“Somebody kill me!” begged Isaac W. Simpson, in front of his blazing garage, 128 East Morgan street, early Saturday morning when, in an agony of helplessness, he saw a curtain of snapping, roaring red flame cut off his wife, his four-year-old son, and their negro nurse, from the only avenue of escape out of their apartment on the second floor.
A moment before, he himself, clutching his two-year-old daughter, had jumped from the window to safety, expecting, he explained to relatives to break the fall of his wife and son, who were to follow.
With his feet badly burned in the effort to get back into the building to rescue his family and the nurse, and distracted with the horror of the thing, he was led off by friends to Rex Hospital where, last night, he was suffering from a complete nervous collapse. The body of Mrs. Simpkins, charred arms encircling four-year-old son Isaac W. Simpkins Jr., was found at 7 o’clock, little more than two hours after the first alarm. Near her was the body of Carolina Hill, the negro nurse. Around them were charred timbers and the twisted shapes of 65 automobiles, which, with the building, were totally destroyed with a loss estimated at $100,000.
The final desperate effort to break through the burning barrier was made by Fireman J.C. Beck of Station No. 3, when he flung a ladder to the second story window out of which Simpkins had jumped and prepared to spring through the opening as the furnace belched out a blast of flame in a back lash of a gas tank explosion that knocked him from the ladder to the paving below, breaking his arm in two places.
Dinty Moore, of Richmond, Va., an automobile man piloting two trucks from Richmond to Columbia, and W.G. Brewer, whose room near the Simpkins apartment, Moore was occupying for the night, escaped from the burning building by smashing a window at the rear and sliding down the almost red hot roof of a shed. Moore received burns and gashes about the arms and hands. Brewer was uninjured.
The only other injury was to A.O. Goodman, a fireman, whose arm was cut by falling glass.
To Save Faithful Servant
Isaac Simpkins jumped form the second story window with his little daughter, leaving his wife who was shortly to become a mother for a third time and his son to follow. Catching on his feet without injury in some miraculous fashion, he called to Mrs. Simpkins to throw their son to him. For a second, his wife hesitated, then disappeared. A few minutes later Fireman Beck was knocked from the ladder and Simpkins’ feet were burned to blisters on the roof of a little shed in the rear of the building on which he struggled vainly to gain an entrance.
To members of the family who, alone, were allowed to see him in Rex Hospital yesterday afternoon, Simpkins confirmed this story with the additional theory that his wife suddenly realizing that the aged negress, Carolina Hill, who had been a faithful servant of her family for years, had not been aroused, returned to wake her. She was trapped in the effort. The location of the bodies indicate that they were together when the end came.
“Save my wife! Save my child,” he begged as a prayer even when hope was gone for anyone who might have been within that building.
When Fireman Beck tumbled to the ground from the ladder in the face of the back lash that followed the explosion of a gasoline tank, Simpkins gave way to hysterical entreaty:
“Please kill me,” he begged. “I’ve lost everything!”
Three Discover Flames
Almost simultaneously, it appeared, the fire was discovered far beyond control by E.R. Rowe, an automobile mechanic who has an apartment over the Southern Express office at the corner of Morgan and Wilmington streets; by A.M. Tyner, another mechanic who lives in the residence three doors east of the burned garage, and L.H. Lee, mechanic for the Simpkins garage.
Lee, who holds down the night shift at the garage, and whose custom it is to snatch as much sleep as possible between calls after midnight, stated yesterday that he was asleep in an automobile and was only awakened when the top of the car (Lines obscured). . . .
“I rushed out, yelling for Mr. Simpkins,” he said. “Then I ran around to the Fire Station No. 3 to call out the department.
In the meanwhile, Tyner had been aroused and had turned in an alarm from a near by box, and Rowe, half a block away had been awakened by crashing glass. Calling to occupants of an adjoining room to telephone the alarm, he had dashed down to the fire.
Isaac Simpkins was standing on the sidewalk, with his little girl by his side, calling to his wife to jump when Rowe reached the garage. It was Rowe who took charge of the little girl, Dorothy, later turned over to Mrs. Rowe for care, terrified but not physically injured by her experience. Impetus was given the easy burning timbers of the garage building by the accumulation of oils and gasoline stored there in barrels and in automobiles. According to a statement Simpkins is said to have made to relatives, there was a crashing explosion just before he jumped. Similar explosions followed at intervals, and firemen state that a bursting gas tank on a truck created the back lash that threw Beck from the ladder in the act of rescue.
Although it was one of the most spectacular fires that has occurred in Raleigh, and threatened several times to spread to adjoining structures, and did twice make contact with a residence around the corner on Blount street, the big crowd did not begin to arrive until the flames were reduced to smoldering embers. Then they came, on the way to work, some before breakfast, some after breakfast, the beginning of a steady stream of all sorts of folk who stood about the ruin, speculating curiously about all its tragic features.
With difficulty, when the heat was reduced to the point where recovery of the bodies might be attempted, could the crowd be restrained from clambering about the still smoking ruins in self-appointed searching parties. “Old those folks back. There are some valuable diamond rings about here,” Fire Chief Horton directed a policeman on duty. It served merely to aggravate the morbid desire to see the things concealed under the debris. Then came the discovery of the bodies, Mrs. Simpkins with her arm about her little boy, and the aged nurse within arm’s reach. The bodies were charred beyond recognition and the ambulance bore them away to the undertaking establishment. But still the crowd came, lingered, gossiped, wondered, and for itself lived through the experiences that must have been Simpkins’ when he stood beneath the tongue of fire that licked mockingly at him from the second story window and begged his wife to jump.
“Oh, you don’t know what you would have done,” the wiser ones said and the imaginative, admitted it might be so.
The discovery of three diamond rings, to of them very valuable, and Mrs. Simpkins’ wedding ring, among the fragments of a shattered glass vase in which they were kept, followed the finding of the bodies. This, too, added its circumstance of interest to the ruins. It was something else to talk about.
Other Damage Done
While the flames were held to the one building, there was grave danger at all times until they were thoroughly under control that the Evans Carriage shop, a wooden structure across the street, might catch fire. Adjoining the Simpkins’ garage to the west, and separated from it by a party wall, 25 automobiles stored in the place of the Central Motors co., of which Fred Drake is manager, were seriously endangered. All cars were rolled to safety, however, with slight damage done to several by falling brick from a hole torn in the wall by the collapse of a big beam. Motor equipment and stock, likewise, were damaged considerably. To the East, the Davis McNeill Tire Co., and the Carolina Electric Appliance Co., were virtually not damaged.
Building Inspector John Mangum yesterday afternoon inspected the walls between which the fire raged and while he expressed the opinion that the east wall of the Central Motors Building will probably have to be partially torn down, as a precaution, he declared that both walls are substantial and there is no danger of collapse.
The Simpkins Building was owned by the N.A. Rand estate and was valued at $20,000, partially covered by insurance. By far the greatest loss came to owners of the 65 machines which were stored in (lines obscured). . . and many yesterday agreed that an average of $1,000 per car would cover the loss.
Possibly only Simpkins himself can approximate a complete list of the cars which were in storage at the time. Yesterday, employes of the place could assemble only a partial record. It included a Willys Knight owned by Mrs. George Williams; a Hupmobile owned by R.G. Partin; a Cleveland owned by Miss Cathleen Johnson; a Hudson touring car and three trucks owned by B. Streb; one truck owned by Fred Staudt; three trucks and a motorcycle owned by Allen Cut Rate Market; an Auburn owned by E.S. Freeman; a brand new Apperson owned by the Indian Refining Co.; two white trucks owned by tourists on their way south from Washington, D.C.; a Packard, owned by Charlie Weinstein; a Hupmobile owned by Mrs. Lee Hough; a Packard owned by Isaac Simpkins; a Dodge Sedan owned by White Ice Cream Co.; four trucks owned by J.G. Ball; one truck owned by Alfred Williams; a Studebaker owned by John Reddingfield; Buick touring car owned by J.W. Brown; two trucks owned by the Dixie Oil Company; a touring car owned by Delk Markham.
Origin Not Determined
Definite determination of the origin of the fire last night had not been reached. Chief Horton of the Fire Department, stated that his investigation had brought to him the conclusion that the fire started on the second story. It dropped from the upper floor, he believed, to the storage room. This is largely borne out by the statement of the night mechanic, Lee, who declared that the top of the automobile in which he was sleeping was ablaze before he was aroused.
Funeral This Afternoon
Floyd Simpkins of Wilson, brother to Isaac Simpkins, returned to Raleigh yesterday to find tragedy where he had left at 1 o’clock Saturday morning, security and happiness. Mrs. Simpkins, Isaac Simpkins and Floyd Simpkins had made up a friendly family party in the Simpkins apartments Friday night and Isaac helped Floyd to make some adjustments on his automobile just before he left for Wilson at 1 o’clock.
Floyd Simpkins immediately took charge of the funeral arrangements. He announced that Mrs. Simpkins and her little son would be buried in the same coffin, this afternoon at 3:30 o’clock in Oakwood Cemetery. The services will be conducted at the grave near the water tower by Dr. Weston Bruner, pastor of the Baptist Tabernacle.
Mrs. Simpkins, before her marriage, was Miss Rachel Wadford, daughter of the late O.L. Wadford. She is survived by two brothers, Hines Wadford and Jack Wadford.
From the front page of the Raleigh News & Observer, Sunday, January 7, 1923
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