One never knows whether the New York Herald is writing
for effect or not, but if its statements about the fire in the Fifth Avenue Hotel are correct, there is a heartlessness among certain classes there to which we can show no parallel. On the 10th inst., at 11 p.m., smoke was seen coming from the third storey of the hotel, below the servants' attic, which was seven stories up, and accessible only by a spiral staircase and a small elevator. It was known to the officials that there was a fire, that the servant- girls' rooms were partitioned off from the men's, and divided by fixed iron wires from the next roofs, so as to make a regular
fire-trap, and that they must be in danger. No one, however, warned the firemen for twenty minutes, no one went to help the servant-girls, a strong draught blew up the nar- row stairway and the elevator, and before an engine arrived eleven women had been suffocated or roasted, They could not tear down the wire blinds, could not break the partition, and could not descend the staircase.
Previous page
