we Girls Killed in Women's Panic-stricken Rush Down Stairway in Sudden Conflagration More than 50 women and girls, {who stampeded on Sunday morning after a fire broke out ina small Chinese tobacco factory on Elgin Road, were rescued by firemen at tached to Hongkew Fire Station, within a few minutes after the alarm But the door at the foot, although not locked, was closed, It swung inward. The leaders could not open it before the others were upon them. They wore trapped with no means of exit, because on one side of them the blank wall could not be broken was turned in, at 9.08 a.m. A party of Chinese firemen, in charge of Mr, W.'A. G. Price, did work for Which the highest praise is due.
Panic-stricken by flames which broke cut in the rear of the factory, and with all exits, save one, cut off by the flames, the workers) rushed toa stairway. When the foremost ones jammed against an in-swinging door, the remainder piled in a mass against them. The Brigade ad to cut out a wooden partition and part of a brick wall to rescue them, The Jatest report has it that two! 4-year old girls wore crushed to death, 19 were received in various hospitals, and as many as 10 or 12, who were not seriously injured, were taken home by relatives.
The fire started in the drying plant of the factory on the first floor. The sight of the flames, after the nearest stairway was cut off, onused a panic. The girls and women in this room, there are seven rooms on this floor—rushed for the passageway upon which all rooms open. - As they passed the open doors they shouted, "Fire, fire." As result every one' on the premises fained in,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.