Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-12-31
EIGHT PERISH IN
TENEMENT BLA
SET BY A F|REB
New York Firemen and
Police Save Others by
Heroic Work.
SCORES FIGHT FOR LIFE
ON CROWDED ESCAPES
Victims All Suffocated in Rooms
on Side of Building Cut Off
from Ladders--l 5 Injured.

NEW YORK, Dec. 31.-Eight per-
sons, FIVE men and three women, were
killed in an early morning tenement
house fire at 96 Monroe street, in the
crowded East Side district. today.
Fifteen persons were injured, four se-
riously, by jumping from fire escapes.
The police and firemen made many
rescues.
All the indications are that the fire
was started by an incendiary. and an
investigation is under way.
The fire started in the hall on the.
ground floor, cutting off escape by the
stairway.
An hour before dawn the tenants
In the house were aroused BY the cries
of persons in the street. Finding es-
cape by way of the stairway shut off,
they crowded on the fire escape plat
forms. Many jumped. The ealner
waited for the firemen to raise lad
ders. A few made their escape over
the roofs of adjoining tenement
houses.
The Dead:
Mrs. Becky Kaplan, Afty-n,e years Of
age, widow.
Barney Kaplan, eighteen, her son.
Louis Kaplan, sixteen. another son.
Shnnuei tohen. sfNfy-fOur.
Isaac Weisberg, atty.
Mrs. Pearl Weisberg, nfty, vile =
Ggssie Mazzin, nineteen.
Israel Golden, thirty-fve.
The Mazzin girl, after assisting her
father and mother and five brothers
to the re-escapes, lost her head and
returned to her room, where she was
found dead The bodies of Mrs Kap-
ian. her sons and Samuel Cohen.
tailor, who occupied room with
them, were found on the fifth floor
Israel Golden was found dead in his
bed on the fifth floor. The Weisberea
We're in their apartment on the third
| floor.
More than thirty families were
made homeless. Many fled half-clad
In the biting early morning air and
We're taken care of by neighbors
1t was a characteristic east side
blaze and but for the quick and ef-
fioient work of the police and fireunen
the toll of death would have been
appalling. More than fifty men. won1-
en- and children were passed down
the fire-escapes, which were small
and clogged with clothing, boxes and
all sorts of junk
The lines of wash caught fire. and
/ flames turned the flre-escapes into
griddles. Those who perished lived III
apartments that had no -escapes.
The big tenement is at the corner
kof Pelham street, just north of the
Manhattan bridge. There are fire.
escapes in the rear. on the east side.
on the front and on the Pelham
street side, but on two sides the es-
cape balconies did not extend be-
yond one apartment This left the
apartments in the triangle formed by
Pelham and Monroe streets without
escapes, making 1t necessary in case
of fire for the tenants to cross the hall
into the opposite apartments.
When the firemen reached the build
| ing the fire had gone up the stair we'll
to the roof. They couldn't even get
into the lower hallway.
BY then all the' fire escapes were
crowded with screaming women and
children, and the men were trying to
make more room by throwing off the
distractions that in some instances
blocked the openings Across some
of the escapes were lines of newly
washed clothes which, dried In the
wind. burned like paper and licked the
bare feet of the women and children
on the escapes above.
The police handed them down as
rapidly as they could lower them
through the openings.