On April 7, 1878, the supervisor of Steuben County’s poorhouse did what he usually did at the end of the day. He locked the “inmates” into their various buildings and went home, taking the keys with him.
L.C. Ford, a “violent and dangerous” epileptic from Hornellsville, was confined to a cell under the care of inmate Thomas Pendergrass, who was infirm and visually impaired. The facility for the handicapped and insane was a two-story brick building with 14 cells, each having a wooden door with an 8 X 10 opening for food. Eighteen men were confined on the first floor, 25 women on the second.
Ford set fire to his cell, and the fire soon spread to the entire building of trapped people, most unable to care for themselves in the first place. One-legged Daniel Casey, who lived in the “old tollgate,” broke a window with his crutch, rescuing a woman and child.
Some reports say that Eli Carrington (keeper) was not present, and that his family took the lead in fighting the fire. Others report that Carrington and C.T. Blancett (supervisor of the laboring paupers) broke open the east door, allowing ten or twelve “nearly suffocated” people to escape. “Mr. Carrington made a desperate attempt to go up stairs and unfasten the doors of those whose dispositions were of such a character that they could not be trusted, but from the dense smoke and increasing heat of the fire he was unable to go; but it was not until he was forced by the main strength of Mr. Blancett, that he gave up the idea.”
“Occasionally an affrighted face could be seem at a grated window, and then the fierce flames would seep down and it would be seen no more. It was no wonder that women fainted and men turned pale…. After burning for about three hours nothing was left standing save the bare fire-eaten walls enclosing a smoking, undefined mass of ashes, bones, iron bedsteads and cell gratings.” This was our version of the 1911 Triangle Fire.
Carrington and Blancett, aided by some neighbors and “a few of the paupers who could be controlled,” protected neighboring buildings.
Alerted by the watchman (“after some hesitation”) people in Bath saw the glow against the night sky, and the fire “companies went out some distance but turned back knowing there was no water source available.” Would they have done that had the wealthy John Davenport’s house been on fire? (Again, some reports place fire companies on the scene.)
The victims were black and white, male and female. They came from aty least eight towns in Steuben County and one in Schuyler. Fifteen people under county care were killed outright (including a year-old child and a child of 4), and one, Edward Hudson, succumbed the following day. Hudson, who could not “move in an upright position without the aid of two crutches,” crawled out with his clothes aflame. Blancett “tore his clothes from him and applied a pail of water.” The eldest victim was 84 years old.
The coroner’s jury exonerated the keeper, but censured the citizens of the county and the Board of Supervisors “for not having provided safe and suitable accommodations.” The jury censured the Superintendents of the Poor “for not having provided a better mode of egress and fire apparatus, and for not removing the insane incendiary Ford to the asylum.”
According to a New York City newspaper on April 18 (“The Steuben Horror”) [Carrington] must have foreseen that in the event of a fire there was needed within the building some person of competent mind and muscle to open a way of escape and intelligently aid it. To quietly lock up fifty or more aged, idiotic, crippled or insane persons in a building night after night, pocket the key, and go off to bed in another building, providing no earthy means of aid in the event of an emergency, would seem to involve the faintest shade of responsibility, before knocking at the door of the Supervisors and Superintendents of the Poor.”
On May 7 the Board of Supervisors (following a defeated proposal to abolish the poorhouse) appointed a committee to review the county home; this committee reported on May 8.
Accused superintendent of making claims for the support of long-dead inmates, and of spending county home funds for personal use. Among the questioned goods were mustache cups, applejack, liquor, bonnets, napkins, umbrellas, veils, cashmere dresses, button ties, ribbons, garters, and “satin goods for the farmer.”
Ordered the superintendent to charge visiting officials for meals. On audit day the county home fed up to fifteen horses and thirty people (including wives), and provided enough liquor to cause comment, though one employee said that “they were not so unfitted they could not do business.”
Led to installation of a cistern and force pump for firefighting.
Built new buildings, leading to a total cost for the year of $21,872.47, including about $3200 for care of the inmates.
Following establishment of the state Board of Charities in 1873 the mentally ill and children under 16 were required to be housed separately from poorhouses… obviously that had not been the case in Steuben. American attitudes at the time regarded the poor as criminals… indeed, at one stage the Board of Supervisors in Steuben ordered that anyone applying for aid was to be arrested.
Though this was the worst, it was not the FIRST fatal fire at the poorhouse. An 1838 fire killed one inmate, while seven died in an 1859 blaze. At least the Steuben County Horror was the last.