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Formatted by U.S. Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott
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SOURCE:  Decatur County Journal
         Thursday, January 28, 1886
         
         
                       PAUPERS DIE BY FIRE
                       ___________________
                       
                  Five Aged and Insane Inmates
               of the Jackson, Michigan Poor House
                      Meet a Horrible Death
                      
       JACKSON, Michigan, January 25.-- The County House burned
     yesterday morning at l2:30 o'clock. Of forty inmates all 
     escaped but five, who perished in the flames. The remains 
     of the black bodies were dug from the ruins and brought to 
     the city. The people who perished were three women and two 
     men, named Dolly Martin, aged sixty years, insane, an in-
     mate for twelve years; Kate Avery, seventy, insane, inmate 
     for ten years; Jane Atkins, seventy, insane, an inmate ten 
     years; Zina Boynton, ninety-two, deaf, and Charles Elliott, 
     seventy-two, blind. 
       The County Building is four miles from the city. It was a 
     new building and cost $l2,000. It was insured for $9,000. 
     The fire caught in the inmates' kitchen, and no one knows 
     how. The whole interior was destroyed. All the inmates lost 
     their clothing and fled into the snow naked, with the ther-
     mometer ten below zero. Thirty paupers were brought to this 
     city and housed. Some will die from exposure. John Doherty, 
     the hired man, brought three insane persons down the fire 
     escape in his arms, and saved their lives. An imbecile boy, 
     nineteen years old, was found in bed with fire falling on 
     his back, and was rescued by means of the fire escape.
       Only two men besides the inmates were about the place when 
     the fire occurred, and they rescued the inmates before help 
     arrived. The County House is in a lonely place in the country. 
     There should have been a night watchman to prevent such a cal-
     amity. William Mills, an inmate, was the first man to issue 
     Sanders' spelling book, and was worth at one time a quarter of 
     a million dollars. 

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