1923 — Feb 18, Fire, Manhattan State Hospital For the Insane, Ward’s Island, NY — 27
Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 4-10-2025 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/
— 27 Cornell Daily Sun. “Fire in Asylum May Have Been Caused by Dust.” 2-21-1923.
— 27 NFPA. “The Dunning Asylum Holocaust, NFPA Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3, Jan 1924, 201.
— 27 Verzoni. “High Risk: The Manhattan State Hospital fire of 1923, New York City.” NFPA.
— 25 National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996.
Narrative Information
National Fire Protection Association. “The Dunning Asylum Holocaust:
“….During the past year the Ward’s Island Asylum fire in New York with its toll of 27 lives, the Allegheny County Alms House fire near Buffalo in which nine inmates were burned to death, and now the Dunning disaster have been added to the gruesome record.”
Verzoni, Angelo. “High Risk: The Manhattan State Hospital fire of 1923, New York City.”:
“At 5 a.m. on February 18, 1923, attendants at the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane, located on Ward’s Island in New York City, noticed a metal ceiling tile glowing red-hot in a hallway leading to patient rooms. Fearing an impending fire, they called patients to breakfast to move them away from the hallway and into the dining room. Minutes later, their fears were realized as flames burst through the ceiling, according to an NFPA bulletin on the incident published later that year.
“Although the attendants’ actions undoubtedly saved lives, not everyone escaped. Twenty-four patients and three attendants died in the blaze, according to the bulletin. Three years earlier, officials had identified the facility—one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in the world, with over 6,000 patients—as being at high risk for a catastrophic fire, but fire and life safety improvements were never made.
“After the fire spread, rescue work became difficult ‘as the patients became excited and had to be dragged out by attendants,’ the bulletin reported. Firefighting was further hampered by sub-zero weather and the extreme difficulty in getting apparatus to the island. ‘The New York City force had to go to the fire without equipment as there was only a small ferry, of insufficient capacity for fire apparatus, to the island,’ the bulletin said. ‘Fireboats had to run hose lines for nearly half a mile before water reached the fire.’
“The cause of the fire wasn’t reported, but the bulletin explains that the facility was similar to thousands of other institutional buildings throughout the United States and Canada, which at the time often experienced fires due to ‘defective chimneys, poorly installed stoves and furnaces, defective electrical equipment, careless handling of [flammable] liquids, spontaneous combustion in accumulations of rubbish, smoking, and carelessness with matches.’
“In 1920, the National Board of Fire Underwriters surveyed the Manhattan State Hospital and recommended the installation of automatic fire sprinklers and other safeguards because its buildings lacked fire-resistant features and contained blind attics and other concealed spaces that made the structures ‘veritable fire traps,’ the NFPA bulletin says. The board also cited an inadequate and unreliable water supply and a poorly equipped on-site firefighting service, which used ‘an ancient horse-drawn engine.’
“The bulletin noted that the superintendent of the hospital recognized the fire hazard and had repeatedly tried to obtain more equipment and funding from state and city authorities, to no avail.”
(Verzoni, Angelo. “High Risk: The Manhattan State Hospital fire of 1923, New York City.” NFPA Journal, Jan-Feb 2019.)
Newspaper
Feb 20: “New York, Feb. 20 – (AP) – Spontaneous combustion was advanced today as the cause of the fire which killed 27 patients and nurses at the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane on Ward’s Island. Testimony that defective wiring could not have caused the fire was given at the inquiry presided over by Medical Examiner Norris, while Acting Mayor Hulbert was in Albany conferring with Governor Smith on steps to protect other institutions in this city against fire menace. Thomas Leonard, chief engineer at the hospital, declared that the lights were burning after the fire was well started, even in the ward where attendants Campbell and Hill said they had gone out before the blaze was discovered….
“Assistant District Attorney Jones, after spending several hours today on the island, said he was convinced that there had been no criminal negligence on the part of any individual and that he had found nothing which would warrant him going before a grand jury. ‘I find that the fire was probably due to spontaneous combustion.’ Said Mr. Jones. ‘I also find that the hospital authorities did everything they could from the moment the fire broke out. Dr. Marcus B. Heyman, the superintendent, I am convinced, has done the very best he could with the buildings as they are and that he has done all he could to gradually improve conditions there.’
Wing Build in 1870
“While official announcement was lacking it was understood that the authorities were considering the possibility of whether spontaneous combustion might have occurred in dust laden flues half a century old. The unit of which one wing was destroyed was built in 1870. It had old fashioned gratings down which hospital authorities said the insane would cram bits of paper or sheets. This rubbish, it was explained, might have served as fuel for the flames.
“Of the 25 patients and two male nurses who fell victims to the disaster – 25 immediately, and two later from shock and exposure – all but five of the bodies had been recovered tonight, but in only a few cases was identification possible. The 22nd body was found this afternoon under the water tank that crashed into the ward while the fire was at its height, shutting off escape.” (Cornell Daily Sun. “Fire in Asylum May Have Been Caused by Dust.” 2-21-1923.)
Sources
Cornell Daily Sun. “Fire in Asylum May Have Been Caused by Dust.” 2-21-1923. Accessed at: http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cornell?a=d&d=CDS19230221.2.1&srpos=&dliv=none&e=——–20–1—–all–
National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996. Accessed 2010 at: http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=1352&itemID=30955&URL=Research%20&%20Reports/Fire%20statistics/Key%20dates%20in%20fire%20history&cookie%5Ftest=1
National Fire Protection Association. “The Dunning Asylum Holocaust,” Quarterly of the National Fire Protection Association, Vol. 17, No. 3, January 1924, p. 201-202.
Verzoni, Angelo. “High Risk: The Manhattan State Hospital fire of 1923, New York City.” NFPA Journal, Jan-Feb 2019. Accessed 4-10-2025 at: https://web.archive.org/web/20210805070041/http://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Publications-and-media/NFPA-Journal/2019/January-February-2019/News-and-Analysis/Looking-Back