Walkabout: 4 February 1916 - Feuer Tag, Part 2

Read Part 1 and Part 3 of this story.

After a day of making wedding plans, and stacking presents in a spare bedroom, the Tag household took to their beds on the cold and frosty evening of February 3rd, 1916. Mrs. Hannah Tag and her two daughters, Caroline and Helen, lived in the large 5 story townhouse at 243 Hancock Street, in the upscale Bedford neighborhood. They had lived here since 1893, the first family to occupy this grand home. At that time, Hannah’s husband, banker Casimir Tag, had been one of Brooklyn’s most successful financial men, the president of two banks and a board member on several more. His background and the story of the family house and neighborhood can be found in Part One of this story.

Casimir died in 1913, leaving his widow and six children in financial comfort. The Tag children were all now adults. The eldest son, Charles, was a medical doctor, with a home right behind the Tag house, at 284 Jefferson Avenue. The eldest daughter had gotten married on Hancock Street, and lived elsewhere. So did the other two sons. Only Caroline and Helen were left at home, and the wedding preparations were for 25 year old Caroline’s nuptials, which were to take place here at the house in two more weeks. Caroline’s older sister Helen, who was 31, was lame, and could not walk for any length of time. She stayed home most often, and was an artist.

Mrs. Tag had had work done in the house in preparation for the wedding. She had some repairs made, and parts of the house re-wired. Her brother had an electrical contracting company, and they had done the work. Because thieves read the papers too, and knew Caroline was getting married at home, Mrs. Tag had added some extra security to the house in the form of several new heavy duty deadbolt locks. Mrs. Tag was one of the wealthiest widows in Brooklyn, and she wasn’t going to take chances that the house would be burglarized before the wedding. There had been several break-ins in the neighborhood, and the block’s wealthy homeowners had hired a security guard to keep people who had no business being on the block out.

The house was full of women that night. In addition to Hannah and her two daughters, Hannah’s cousin, Mrs. Henrietta Suarley, was in town for a long visit. She was Hannah’s age, and the two women had always been close. Mrs. Suarley’s long visit would end with the wedding, but while here, she had come down with a bad case of the flu. Dr. Charles Tag was on staff at the Eastern District Hospital. He hired one of that institution’s top graduates of their nursing program, Miss Jennie Stedman, to be a live-in nurse for his aunt. On the evening of Feb. 3rd, Jennie was about to spend her first night at the house.

The other members of the household were sisters. Ann and Lizzie Cain had been in service to the Tag household for many years. Ann, who was now 52, had been nursemaid to all of the Tag children. She and her sister Lizzie, who was a bit younger at 45, had worked for the family so long that they were considered family. They had rooms up on the top floor of the house. Jennie and Mrs. Suarley were on the fourth floor, and Mrs. Tag and her daughters had their bedrooms on the third floor, just above the parlor floor. The ground floor held the kitchen. The family had a long time cook, Mrs. Delia Varney. She often stayed here overnight, although she didn’t live in the house. This night, she had decided to go out, and would stay at her home on nearby Gates Avenue.

Around 2:30 or three in the morning, Caroline woke up to smoke filling her bedroom. She immediately knew the house was on fire. She made it to the phone and called her brother. But because of the lateness of the night, it took a long time for him to answer. People only had one phone in the house in those days, and it was usually downstairs on the parlor floor. By the time Charles picked up, smoke was filling the room. He was going to rush over. Caroline then called Police Headquarters downtown. She told the officer the house was on fire, and that it was getting harder to breath, and she was going to get everyone out of the house before it was too late. The police later found the phone dangling off the hook.

Caroline ran to her mother’s bedroom and got her out of bed. Thick black smoke was now filling the house, making it almost impossible to see and increasingly hard to breathe. Caroline and Hannah made it to the back of the house where the windows opened out onto the roof of the parlor floor extension. Caroline was half dragging her mother to the window, where she got her out onto the roof and as far away from the flames as she could. According to the papers, who interviewed neighbors, Caroline stood on the edge of the roof and called to her brother, whose house was right behind theirs. “Help us, Charlie,” she cried, “Come and save Mother.”

Then, according to neighbors, she ran back into the house to get her sister. The flames were now coming out of the back windows, but Caroline ran back into the house anyway. She reached her sister on that same floor, and the two women made it to the back of the house. But because Helen was lame, progress was too slow, and Caroline was not able to carry the larger, heavier woman. They two made it to the back window, but Helen could not climb out of the window. Helen was seen at the window for a moment before disappearing forever. The fire department found their bodies huddled together just under the window. They had died of smoke inhalation, but the fire had been so strong, the bodies were unrecognizable.

Upstairs, Mrs. Suarley and Jennie Stedman had awoken to the flames as well. Jennie, who was a small girl, had awakened Mrs. Suarley, and tried to get her to safety. She had only known the family since that afternoon, but her duty was clear. But Mrs. Suarely was too sick and too heavy for Jennie to carry very far. She stayed with her patient, and according to police, died of smoke inhalation before Mrs. Suarley did. Both bodies were found near the door of the bedroom.

Up on the top floor Annie and Lizzie Cain didn’t have a prayer. The flames shot up towards the roof, and engulfed their room, killing them in minutes. Their bodies were found still lying in their beds. While all of this death was taking place, Charles and the police and neighbors tried to get into the house. But the new heavy duty locks kept them from getting in. Because the locks were so new, Charles didn’t have keys. By the time the police were able to break down the doors, it was too late. Everyone was already dead, and the flames so high, they couldn’t go any further into the house.

The fire department was hampered by the cold icy weather, and took a few minutes longer than it would normally have taken. The station was on Madison Street, near Nostrand Avenue, perhaps eight blocks away. By the time they got there, there was fire on every floor of the house, especially on the parlor and third floors and up to the roof. The fire had started on the parlor floor, in the front of the house. It was fed by the draperies, woodwork, furniture and clothing on these floors. The wedding gifts, now tragic reminders of a marriage that would never be, all burned up as well.

Charles Tag frantically tried to do something to rescue the women in the house, but he could not get in, the flames were an inferno. But his mother was at the lip of the extension, and he could rescue her. He and two policemen went next door to the Tregarthen house, and tore the shutters off the windows and used them to bridge the gap between the two house’s extensions. The men were then able to cross over to the Tag house and rescue Mrs. Tag. She had to walk the same bridge to the house next door, where she collapsed in grief. Neighbors told of her standing in the street in front of the house, screaming for her children. She finally had to be taken to her son’s house, where she was heavily medicated with opiates.

The fire was so fierce; it went to a second alarm. Fire fighters tried to put scaling ladders in the windows, first for rescue, and then to fight the fire, when it became apparent that no one inside could possibly still be alive. They were driven back by the heat and flames and could do little until the fire consumed everything, and had little left to keep it going. That did not take long; in a matter of hours, from start to finish, the blaze was over. It had burned so hot and fiercely that people a few blocks away were unaware of it, until the wind shifted.

The freezing temperatures had frozen the water used to fight the fire, in spite of the blaze’s heat.
Firemen were covered in ice, and were slipping on the icy sidewalks. The hoses were covered with dirty black ice, and broken glass from the windows was deceptively invisible. One fireman almost lost a finger to a shard of ice. Several were taken to the hospital for injuries, as were several civilians who had attempted to rescue anyone alive. One of them had been the security guard who had been on the other end of the block making his rounds when the fire broke out.

The house was a total ruin. It was totally gutted, with the remains of furniture and fixtures standing on charred and icy floors. Even the marble fireplaces burned. There was nothing, and no one, left. The house was a shell. The block was shocked and in mourning. Everyone knew the Tags, they were very popular on this block filled with other wealthy families, and many were planning on attending the wedding in a couple of weeks. Now they would all be attending funerals.

Next time: The conclusion of the Tag fire tragedy. There were funerals to attend, investigations into the cause of the fire, and a coroner’s inquest to determine the deaths of six women. The story shocked Brooklyn and New York City, and soon spread across the country. The tale had everything; rich victims, a young and beautiful doomed heroine, loyal servants and a frantic son who crawled across the abyss to rescue his mother. There were also serious discussions about fire safety and the need for better rules and regulations. Although the flames on Hancock Street were extinguished on February 4th, 1916, there was still more to this tragic story.

(Photo:Front page photo of the burned out Tag house. Feb.4, 1916. Brooklyn Standard Union)

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