TERRIBLE NEW YORK FIRE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 224, 21 September 1907, Page 3

TERRIBLE NEW YORK FIRE.

FRENZIED SCENES IN A DOOMED AND CROWDED TENEMENT.

A New York report says that twenty-two dead, chiefly little children, a score injured, and one hundred homeless, is the appalling record of a fire that destroyed a six storey tenement dwelling in Chyisiie Street, New York.

The dwelling was •crowded from top to bottom with Italian families, many of them related to each oilier by intermarriage in Italy before they migrated to the United States "• m the- hope of maiaiig their fortune." ihe locality might be compared in tyualor with the Petticoat Lane district m Luuaou, unu is popularly known as the •' iilaok Hand ;> quarter. The tenants in Chrystio Street are declaring that the tire, wmen was pit ceded by two expiobions on ilk ground iloor, was the work of the '• iilack iriand."

That the explosion was the work of a bomb ail the tenants agree, and some state that the third storey ilooring wub saturated with paraffin oil, which blazed: with such rierceness from the very ■.start .as to make egress by the stairs quite impossible, ami to that extent converted the' dwelling into a veritable fire-trap. ■''■ HEROIC AND COWARD DEEDS.

Awakened by the - explosion, the panic-stricken tenants rushed for the stairs in their night attire, ami being foiled on the third lauding by the flames, they stampeded to the roof and to the iron balconies in front of the dwelling. The, weaker suffered at the hands of the stronger, and were either overcome by the dense smoke or caught by the flames as they ran frantically up the- blazing stairways. Most of the dead are children, and it appears as though the older persons tried only to save their own lives, with the exception of a few brave mothers, who perished with their little ones.

The firemen forgot their own danger in their efforts at rescue, but in some instances had to use brute force to drive back the panic-stricken organgrinders and street-hawkers, who struck at those nearest them in their endeavours to escape. Captain Johnson,-a fireman, made the pluckiest rescues of all. He got to tne roof of the adjoining house, No. 22i4, and lowered himself until his toes touched the lintel over the window sill on the fifth foor of the burning house, No 222. With his own body he made a bridge of safety between the two houses)* Another fireman, Connors, was with him to help the people across this human fire escape.

Just above the gallant firemen, in a sixth floor window of No. 222, stood a screaming, crazed group of women and children and a man, and they called wildly for aid. The man in the window was raving, and wanted to cross first. Connors shouted—"l'll throw you into the street unless you keep quiet," and the maniac desisted. Then with Connors' aid the women and children and the man were assisted to safety, and finally Connors helped to recover the outstretched body of his chief from its perilous position by drawing him into the open window oi: No. 224.

Other people were rescued by'ladders placed against the walls of the burning building.