The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-11-30

ble for the blaze was an unidenti- lied practical joker who may have paid with his life.
 According to the alleged confess sion of Tomaszewski he was asked to replace a light bulb in the sup per clubs basement Melody Lounge that had been removed by a guest. "A man in a mixed party, you know, men and women, reached up and turned of light" the lad told police.
 Boy Lit Match
 q started to screw it lack in but it fell out of the socket when l touched it. held it in my hand and lit a match to find the socket and started screwing the bulb back in. Somehow the match fell out of my hand and I guess it dropped into an immitation palm that was under the bench I was standing on
 The youth said he stepped down of the bench and heard a woman yell "Fire!' That was when he first noticed the blaze.
 T tried to put 1t out with my hands and I burned 'em both. Then there was big puff of flame"
 An official board of inquiry al- ready was at work attempting to place the ultimate responsibility for the fire and panic.
 Blaze Spread Like Lightning
 But what interested the board headed by Mayor Maurice J. Tobin were the facts that the flames spread through the story and half structure by way of it's tinder-dry decorations and draperies with frightening speed and that scores were tranpled and smothered to death in the jam of flailing screaming. fighting humanity that piled up and blocked the four exits. The boards first finding was that the club had been inspected, along with all other night clubs, two weeks ago. following another fire in which six firemen were killed The results of that inspection were not revealed
 National Disaster It already was among the worst disasters in the nations history and
  and injured in hospitals indicated that the entire death toll was not yet reckoned. Of the l79 in hos pitals. 63. including the star of Western movies. Buck Jones, were in critical condition The Massa- | chusetts Public Safety Commission | feared that at least 30 of these would die, which would make the toll SIS dead. Only one fire in American his i tory took a greater toll-that which destroyed the Iroquois Theater in Chicago in 1903 and killed 575 persons
 Many Unidentified
 Of the dead, IF bodies remained l unidentified and sorrowirg rela- i tives of missing persons filed ! drought two morgues all night | some of them fainting, others screaming :n horror, upon recogniz- | ing a partly charred corpse. Some l Of tte bodies had been so reduced i by flames that they probably will be identified only by the process of elimination-a matching of the names of missing persons and their sex against remnants of bodies.
 Many of the unidentified bodies were those of women and girls. They had been dres- ed in flimsy ! evening clothes ard of course did | net have purses of the sort that l contain cards and papers which | would assist in establishing their identity.
 The difficulty of identifying the bodies and also the class and age of the victims was demonstrated in i Wellesley College authorities send i i-g its physician, Dr. Elizabeth !. Broyles, to the two morgues in search of four missing students ] Miss Margaret Whitson. daughter of MT. and Mrs. J. Barclay Whit l son of Moylan. Pa: Miss Sadie Tors 1 daughter of Mir. and Mrs. Eric H | Fors of Worcester. Mass; Miss Jac- queline Weiss, daughter of MT. and | Mrs. Herman Weiss, of Cincinnati, i O.: and Miss Alean Winkleman, i daughter of pr. ard Mrs. Nathan iel Winkleman. of Philadelphia.
 Identified Dead Among the identified dead was Miss Helen Welch. IT. daughter of Vincent Welch, ice-President of i the Equitable Life Insurance So- ciety of Port Washington, L. I. student at Radcliffe College Her escort, Allan l. Kluber, IS. of New York, a Harvard sophomore. died with her. They were only two of the several score undergraduate of the Boston environs' many colleges and universities who perished. The Boston Saturday night club crowds are always predcminantly collegiate and last Saturday night they were even more so because the hig football game, between Boston Esssiege and Holy Cross. Worcester. kza attracted an enrmous crowd G=E Holy Cross upset victory had kslt A large segment Of 1t in a mood sor celebrating.
 Over 1000 There
 We'll over 1000 were damned into the Cocoanut Grove, which. though lt was founded by the gangster. "King Kong" Solomon, is Bostons most fashionable. IL is entered by Nf4G OA t44G Oll4GE pl lNO IthOlNlnB doors set side by side and giving into q small foyer. To the right Of the foyer is a bar and in its far wall is the entrance to the restaurant and dance floor, where the floor shows are staged. Adjoining the restaurant in the diagonally opposite corner Of the building from the foyer, is a cocktail lounge srl in the basement another bar, ca ed Melody Lounge. There is a small door from the street into the ground floor cocktail lounge. That. the two revolving doors and an exit from the part of fhe basement devoted to storage and service and no wider than the door of q telephone booth. were the only exits.
 College Crowd Present
 This space was pack damned Sat-