Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-01-01 | Page 1 | Forty-Six Women Burned to Death

FORTY-SiX WOMEN BURNED TO DEATH Fire Breaks Out While Inmates In-mates of Asylum in Quebec Are Asleep. j By International News Service. I MONTREAL, Quebec Pec. 31. An ap-j ap-j palling tragedy closed the old year in the , little French-Canadian illage of St. ' Ferdinand de Halifax, near Lke William, :in Megantlc county, Quebec, where forty-live forty-live Idiot gir! inmates of a eon vent asylum asy-lum perished in the lire which destroyed ! that institution. One of the sisters who tried to rescue the girls suffered martyr- j dom in the attempt, making the death j roll forty-six. Far away from any town large enough to make an effective tire brigade, the St. Ferdinand de Halifax 1 asylum for female idiots had to depend on the slender resources of the village and its own staff for protection from lire, and may he said to have bar! practically prac-tically no protection at rill. The institution institu-tion was not a lariio one a-: asvlums l-o, provincial govern men l sta t tst bg showing il to have JS'i eirls. hut. !-'sides the inmates. in-mates. tliTt were also thirty girls frnin the locality studying Hi iheYonvenl adjoining. ad-joining. Luckily, rill t besc escaped. No more terrihle condil imis eouH be imagined tha u those eon ncler with tliir; holocaust the blazing convent, the idiot inmates, and outride the hitter cold nf a Lin-below-zero night. Attempt at rS'-ue was doomed lo failure from the tirst . The scene was one of un forcet ta hr horror; hor-ror; the screaming vjrls were absolutely beyond control, some leaning f-nm high windows and escaping with fchgh! hurts: ol hers met ilea t h in the sa n;e , v. and some poor bewildered crea t ui es crouched in terror till the fin nies en -.: fed them or more inerci t ny smoked thc-m into insensibility. in-sensibility. The water Fnpply n;is cf the pnot-osf, the beImv-7,ro weather bavin? frc-,;--n most of the ?"-er e--. Mnnv t c!T. r-st rick -en refucre. s and v illage's t-'ea 7-bed for and took tn their hoin-s other:; who had fled bewildered into lh nighr. The Hill "M'lll o! he tragedy will not iie known for a day .r i . ( The material ma-terial da mace is placed dt .f 0. 0'"'