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Description: Nine Burned Page 1
Date: February 6 1906Newspaper published in: Washington, D. C., USA
Washington Times February 6, 1906 Nine Burned Page 1
NINE CREMATED IN AN HUMBLE CABIN NEAR BALTIMORE
Those Burned to Death in Fire Were All Colored.
INCENDIARY SUSPECTED
Woman Who It Is Alleged Wished to Shield Lover Is Arrested.
Baltimore, Feb. 6 - Nine colored people were burned to death, shortly after midnight, in a fire which destroyed a small shanty located on the old Cabin Branch road, about a quarter of a mile from Curtis Bay.
Nothing remains this morning on the site of the shanty but a heap of ashes and the charred remains of the victims of the fire. None of the occupants of the building was awakened until all hope of escape was cu off.
The flames rose high in the air, an the glare of the fire in the cabin, which burned like tinder, could be seen for a great distance.
Neighbors, aroused from sleep, got out of their beds and hastened to the scene. An alarm of fire was sounded, to which the Curtis Bay and Brooklyn engines responded. The fire companies, however ], arrived too late to be of any service.
The dead are:
ROSE JACKSON, thirty-two years old.
WILLIAM JACKSON, a six-month-old baby.
IDA JACKSON, a young woman.
ELIZA JACKSON, a young girl.
SUSAN JACKSON, eleven-year-old daughter of Rose JACKSON.
ISIDOR JACKSON, nine-year-old son of Rose JACKSON.
HORACE JACKSON, husband of Rose JACKSON.
RICHARD TAYLOR, an adult.
SAMUEL JACKSON, son of Eliza JACKSON.
The victims occupied the little two-room shanty together.
The fire was caused by the upsetting of a little coal stove in the shack, and within a few minutes the whole place was a mass of flames. One after the other the occupants of the two rooms awoke choking with the smoke and almost overcome. Every wall was by that time burning, and virtually every avenue of escape was cut off. A bed on which three men had been sleeping quickly caught fire, and soon it was burning from head to foot.
The occupants of the room, crazed with pain and confused by the smoke, dashed about in a mad frenzy. Each of them had inhaled some of the flame, and they fell to the floor of the building, in which only their charred remains were found.
Upon the arrival of the neighbors and firemen a heroic attempt was made to rush into the flames and rescue some of the victims, but to no avail. They were all so pinned beneath beams and boards as to make their rescue impossible, and they literally roasted to death.
The police are sure the fire was not an accident, but an occupant of the house, and who escaped, burned the place down to kill the witnesses who were to shortly testify against her lover in an attempted murder.
On December 24 William SMITH shot Horace JACKSON in the leg and nearly cut the head off of Richard TAYLOR, both victims, of today’s fire.
The crime occurred at the same house, and all the people burned had been summoned as witnesses. SMITH is now in jail waiting trial. ELLA WEBSTER’s reputation is bad, and she was arrested at 12:30 this afternoon.