TWO FIRES CAUSE TERROR
_______

    One fire started a panic last evening among 150 men and women guests at the Hotel Walters, 407-409 State street. Another, which attacked the wholesale meat market of Arnold Bros., 145 West Randolph street, caused consternation among the 450 lodgers in the Municipal Lodging house just around the corner on North Union street and drove to the streets a dozen families occupying rooms just above the store.
    Several men leaped from windows to the structure of the South Side Elevated railroad in the alley shortly after the blaze had been discovered in the basement of a picture frame factory in the rear of the hotel. All escaped injury. Several women appeared at windows and were seized by firemen and policemen and carried through smoke filled halls and stairways to the street.
    While most of the guests were fleeing from the building G. F. Young, manager of the hotel; John Franklin, a clerk, and John Wells, a guest, formed bucket brigades and held in check the fire on the second floor until members of engine companies Nos. 21 and 10 arrived.

    Policeman Michael Kennedy was passing and several employ�s of the international theater were at the stage entrance to the theater when the flames burst through a glass door into the alley. One of the men summoned the firemen while others assisted the policeman in breaking down a rear door of the burning building.
    When the firemen arrived the flames had reached the second floor, which is on a level with the elevated structure, over which trains crowded with passengers passed when flames were shooting out of the windows.
    Guests who were notified by Ellen Schneider, a housekeeper, fled into State street. Some were unable to get down the stairways and were assisted by policemen.
    The fire was extinguished after a fight of more than an hour. The loss on the building was $500, while that on the hotel was $600. The picture frame factory suffered a loss of $1.000.
    The building is owned by Edward Taylor, 125 La Salle street, a real estate dealer.

    The Arnold Bros.' store fire caused a loss of $25,000. It required strenuous efforts on the part of policemen to restrain the frightened lodgers in the Municipal lodging house, when the fire apparatus stopped in front of the door.
    The fire was discovered in the sausage room, on the fifth floor of the Arnold building, which is a six story brick structure.
    By the time the firemen arrived, the entire upper part of the building was in flames, and a 2-11 alarm was turned in, which brought Chief Horan and former-Chief John Campion.
    About twelve tenants were asleep in their apartments. Mrs. Henry Smith, who lives on the second floor of 143 West Randolph street, was the first to be awakened. She ran screaming through the halls of both her own building and the Arnold structure, pounding on the doors and arousing the sleeping inmates.

    Mrs. Sarah Wynekoop, wife of Dr. F. E. Wynekoop, 1583 West Monroe street, accidentally set fire to her clothing during the day in attempting to extinguish a lighted candle on a Christmas tree in her home and was burned slightly on her hands and face. Dr. Wynekoop, who smothered her burning clothing with a rug, suffered slight burns on his hands.

Source:

Unknown, "Two Fires Cause Terror," Chicago Daily Tribune, Saturday, 28 December, 1907, Page 3.

    Mrs. Sarah Wynekoop, wife of Dr. F. E. Wynekoop, is, in actuality, Dr. Alice Lois Lindsay Wynekoop, later implicated in the death of her daughter-in-law Rheta Gardner, in the Fall of 1933.

    Chris