FOUR PERSONS DIE IN SWEATSHOP FIRE (09-08-1908)

FOUR PERSONS DIE IN SWEATSHOP FIRE. (09-08-1908)

Scores Narrowly Escape from Incendiary Blaze Down Ladders and Over Roofs.

FIREMEN RESCUE MANY

Two Members of Truck 18 Injured When a Floor Crumbles Under Their Feet.

Two women, sweatshop workers, clung to the railing of a fire escape on the fifth floor of the big seven-story brick building at 542 to 548 Water Street last night and screamed for help, while flames crept up from the lower floors.  The flames reached them and they were driven back inside.  As the building burned two dozen men were rescued by the police and firemen, but no women were among the rescued.

Four charred bodies were found just before midnight.  One of them was that of a woman.  Another was that of a man apparently about 40 years old.  The other two were so badly charred that the firemen could not tell whether they were men or women.

It is supoosed that all who lost their lives in the blaze were sweatshop workers, for the upper floors of the building were occupied by dozens of them.  In many of the shops men and women were at work when the fire started.

The firemen are still searching the ruins this morning in the belief that other bodies will be found.  Until the search is ended the number of dead cannot be definitely settled.

The fire was undoubtedly of incendiary origin, according to Fire Chief Croker.  Three alarms were sounded, and practically the entire fighting force of the lower east side turned out to save the warehouse section, of which the big seven-story building was the centre.  There was a hospital, too, less than a block away, and the firemen feared the flames might reach there, but the valiant work kept the blaze within the one building.  The damage is estimated by Chief Croker at $75,000 or more.

MANY GOT DOWN FIRE ESCAPES.

The building, one of the largest in that part of the city, was occupied mainly by seat shops.  From one of these a hundred or more scrambled down the fire escapes in the rear, on Cherry Street, for the building ran from Water to Cherry, and a few reached the roof and ran along to neighboring buildings, from which they reached the street in safety.

The four bodies which were found in the ruins were on the sixth floor, near the Water Street side.  The victims were probably driven from the front windows by the flames and were overcome before they could run the length of the building and get out by way of the fire escapes on the Cherry Street side.

Escape on the Water Street side of that part of the building was impossible, for flames were licking up the front from the third floor to the roof.  There were no stairways leading to the roof, the firemen say, and no elevator was in working order.

The searching party of firemen, headed by Deputy Chief Guerin, was organized as soon as the blaze as out, about 9:30 o’clock.  For an hour the firemen were kept busy washing away the debris so that they could see what lay beneath.  It was nearly midnight before the first body was found.  It was near one of the windows on the sixth floor.

The body of the woman was about thirty feet from the front of the building, and it is supposed that she was one of the two who were seen by the watchman hanging to the fire escape of the fifth floor soon after the blaze started.  How she got to the sixth floor will never be known.

While the search for the bodies was going on on the sixth floor Deputy Chief Guerin and his men had a narrow escape from death.  Without warning part of the floor gave way and several of the firemen were plunged headlong to the fifth floor.  Firemen Thomas Walsh and John Miller, both of Truck 18, were hurt.  Walsh sustained a broken wrist and Miller was badly bruised.  They were hustled down to the street by their comrades and the wounds were dressed by Dr. Wygley of Gouverneur Hospital.

BODY FELL WITH FLOOR.

When the floor fell one of the charred bodies which had not been seen by the firemen plunged down to the fifth floor and landed a few feet away from the firemen who were injured.  This body proved to be that of a man apparently about 40 years old.

Policeman Edward F. Howe of the Madison Street Station saw the blaze first.  It shone through the front windows on the Water Street side of the building on the third floor.  He sent in an alarm and started the work of rescue without waiting for the arrival of the firemen.  Two men were on the fifth floor fire escape on the east end of the building when Howe and several volunteers began scaling the fire escapes on the west end.  Howe yelled to the men to cross over to the west side.  This they did, and descended to the third floor platform and were rescued by the policeman.

“There are others inside,” whispered Abraham Rosmann, one of the sweatshop workers, as he was being carried down the ladder.  The other man who was rescued was Nathan Liebowitz.  Howe and his volunteers returned to the upper floors and assisted a number of other sweatshop workers to safety.

In the rear on the Cherry Street side other rescuers were at work, and a number of men escaped that way.  The fire by this time had spread to the fourth and fifth floors on the east side of the building.  It was then that the women were seen on the fire escape of the fifth floor.

Cornelius Sullivan, a watchman, employed at Silas W. Griggs’s warehouse, just across Water Street, saw the women and heard their cries for help.

“Then the flames, which were spreading out like a fan over the front of the building, reached them, ” said Sullivan afterward.  “I saw them stagger back through the window and disappear.”

The flames finally covered the entire east side of the building from the third floor to the roof.  Shortly after the engines arrived the fire burst through the roof.

When Chief Croker arrived he led the way to the third floor of 544, which is just west of the center of the building.  In a vacant loft on the third floor of 544 he found a small blaze.  There is no opening in the wall which separates 544 from 546 and 548.  He ordered his men to chop away the floor boards.  He found no blaze beneath them.

“This fact seems proof enough that the fire was of incendiary origin,” said Chief Croker later.  He said that similar fires had apparently been started in 546 and 548, the east wing of the building.  It was this wing which was burned from the third floor up.

There were a number of vacant rooms in this part of the building, although the entire fourth, fifth, and sixth floors were occupied by sweatshop workers.  Some of the workers lived in the building, sleeping in little rooms adjoining the main workrooms.  After the second alarm had been turned in Deputy Fire Chief Guerin of the First Division arrived.  He led a rescue party into the building from the Cherry Street side.  The flames had not reached that side of the building on the third and fourth floors.  On some of the upper floors the Deputy Chief and his men found the sweatshop workers sitting at thier machines.

“They were simply paralyzed with fright,” said the Deputy Chief afterward.  “They had heard the shouts of fire in the front of the building and were too demoralized to get up and run.  We just kicked them out of the rooms and headed them for the fire escapes.  And down these they scudded.  I believe that if we hadn’t kicked them out they would have perished where they were.”

The third alarm followed quickly after the second.  Chief Croker realized that much valuable adjacent property was in danger.  In the Beth Isreal Hospital, at Jefferson and Cherry Streets, were several hundred patients.  There was some uneasiness among them, and Superintendent Frank gave orders for their quick removal should the blaze get beyond the control of the firemen.  A number of the patients put on their clothing to be ready for a quick exit.

Three blocks away was the Gouverneur Hospital, quite out of danger, but the patients there, too, hearing the sound of the fire bells and the shouting in the streets, experienced some uneasiness.

Several ambulances arrived on the scene, directly after the fire started.  The firemen worked from the fire escapes on both sides of the burning building, also from the roofs of the neighboring warehouses.  When the searchlight and water tower arrived Chief Croker directed that the attack be made from the Water Street side.

In the basement of the burning building were twenty or more horses, owned by a livery stable firm.  The horses were got out without mishap by employees of the stable and policemen and firemen.  One of the horses caused some excitement by balking on the steep stairway leading from the basement to the street, but it was finally blindfolded and led to safety.

All along the front of the burning building on the west wing fire ladders were run up high as the fifth floor just after the firemen arrived, and these ladders aided greatly in the work of rescue.

Originally published in The New York Times on Tuesday, September 8, 1908