TERRIBLE FIRE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14383, 28 November 1908, Page 10

TERRIBLE FIRE.

'"BLACK HAND " GANG BURN DOWN A TENEMENT HOUSE.-

That mysterious Kalian organisation called tho "Black Hand," which in Now STork.'and other big American cities lives by blackmailing; Italians of the most ignorant class, is held vesporisible for a tenement fire in that city, which resulted in the loss of 11 lives, While several persona were severely injured. Barrels.of oil-, .soaked paper were piled under the stairs of the tenement, house, and shortly after midnight the incendiary's match was applied.' This outrage occurred in the Calabriari section of the New York district, where the ''Black Hand" has lately been partiouhvrly aotivc. Tho theory of the police is that somebody in the tenement offended tho "Black Hand," and to end his life or her life the. Jives of others were destroyed. flic dead include a married couple named Forcillo, four young children, a widow, and ■her seven-year-old daughter," two girl hoarders, and an old man. .All the. viefmis were Italians, mostly poor folk. Between midnight and 1 a.m. a man was seen quickly moving barrels from tho street into the hall-way of the tenement house, and then, suddenly, this stranger ran from the house, accidentally knocked over a fruit stand, turned a street corner, and disappeared. Immediately flaioos were ■seen leaping from tho doorway. In the exoitemont' tho people forgot■ to summon the firo engines, but men in t)ie upper floors of tho • tenement began .firing revolvem from tho .windows. In' tho Calahrian quarter iiiamy people we usually armed with revolvers or stilettos. Tho tenants awoke at THE FinST CKYOP " FIRK |" and began crowding the houi« fire escapes from the fourth and' top floors down to tho second. Several women, in their frenzy, dropped their babies to two men Oi the escape,, and the latter, passed them down to men on the pavement below. When the engine arrived men and women in all stages of dress and undress were running about screaming, and every tenement i.n the ' neighbourhood 'was emptied. ■ . On the fourth floor lived the doomed Foroillos and a boarder. ' Palest riuo Foroillo and his wife got to the escape m fiont, and wore followed by their children amnios boarder, when-there came a/h explosion, supposed to have been caused by a back draught. The house trembled and windows crashed. Then came flames from tho windows below, and tho Foroillos wore driven, back inlo their smoke-filkd and already blazing rooms. They ran to tho escape.-, in the rea.r. In the father's arms was one of the children, the mother carried another, and Palcstrino held a third, jho clothes of all were on fire, and the names cams out over the escapes. Suddenly smoko hid the imprisoned persons from view. The firemen, found their bodies later. All- had been suffocated and burned. — _ One mother managed to drop 'her baby into a blanket hold bv the people below, but on attempting to save tho lives of her other children she was overpowered by tho flames and burnt to death. A man who refused to, leave the premises without his money also lost his lif*.