WALL STREET BOMB HORROR

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 254, 23 October 1920, Page 19

WALL STREET BOMB HORROR

A TERRIFIC KXl'I-OSIOX. The mysterious explosion, disastrous in its effect, 'Which occurred iv Wall street, Xexv York, on September in, killed more than a score Of persons and injured hundreds. A reporter of the Associated I'ress, making his way down Wall Street from Broadway, suddenly saw go up in front of him a cone of flame from the centre of the worlds great street of finance. Then came the blast. A moment later scores of imen. xvomen, and children xvere lying blood-covered on the pave—tents. _'wo minutes later nearly all the exchanges had closed. Men had turned from 'business to an errand of mercy, and there I xvas need of it. liescribing the* 1 scene a few minutes after the explosion an eye-witness said:— 'Fight bodies, mangled 'beyond description, lay sprawled before the xvhite stone Broad 'Street side of the world's greatest j banking house. Of these, three were those of girls in their teens. On, a window j ledge lay the severed forearm of a girl. Across the street lay her ibody, the head smashed Hat against the brown stone front of .1 broker's office. Aiong the sidexvalk were men nnd boys, their legs a fexv feet away, n foot here, a head there. Everywhere was blood. Glass fell all about mc ns I tried to keep my head and count the bodies. When I reached the Wall Street side of the Morgan concern an even more gruesome sight met my eyes. Auto trucks -gathered up the dead aud injured impartially. Men. dazed from shock, fell all around inc. It was impossible to count the Injured, but there must have been easily a hundred. ■All windoxvs of the Morgan house were shattered, 'highly polished mahogany furniture lay in the street. Windows iv seven buildings alongside the Morgan house In Wall Street, and every big structure in doxvntown Xexv York felt the shook. The j sub-treasury xvindows xvere smashed aud | the statue of George Washington was | damaged hy flying debris. The windows ! in the United States assay offices xvere also ■ smashed. ! As far as could he ascertained the , majority of the dead xvere passers-by before the Morgan house when the explosion | occurred. The only evidence to substantiate the theory that a wagon loaded xvith TNT had exploded xvere fragments* of red ■wood such as dynamite wagons are made of. ! Groan* and screams split the air. and even police officials lost their heads at sight of the horrors. 'Several women in the croxx-d of thousands xvhich soon collected fainted, and xvere left where they lay. all medical attention I>eing given to those injured. As two volunteers lifted a woman whose stomach had been torn out she gasped and expired. Shades were torn from tbe windows of the big banking concerns In Wall 'Street to cover the bodies. At the corner or Wall and Broad Streets, iv front of the Bankers' Trust building, lay txvo horse's hoofs. On a window lodge lay the pumpcovered foot of a xvoman, severed at the ' ankle. i The spectacular explosion ripped xvindoxvs from the sub-treasury across the | street from llie Morgan office, and within a | short time soldiers from Governor's Island I and all the -police reserves that could be j assembled were placed around the Govern- J ment building, in which was stored more than a billion dollars in metal and notes. Banking houses also were placed under heavy guard, and United States regulars with fixed bayonets xvere patrolling the streets. The explosion came at a time vhen the I canyons of lower Xew York xver thronged , with office -workers intent only in crowdIng their way into lunchrooms near by. j There w-as a roar that was heard far np ___battan Island, and hundreds of person- were hurled to tbe pavement. Cries arose, and on Wa_tl Street, paved with ■broken glass, there gushed forth streams of blood more fit for a battlefield than America's financial centre.