Ogden Weekly Standard | 1905-11-17 | Page 1 | Five Perished in a New York Tenement

NEWY hams cut off all avenues of escape and men and women were burned to death while kneeling in prayer new york NOT 16 at least five persons were burned to death in an italian tenement house fire at east street early today the house was six floors bight and the sleeping tenants on the five upper floors ft ere made prisoners by the flames with the ground floor a raging furnace beneath them three of those who lost their lives were kneeling in prayer when the fire reached them within the first hour after the fire was controlled troll ed the bodies of three women and two men bad been taken from the stairways between the second and third floors labe police believe the alre was started by an incendiary it began in a heap of rubbish at the bottom of an air shaft and spread through the interior of a grocery store on the ground floor A policeman was the first person to see the ahre just as it had begun to creep up the air shaft he ran into the building pounding on the hall boora all the way up to the sixth floor to awaken the tenants the alre followed him so swiftly that when he reached the top floor ne was obliged to send the tenants through the alro escapes to save them from suffocation within a few more on all the floors below the alre escapes were packed with persons whom the flames had cut ot from escape by the interior stairways when the alre department arrived with ladders nearly every one on the aflfe escapes was kneeling in prayer adding to the pathos of the scene wag the action of the men who stood wibb arms full of personal possessions while their wives fought unaided to protect the children from being ram by the crowd or suffocated by smoke on the third stairway the firemen found the bodies of two women and three men who had evidently knelt together where they died se DEAD i guiseppi azzo orea t santa anttonio Aft tonio velarde Ze larde the lessee of the house told the po alce that the black hand society had recently bent him letters demanding 2000