Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence Part 25

Shortly after 2:30 this morning fire

broke out in a pile of old papers in the

bas.e.m.e.nt of the Harmony Flat building,

at 1356 Congress avenue, a four-story

eight-apartment structure. Two firemen

were killed by a falling wall.

The fire had a good start before the

janitor, Michael Jones, who sleeps in the

bas.e.m.e.nt, awoke. He turned in an alarm

and ran through the halls awakening the

occupants. The people on the two lower

floors escaped in their night clothing by

the stairways, but the fire spread very rap-

idly, the occupants of the upper floors be-

ing forced to flee down the fire escapes in

the rear.

When the firemen put in an appearance,

Mrs. Jeanette Huyler appeared at a third

story window and called for help. An ex-

tension ladder being hoisted, she was res-

cued without difficulty. During the fire

the wall on the east side fell and killed

Fireman John Casey and Jacob Hughes;

Fireman Williams Jacobs was. .h.i.t on the

head by a brick and seriously injured.

The fire was extinguished before it

spread to an adjoining three-story flat

building on the west.

The firemen in searching the ruins

found the body of a man who was later

identified as Rupert Smithers; he was 70

and occupied a lower flat by himself. The

janitor said that he was deaf and prob-

ably did not hear the warning. The three

dead and injured firemen belong to Hose

Co. No. 24.

Loss $50,000, fully insured.

II

The police have arrested John Johnson,

23 years old, 2367 Sixth Street, charged

with murdering Mrs. Laura Buckthorn,

the well-known proprietor of the d.u.c.h.ess

Restaurant, 438 High street. He is now

in the county jail.

Mrs. Buckthorn was sixty years old and

the widow of one of the oldest settlers in

the city.

She lived in her small cottage at 2367