A Bundle of Bones (1890)

The Atlanta Constitution (Georgia)
3 January 1890
(*Viewed online via Ancestry's Historical Newspaper Collections)

A Bundle of Bones
The Tragic Death of Annie Martin, Who was Burned to Death
A House That is Well Known to the Police Department is Burned to the Ground - A Notorious Woman Perishes

Burned to a crisp!

That was the fate of Annie Martin last night. She perished in the burning of her home on Railroad alley, between Calhoun and Butler streets.

It was a tragic death, and the cause of it remains a mystery. It looks like a case of arson.

But nobody knows.

Kittie Stribling, a negro woman who lives not far from the scene of the fire, happened to look out and saw the flames bursting from the roof of the house.

She ran out, and then she observed a commotion in the east room nearest Calhoun street; while watching the progress of the fire she saw a woman run out of the room, and as she reached the hallway, fell to the floor.

A man ran to the door and broke it in, but it was too late. The fire was then bursting through the doors and windows, and the man staggered backward and gave the alarm.

Patrolman Pat McCullough pulled the nearest box. The department responded, but before the engines arrived, there were five hundred people standing on the railroad embankment looking down on the scene.

Front and rear and on every side men rushed to and fro trying to save buildings adjoining. And the cry went up: "A woman is burning to death in there!"

Soon as the fire department got water on the building the flames subsided, but the smoke was startling. Chief Joyner entered the house with the hook and ladder men, and amid the blinding smoke he discovered by the flickering light of his lantern a ghastly sight in the form of a human skeleton stretched at full length on the floor.

The body was burned to a crisp. There was no flesh on the limbs; no flesh on the body; the skull was as bare as marble, and there were no features left to even hint at the terrible story of the last moments of the unfortunate.

The fragments were removed by order of Sergeants Moss and Cartright, and four stout negroes bore the half-burned shutter on which they were laid. They were carried up the steep embankment and to the house of Willie Burton, on Collins street.

Undertaker H. W. Patterson was summoned and prepared the body for burial.

Annie Martin was well known in police circles. She kept as assignation house, and for ten or fifteen years was prominent in the criminal annals of Atlanta. Among the later crimes charged against her was the inveigling[?] and abduction of young girls into her house for immoral purposes.

She is said to have come to Atlanta from Athens, Ga. She was forty-two years old, and has borne a dark reputation ever since her advent in Atlanta.

For two or three weeks she has been ill, and most of the time she was confined to her bed. Nobody lived with her, consequently there is no witness to the beginning of the catastrophe. It is supposed that she was too weak to escape from her room when she saw that the house was on fire.

The origin of the fire is a mystery, and likely to remain so. There are many theories. It might've been the explosion of a lamp, or many other small accidents that fequently cause disastrous accidents.

But there is a strong suspicion that the house was fired by somebody through revengeful motives, and a desire to put a stop to the nefarious practices of her who lived there.

The unfortunate woman has neither kith[?] nor kin in or around Atlanta, and Willie Burton only took charge of the funeral out of compassion.

The house was worth about two or three hundred dollars.