Hotel Horror | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 19, 1877

Hotel Horror.

The “Southern Hotel,” the largest, most costly, and most luxurious hotel of St. Louis, was burned at about 2 A. M., April 11. The details of the particulars are heart-rending. Probably from fifty to seventy-five persons lost their lives. The building was six stories high. Several jumped from the upper stories, escaping the flames to meet death by their fall. One man in an upper story tied together some of the bed clothes and let himself out of the window. His object might be to get into a lower window, but the cord not letting him down so far as he had hoped, he tried to ascend. This he was unable to do. He threw back his head, revealing a ghastly face—the people veiled their faces, and the man soon fell to the ground. He lived about twenty minutes after the fall.

The flames had made such progress when warning was given, and the stairways so quickly filled with smoke that escape was rendered impossible. A very singular coincidence is the fact that Kate Claxton, the actress that made such a remarkable escape from the burning theatre of Brooklyn last December, was in the hotel, and made another similar escape.

The loss of property is estimated at over a million dollars.