SCENE AT A CHICAGO FIRE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1694, 24 October 1887, Page 2

SCENE AT A CHICAGO FIRE

A terrible scene w&b lately witnessed at a 6re at Chicago. A three-utorey house la Archer avenue was discovered to be on fire abont 3 o'olook In the morning. A number of people living m the building were rescued either dead or dying from the effocte of etnoke and flimes. It wai supposed for a time that no one rem lined m the burning building, but it wag found that m the confusion Mrs Trogo, wife of one of the tenants, with her two-year-old child, had been overlooked. Finding 'herself m danger, and being unable to descend the stairway, the woman ran to a front window with her child m her arms and cried for help A fireman at 0308 rushed up the finning atairi. By the t'me he reached them all escape by ■ the stairway with such a harden as the woman and her child was impossible. Than tha fireman thought of the bed cord, and tearing It out bound the woman and her baby with It, and poshed them through the window. He payed out the rope until, from the heat and smoke, he was ready to fall to the fl.'or, and then he fastened the end to the bedpost and fhd. The rope was too short, aud inatead of dropping the women and ohird to the ground or with'n reaoh of those below, he had easpended them m front of a first floor window, from which the fire poured as from a furnace door. Tnere the woman and her child swung, 10ft or 12 ft from the ground, writhing, shrieking, strangling as the fire swept over them. Bu< singularly the flsmei which were burning the woman and child left the rope Intact. Captain William H, Cowan thereupon seizing a ladder threw it op to the biasing window, and with an axe mounted and stood on an upper rcng, which aom whs In fltmas. He had deliberately entered the flames, and as they ouclroled him from helmet to boota he struck at the rope. He could not see, and struck with inaccurate aim. Once, r.wioe, &b the clothing began to fall from him, he struck m vain. At the third dtroke the blade cat the rope. Simultaneously the burning ladder broke, and the three biasing human beings fell to the ground. The baby was already dead, the mother died a few hours later, and tiiQ captain waa, it ia feared, fatally Injured.