The New York Tragedy.

Southland Times, Issue 14331, 27 April 1899, Page 4

The New York Tragedy.

The correspondent of the Argus, writing on 22nd March, says the afternoon of St. Patriok’a (Day was mild and sunny, and the long procession of Irish societies marching up Fifth Avenue began at 3 o’clock to pass the Windsor Hotel, one of the most famous in America, whose grand front covered the entire block between Forty-sixth and Fortyseventh streets. The sidewalks of the great avenue were crowded,? and hundreds of the guests of the hotel were at the windows, while a small army of the servants, with their friends, were on the roof. Suddenly a waiter ran out of the hotel, frantically pushing through the orowd, to reach the fire-alarm box. He had seen a guest in the parlour carelessly throw a match towards an open window, where a lace curtain caught fire. It blasted up, and sent flames through the corridor. The fire spread with incredible swiftness, and in twelve minutes the upper stories were burning, and the guests were leaping from the windows to certain death. Within twenty minutes the roof fell in, and the flames shot up a hundred feet. Before half an hour had elapsed the walls were falling, and in another halfhour the site of the hotel was a great furnace, covered by a pall of smoke and steam.

Following upon the alarm, the procession dissolved, and soon 50,000 people were gazing horror-stricken at the guests, driven to the windows, jumping from them, escaping by the ropes which had been attached inside the sills of each room, or falling back in the flames and smoke. The house was built under the loose laws of 25 years ago, without dividing walls, or doors in the broad corridors, through which the flames swept; while the flimsy elevator-shafte became flues, drawing them quickly from the bottom of the building to the roof. The scene from the street was appalling, and the spectators were weeping, screaming and praying as they saw the poor victims throwing away their lives. Most of the iron fire escapes soon became red hot, and few eould use the lopes. Crazed by th# laeeration of their hands, and blinded by the smoke, they fell after slipping a few feet, and the bodies of some of these were quickly buried under the falling walls. Miss Amelia Paddock was seen wringing her hands at an upper window ; then,forced by the smoke to leap out, her body struck heavily and bounded against an iron fence. With Miss Paddock leaped Miss Eleanor Goodman, the daughter of a rich banker, whose head was crushed, and her body was not rescued until it was charred beyond recognition. Mrs Kirk, the widow of a Chicago millionaire, was saved, only to die from shock. She and her daughter lost 200,000d01. worth of jewels. A man came down the rope safely, but as he touched the ground he was struck and killed by the falling body of another man, who also perished. A terrified mother threw her infant from a window on the sixth floor, then leaped herself. Both were killed. To the hospital was taken the body of a woman, richly dressed, with great diamonds on her fingers. Several of the employes were sleeping on the seventh floor, and had not time to attempt escape. One of these, however, descended, clinging to the electric-light wire. The landlord, Mr Leland, lost his wife, his daughter, and two nephews. An unknown employe saved two women by carefully lowering one after the ocher by a rope from a window. He then began to attach the rope to himself,but he fell back into the roaring furnace, and was seen no more. There were invalids in the hotel, and the nurses vied with the firemen in heroic deeds. The landlord’s crippled daughter, Fann’e, was borne down the fire-escape through five stories by her nurse, who had the girl on one arm, the crowd cheering as she reached the ground. Another nurse, when two men who were trying to escape entered the room where her patient was lying, locked the door, and by {threats compelled them to take the invalid out of the window and down the iron ladder. Two soldiers, who had just returned from Cuba, clambered up through the smoke to a fifth floor window and rescued one of two frantic women. The other would not wait, but leaped blindly, and her brains were dashed out on the stones below. When the firemen raised the ladder to the window where Miss Winter was waiting, she spied an older woman at the next window, and insisted that they shruld take her first. They obeye 1, and when afterwards they rescued the young woman the flames were just behind her. A woman servant, hanging by her hands from a window-sill, carried herself along to the next sill, where there was a rope, by which she descended. A Mr Wells carefully lowered his wife and daughter from the sixth floor with a rope tied around their bodies. Then, while the flames were near him, he wrapped a towel around his hands and descended, just in time, without a scratch. The crowd watched him breathlessly, and cheered his safe arrival. When the fire broke out a class of 30 young children were taking a lesson in dancing in one of the parlours. The teacher chanced to look at the window, and siw two bodies falling by it in succession. The next minuts a sensible maid came in and whispered to her that there was a fire in the hotel. Tr.e children were quietly firmed in fine, and, all joining hands, were led through the eorricor aud downstairs into the street just in time. No braver firemen ever worked than these of the New York brigades, nor are there any more modest in speaking of their during feats. Their slender swaying ladders wi re seen on every side of the hotel, while they were scaling the fronts, groping in s noky rooms, and bringing frightened or unconscious women down the escapes. Now clinging to one windowsill, then stepping on to another, breaking in this window and emerging from the next, they were everywhere, fearing nothing. Mrs Howard, the wife of a journalist, v.ai at a window on the fourth floor. Two firemen named Ford and Clark put a ladder to toe second floor, and ascended by scalingladders to the fourth floor."iSudder>ly a greyfa tired feeble woman appeared at another window on the same fl ror. “Save her first,” said Mrs Howard. One fireman passed a- niis the gap, clinging to the windowsill. He grasped the old lady and swung her to hi. companion, who took her down, and teen returned for Mrs Howard and her maid, who were taken out just before the flames burnt out their window, A fireman named Kennedy smashed in a window, and entering a room found, after groping in the smoke, a heavy woman in an unconscious condition. He took her out and brought her down the ladder. A fireman named Haslen, from a neighbouring city, who was off duty, took from the sixth floor one woman who died in his arms, and bracing himself below caught a woman who jumped from the roof at his command. Hundreds of persons who came down the fire-escape were penned up in a little court at the rear of the hotel, where they were in danger of being buried by the falling walls, until all were taken out by the firemen with ladders. Policemen repeatedly riekid their lives, and several had their clothing partly burned off while bringing, men and women out of the burning hotel. The hotel was frequented by the rich, j ab.hough finer and safer houses erected in i recent years had left it no longer in the flrsb [ rank. The Windsor was a spacious and' ■ luxurious house, and had had an interesting i history. Its mile and a quarter of corridors were fitted with water-pipe telegraph alarms fo • fire, but the swift attack of the flames left no time to use them. The cost of the fnrniture was a million and a quarter dollars. The house was admirably situated in the heart of the finest residential district and the manager came of a family which has . furnished the laudlords of the leading Jj American hotels for three generations. One £ can scarcely realise that a careless smoker’s j: match should have wiped such a fine build- jl ing from the face of the earth in one short | hour.