NEWHALL HOTEL, MILWAUKEE

Milwaukee's Newhall Hotel, a once elegant lodging that fell into disrepair, burst into flames on Jan. 10, 1883, claiming about 70 lives.

The hotel, also called Newhall House, had been the site of lesser fires before its incineration, and firefighters considered it a fire trap.

The final blaze was discovered at about 4 a.m. as flames mushroomed up its open elevator shaft, trapping residents in their rooms and hallways. People in windows jumped or collapsed into the flames. Others suffocated.

A contemporary account published in the Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel, an Indiana newspaper, said that "exit by way of the roof was cut off by the fire and the two stand pipes with fire ladders were not available for the same reason."

The newspaper hailed firefighters for "a superhuman effort." In one rescue, "waiter girls were brought safely across frail ladders stretched over the alley from the sixth story of the hotel to the roof of the adjoining bank building," it said.

The traveling circus performer Tom Thumb and his wife were rescued by ladder, according to one account, in the arms of a single firefighter. Another account said a police officer carried Mrs. Thumb while Tom Thumb descended on his own.

A Jan. 23 inquest found the hotel owners guilty of culpable negligence for lacking adequate exterior fire escapes and failing to employ an adequate number of night watchmen, according to an 1883 report entitled Burning of the Newhall House.

The watchman and hotel clerk on duty "obeying previous instructions of the proprietors, lost valuable time in useless attempts to extinguish the fire and to arouse the inmate,'' the inquest said.

They also lost time hailing the Milwaukee Fire Department, which received  a telephone alarm from the night clerk at 4:05 a.m. followed by a signal from a street alarm box - Box 15 - at 4:08 a.m. and a general alarm from the same street box at 4:15 a.m.