., SIS, 600, 900.
Mercantile Trust Co., $70,0 0O, 900.