FIRE IN A NEW YORK FACTORY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 924, 29 November 1910, Page 4

FIRE IN A NEW YORK FACTORY.

LARGE LOSS OF LIFE. New York, Sunday. A fire occurred at a four-storey paper box factory in New York. Twenty-four girls were burned to death or crushed to death on the pavement, after jumping from the four-storey building. A panic broke out among the girl employees, who dashed for the fire escapes and escaped thence into the street, where an enormous crowd was gathered. Firemen with life nets saved thirty girls, who were clinging to window ledges and fire escapes, The origin of the fire is unknown. Six other girls are missing. The building was gutted and many of the bodies have not yet been recovered. Fifty were taken to the hospital. The chief of the New York fire brigades was injured by falling walls. One girl’s body was found seated at her machine in the attitude of working. She evidently failed to realise her peril or fainted. Numbers in the crowd knelt and prayed. Many bodies hit the firemen in their descent, or rebounded from the nets on to the pavements. The loss is estimated at