Brooklyn, NY disciplinary school fire, Dec 1909

BOYS ESCAPE IN FIRE AT TRAINING SCHOOL

Four Disappear After a Suspicious Blaze in Brooklyn Institution Recently Investigated.

STARTS IN A PILE OF PAPER

Youngsters' Bucket Brigade Puts the Flames Out Before the Firemen Arrive.

Coincidental with a fire which aroused the suspicion of incendiarism among the authorities, several boys of the Brooklyn Disciplinary Training School for Boys, on Eighteenth Avenue, between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth Streets, Brooklyn, escaped last night.

The school is the one where disclosures of harsh discipline and mismanagement were made after a presentment by the Grand Jury of Kings County a few weeks ago. This led to the dismissal of the Superintendent, and John Haitney is in charge now as Acting Superintendent.

He and his assistants are now investigating the fire, which, had it not been discovered promptly, might easily have swept through the rickety old frame building. As to the runaway boys, the police of the Parkville Station say that the training school people gave them the names of four - Matthew Fields, Samuel Schumacher, John Malen, and Victor Olsen - but the authorities say that only Schumacher and Fields are missing. They escaped during the fire or just before it.

Albert Haywood, guard of the training school, saw smoke pouring from the one-story wooden frame wing to the four-story building of the school just as the 200 boys were assembling for dinner. He took one look through a window and saw that a big pile of paper in a corner of the washroom was blazing. Then he ran into the main hall, sent in an alarm, and tugged at the rope of the school fire bell.

The 200 boys, calm under the eyes of guards and monitors, fell into a column of twos, as trained to do, and quietly marched to the yard. There the older ones were fortified into a bucket brigade. They worked smoothly, and just as the engines clattered up had the blaze out. Roll call instantly followed. Either two or four boys did not answer to their names, and they could be found nowhere. The police were then notified, and whether it was that two boys turned up later or what the names of four boys said to be at large were given to the police.

As for the fire and its origin, the school authorities cannot explain.They say the fact that papers were piled in the corner does not necessarily make the thing suspicious, for papers are often collected in that way, but they are of the opinion that the pile could not have caught fire by accident.

The New York Times, New York, NY 6 Dec 1909
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Transcribed by Tim Taugher. Thanks, Tim!