Year: 1871

Z


Spottswood Hotel---ThriIIing and


Heartr ending Scenes-Seven OF Eight


Lives Lost.


A special correspondent of the New
York Herald thus details the burning
of the Spottswood Hotel in Richmond,
on Saturday night:


Not year has passed since swiftly,
suddenly and without shadow of pre-
monition-this city was plunged into
depth of gloom almost without par
allel in the annals of any city on this
Continent by the falling in of the floor
of the Court of Appeals in the Capitol
building Since then flood has spread
desolation throughout the State to add
to the list of horrors that have marked
the last decade in this beautiful land,
and now have to chronicle calamity
which, coming at the time it does,
makes us feel that it is written by the
fates, Getty of the Seven Hills, thou
| art doomed"


<. The demon of fire has again ravished
7 1t and added to the destruction of pro-
perty and loss of life Desolation,
! destruction, death, come hand in hand
with the Ice King. Last tnight-Christ-
mas Eve, which never, even in the dark
days of our civil strife, was aught but
a time of merry making and rejoicing
/ throughout the Old found
nearly every house in the city the
scene of festivity. Christmas morning
found the cypress where the holly had
been the night before. At half-past
two o'clock A. NJ. a canopy of fire hung
over the whole city. In one short
hour, certainly five if not more souls
were, mot hnrled, but dragged slowly
into eternity, through the most horrible
| death gates known to humanity. Only
Dante, in his widest flights of poetic
imagination, could have depicted one
half the horrors of the burning of the
! Spottswood Hotel.


Built without any brick partitions
above the first floor, the flames having
once gotten a headway, any attempt to
check them was worse than futile. In
few minutes after the fire was discov-
cred by the watchman, who happened
to pass the pantry where stove had
been negligently allowed to burn, and
which, becoming red hot, communicate
ed to the floor, it had rushed with
Lightning speed from cellar to garret,
and by the time the Fire De-
partment had become thoroughly Or
ganized for work the whole interior of
the immense structure was one sheet of
living fame-mad, wild kissing fame
in its resistless, Gesolating sweep,
hurting athwart the frosty sky masses
of burning timber, like some volcanic
demon laboring to disgorge itself-now
70 "a,
now roaring, cracking, laundering, as
if striving to drown the shrieks of it's
victims, the hoarse, confused cries of
the firemen, the shrill whistles of the
| engines and the agonizing hum of the
swaying crowd of citizens below ready
to do and die in the cause of humanity,
but powerless.


Here is a mother barefooted on the
frozen streets, and just as the cry of
fire had startled her from her slumbers
raises that most agonizing of cries,
NSave my childrenl" Here a brother
looking frantically for a sister, or a
wife pleading for some tidings of her
husband, who when last seen wss bray
ing fire and smoke to save some rela-
ton; there man stupifed by horror
and fear; beside him another, whose
gallant spirit knows not the meaning of
the latter word, and who, having saved
one friend, is preparing to rush again
into the jaws of death to save
another. Here is young Sam Hines,
who has just brought two friends from
the fourth story out and rushes back
for third, who is seen at the window
of his room from the street below; but
now the stairway is in flames. Only
one chance remains; it is to jump. He
prepares for the fearful leap. Brave
hearts will catch him, if he crushes
them Too late; the fire fend has
claimed him. A volume of black,
sitting smoke envelops him. angry,
forked flames leap like serpents' tongues
from without the mass, and his gallant
soul is in eternity.


Creeping, writhing, kissing during
the lulls of the winters blast rushing
as it springs fresh from its lair-the de-
mon finally seizes upon two large build
ings adjoining the hotel. Then the
scene, if possible, becomes more fear
full than before, mingling as it does the
falling of walls and the crashing of the
floors with the other horrors of the
scene


At one time it appeared as if the de-
struction of the whole block was newt
able. The night was the severest of this
winter, the spray from the streams fall
ing in hail upon the half-dressed in.
mates of the hotel, as they stood watch
ing the means of egress from the build
ing, to see If the next that rushed out
was brother, sister, husband, wife,
! son or daughter, or to give word Of
encouragement to some one poised be-
tween two horrible forms of death and
powerless, except to cry out above the
din below, ''save me- am burning ~
This heartrending appeal rang out
from more than fifty windows, and rang
out only once. 1t is not known posi-
lively that there were more than five
actual victims of the flames, but the
universal fear is that this does not ap-
proximate the number One short hour
and the fire fend had done it's worst
Its progress had been stayed, but tive
thirds of the block fronting Main street
and running back nearly the same dis
tance was fiery charnel lake, still smok
ing and seething, but conquered.
When the fire first broke out, and the
wild cry rang through the house, re-
| peated from mouth to mouth with fran
tic and despairing energy, your CORE
/ spondent, whose room was in the left
wing of the building, in the third story,
woke up, and, after getting on some
clothes, rushed into the long passage,
now filed with smoke. A terrible scene
met the eye through the smoky atmos-
phere. The forms of half dressed males
and females could be seen rushing, they
knew not whittier, and shrieking with
despair. Proceeding further to the
head of staircase all egress was block
! ed up with an indiscriminate mass of
luggage and people trying to escape
Rushing then to the right wing of the
building another staircase was reached
which brought one to the second floor,
and here the long corridors but served
as tlues to conduct the flame through