Kitabı oku: «Lest We Forget: Chicago's Awful Theater Horror», sayfa 7

CHAPTER IX.
THIRTY EXITS, YET HUNDREDS PERISH IN AWFUL BLAST

Those in greatest danger through proximity to the stage did not throw their weight against the mass ahead. Not many died on the first floor, proof of the contention that some restraint existed in this section of the audience.

Women were trodden under foot near the rear; some were injured. The most at this point, however, were rescued by the determined rush of the policeman at the entrance and of the doorkeeper and his assistants.

The theater had thirty exits. All were opened before the fire reached full headway, but some had to be forced opened. Only one door at the Randolph street entrance was open, the others being locked, according, it appears, to custom.

From within and without these doors were shattered in the first two minutes after the fire broke out – by theater employes, according to one report, by the van of the fleeing multitude and the first of the rescuers from the street, according to another.

The doors to the exits on the alley side, between Randolph and Lake streets, in one or more instances, are declared by those who escaped to have been either frozen or rusted. They opened to assaults, but priceless seconds were lost.

Before this time Foy had run back across the stage and reached the alley. With him fled the members of the aerial ballet, the last of the performers to get out. The aerialists owed their lives to the boy in charge of the fly elevator. They were aloft, in readiness for their flight above the heads of the audience. The elevator boy ran his cage up even with the line of fire, took them in, and brought them safely down.

As Foy and the group reached the outer doorway the stage loft collapsed and tons of fire poured over the stage.

The lights went out in the theater with this destruction of the switchboard and all stage connections. One column of flame rose and swished along the ceiling of the theater. Then this awful illumination also was swallowed up. None may paint from personal understanding that which took place in that pit of flame lit darkness. None lives to tell it.

To those still caught in the structure the light of life went out when the electric globes grew dark.

In spite of the terrible form of their destruction, it came swiftly enough to shorten pain. This at least was true of those who died in the second balcony, striving to reach the alley exits abreast of them.

Six and seven feet deep they were found, not packed in layers but jumbled and twisted in the struggle with one another.

Opposite the westernmost exit of the balcony – on the alley – was a room in the Northwestern University building (the old Tremont house) where painters were working, wiping out the traces of another fire.

They heard the sound of the detonation of the fuse; they heard the rush of feet toward the exit across the way. Out on the iron stairway came a man, pushed by a power behind, himself crazy with fear. He would have run down the iron fire escape, but flames burst out of the exit beneath and wrapped themselves around the iron ladder.

HORRIBLE SIGHT MET THE FIREMEN UPON ENTERING AUDITORIUM

The postures in which death was met showed how the end had come to many.

A husband and wife were locked so tightly in one another's arms that the bodies had to be taken out together. A woman had thrown her arms around a child in a vain effort to save her. Both were burned beyond recognition.

The sight of the children's bodies broke down the composure of the most restrained of the rescuers. As little form after form was brought out the tears ran down the faces of policemen, firemen and bystanders. Small hands were clenched before childish faces – fruitless attempts at protection from the scorching blast.

Most of the children could be recognized. Fate allowed that thin shadow of mercy. They fell beneath their taller companions. The flames reached them, but they were face downward, other forms were above them, and generally their features were spared.

The persons crowded off the fire escape platform, and those who jumped voluntarily by their own death saved persons on the lower floor from injury. Scores jumped from the exits at the first balcony, the first to death and injury, the ones behind to comparative safety on the thick cushion of the bodies of those who preceded them and who fell from the balcony above. Other hundreds from the main floor jumped on to the same cushion – an easy distance of six feet – without any injury.

When the firemen came they spread nets, but the nets were black, and in the gloom they could not be seen. They saved few lives – argument for the use of white nets hereafter.

The chain of mishaps surrounding the catastrophe extended to the fire alarm. There was no fire alarm box in front of the theater, as at other theaters. A stage hand ran down the alley to South Water street and by word of mouth turned in a "still" alarm to No. 13. The box alarm did not follow for some precious minutes. At least four minutes were lost in this way.

Of the 900 persons seated in the first and second balconies few if any escaped without serious injury.

So fiercely the fire burned during the short time in which hundreds of lives were sacrificed that the velvet cushions of the balcony seats were burned bare.

The crowds fought so in their efforts to escape that they tore away the iron railings of the balconies, leaping upon the people below.

From 3 o'clock, when the alarm was sent in, to 7:30 o'clock, when the doors of the theater were closed, the charred, torn, and blistered bodies were carried from the building at the rate of four a minute. One hundred were taken out across the plank way.

Many blankets filled with fragments of human bodies were taken from the building.

Hundreds of bodies were taken from the building, their clothing gone, their faces charred beyond recognition. Under pretense of serving as rescuers ghouls gained entrance to the theater and robbed the dead and dying in the midst of the fire.

Men fell on their knees and prayed. Men and women cursed. A rush was made for the Randolph street exits. In their fear the crowds forgot the many side exits, and rushed for the doors at which they had entered the theater. Little boys and girls were thrown to one side by their stronger companions.

Ten baskets of money and jewelry thrown in this manner were picked up from the main floor when the fire was extinguished.

Men and women tore their clothing from them. As the first rush was made for the foyer entrance to the balconies men, women and children were thrown bodily down the steps.

A few score of those nearest the doorways escaped by falling or being thrown down the stairs of the main balcony entrances.

Scores were wedged in the doorways, pinned by the force of those behind them. There in the narrow aisle at the balcony entrances they were suffocated and fell – tons of human weight.

All succeeded in leaving their seats in the first balcony. Climbing over the seats and rushing up the slanting aisles to the level aisles above, they fought their way. Those at the bottom of the mass were burned but little. The top layer of bodies was burned till they never can be identified.

Darkness shrouded the theater with its hundreds of dead when the fire was under control that the building could be entered. The firemen were forced to work in smoky darkness when they started carrying the bodies from the balconies.

THE GALLERY HORROR

James M. Strong, a Chicago board of trade clerk, the sole survivor of all the occupants of the gallery who tried to escape through the locked door, smashed with his fist a glass transom and climbed through it. Three members of his family, who followed him down the passageway, shared the fate of others. Their bodies since have been discovered, burned almost beyond recognition.

"If the door hadn't been locked hundreds of persons could have saved their lives," said Strong.

The passageway, along which Strong and many now dead ran to supposed safety, led toward the front of the theater, past the top entrance to the gallery. Strong had been unable to secure seats and was standing in the rear of the gallery with his mother, Mrs. B. K. Strong, his wife, and his niece, Vera, 16 years old, of Americus, Ga. When the fire started all ran toward the nearest exit.

"The exit was crowded," said Strong. "We ran on down a passage at the side of it, followed by many others. At the end, down a short flight of steps, was a door. It was locked. In desperation I threw myself against it. I couldn't budge it. Then, standing on the top step of the little stairway, I smashed the glass above with my fist and crawled through the transom.

"When I fell on the outside I heard the screams on the other side, and, scrambling to my feet, I tried again to open the door, but couldn't. The key was not there. I ran down a stairway to the floor below, where I found a carpenter. I asked him to give me something to break down the door, and he got me a short board. I ran back with this and began pounding, but the door was too heavy to be broken.

"I scarcely know what happened afterward. Smoke was pouring over the transom and I felt myself suffocating. Alone, or with the assistance of the carpenter, I at last found myself at the bottom of the stairway opening into the lobby of the theater. From there I pushed my way to the street. Until then I didn't know I was burned."

GIRL'S MIRACULOUS ESCAPE

The most miraculous escape was that of Winnie Gallagher, an 11-year-old girl, who occupied a seat with her aunt almost directly under the stage. When the panic was started she jumped to her feet and after being thrown about and trampled upon and having her clothing torn from her she managed to climb over the seats and reach the street in safety. What few pieces of wearing apparel she had on at the time were in ribbons and a messenger boy, seeing her predicament, pulled off his overcoat and wrapped it around her. She went to the Central station, where she gave the police her name and asked that someone take her to her home, 4925 Michigan avenue.

AN ACCOUNT FROM THE BOXES

The first two lower boxes on the left of the stage were occupied by a party of young women who were being entertained by Mrs. Rollin A. Keyes of Evanston, in honor of her young daughter, Miss Catherine Keyes, who was home from school in Washington for the holidays.

"We arrived at the theater shortly after the first act," said Miss Emily Plamondon of Astoria, Ore., a member of the party, in describing the fire. "As far as I could see the house was filled with women and children, who occupied seats on the first floor and in the galleries. It was about a quarter to 3 when one of the young women in the party asked Mrs. Keyes if she did not smell something burning and an instant afterward a great cloud of smoke spread across the stage and into the body of the house. Immediately we realized the danger we were in, as did all around us. Instead of a rush to the doors, the audience gazed for a moment at the stage, and as a whole the people appeared very calm, under the circumstances, and as if contemplating how they would escape.

"Again another cloud of smoke issued from the stage and several stage hands appeared, shouting at the top of their voices for the people to sit down. But it was only for an instant that they obeyed, for by that time the smoke had spread through the theater and men, women and children were gasping for breath. Then a mad rush was made for the doors and for the supposed exits, but in vain. Mrs. Pearson and Mrs. Keyes commanded us to keep together by all means and just as we were leaving the boxes the theater became darkened, which, I suppose, was caused by the burning out of the electric light, and thus made our escape the harder. We plodded through the aisles until we came within about ten feet of the main entrance without encountering any violence from the panic-stricken women and children who were fighting for their lives. Then the crush became terrible and the members of our party, Mrs. Rollin A. Keyes, Mrs. Pearson, Misses Charlotte Plamondon, Catherine Keyes, Elmore of Oregon, Amelia Ormsby, Grace Hills, Josephine Eddy and Miss Elizabeth Eddy realized that it would be impossible to get to the street through that door.

"It was only a short time, however, when somebody knocked down two doors, which had been locked, and the majority of the people on the first floor escaped through them without serious injury. Miss Charlotte Plamondon, who was bruised about the face and hands, and I were the only ones in the party who escaped with our wraps. The others had their clothes torn almost from them, as they were hurrying from the burning theater.

"Before we had left the boxes the fire had spread to the first row of seats and the stage hands were endeavoring to lower the asbestos curtain. When it was about half down it became caught and the attempt to drop it was abandoned. A great gush of fire then spread to the draperies over the boxes. The people were wonderfully calm, it seemed to me, for so crucial a moment and it was not until the smoke filled the house that they became frantic and screamed for help. We could hardly breathe and I believe had we been in the theater a few minutes longer we, too, would have been suffocated, as the heat and smoke were becoming unendurable. Had the exits been open and unlocked the loss of life would not have been nearly so great."

"We were seated for half an hour before the fire broke out. Our attention was first attracted by a wreath of flame, which crept slowly along the red velvet curtain. We all noticed it. So did the audience and I could see little girls and boys in the orchestra chairs point upward at the slowly moving line of flame. As the fire spread the people in the balcony and on the first floor arose to their feet as if to rush out of the place. Then Eddie Foy hurried to the front of the stage and commanded the people to be quiet, saying that if they would remain seated the danger would be averted. All the people who were then on the stage maintained remarkable presence of mind and the chorus girls endeavored to divert the attention of their auditors off the fire by going on with their parts.

"I looked over the faces of the audience and remarked how many children were present. I could see their faces filled with interest and their eyes wide open as they watched the burning curtain.

"Then I looked behind me and realized the awful consequence should the people become alarmed. The doors, except for the one through which we entered the theater, were closed and apparently fastened. Up in the balcony I could see people crowding forward in order to obtain a better view. Again the audience arose as if to flee.

"Eddie Foy again rushed on the stage and waved his arms in a gesture for the people to be seated. But just then the shrill cry of a woman caused the women and children to rise to their feet, filled with a sudden and uncontrollable terror.

"'Fire!' I heard her exclaim, and in another instant the eyes of the audience were turned to the exits in the rear. The flames lighted up the stage as the light tinsel stuffs blazed up, and the scene changed from mimicry to tragedy. A confused, rumbling noise filled the theater from the pit to the dome. I knew it was the sound of a thousand people preparing to leave their seats and rush madly from the impending danger. The noise of their footsteps in the balcony was soon deadened by the cries for aid from those who were hemmed in by the struggling mass.

"On the stage the chorus girls, who had exhibited rare presence of mind, turned to flee. Many were overcome before they could stir a step. They fell to the floor and I saw the men in the cast and the stage hands lift them to their feet and carry them to the rear of the stage. By this time the scenery was a mass of flames."

INSPECTION AFTER THE FIRE

Deputy Building Commissioner Stanhope with three inspectors made a thorough examination of the theater building yesterday.

"I first examined the building with respect to the safety of its walls and found them in perfect condition," said Mr. Stanhope. "They are not out of plumb an inch and are as good as they ever were. The steel structure is not injured except that portion which supported the stage. The heat has twisted some of the supports but they can be replaced at little cost. Except the backs of the seats and the floor of the stage the interior of the auditorium was not injured by the fire. The carpets in the gallery, where most of the people were killed, were not even scorched."

A YOUNG HEROINE

Verma Goss is one of the young heroines of the fire. She attended the theater in a party composed of her mother, Mrs. Joseph Goss; her 5-year-old sister, Helen; Mrs. Greenwald of 536 Byron street and her young son Leroy. In the rush for the door Miss Verma caught her young sister's hand and pulled her out of the crowd and carried the child to safety. She thought her mother was following, but she and her sister were the only ones of the party who escaped.

A NARROW ESCAPE

Mrs. William Mueller, with her two children, Florence Marie, 5 years of age, and Barbara Belle, 7, occupied a seat in the parquet.

"I was not in the theater auditorium," said Mrs. Mueller. "I was in one of the waiting rooms, but was on my way to our seats. As I entered the doors somebody yelled fire. I looked up and saw the curtain ablaze. Then came the stampede. I picked up my children and ran toward the door. I was caught in the jam and it seemed that I would fail to reach it. Some man saw my plight and jumped to my assistance. He picked up Florence and threw her over the heads of the rushing people. She fell upon the pavement, but was not badly injured."

FINDS WIFE IN HOSPITAL

The first woman to be rescued over the temporary bridge between the theater and the Northwestern university building was Mrs. Mary Marzein of Elgin, Ill. She was severely burned and lost consciousness after her rescue. A score or more suffered death on every side as she crept over the ladder. They were thrown aside and knocked down, but she clung to the ladder and escaped. She was taken to the Michael Reese hospital and did not regain consciousness until the following day. Her husband, who is an employe of the Elgin Watch Company, searched all the morgues and was making a tour of the hospitals when he found his wife.

When Mrs. Marzein recovered in the afternoon the first person she inquired for was her husband, who at that moment was being ushered into the room. Their eyes met as she was whispering his name to the nurse, and an affecting scene followed.

A MIRACULOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS ESCAPE

One of the most miraculous escapes from the fire was that of Miss Winifred Cardona. She was one of a party of four and with her friends occupied seats in the seventh row of the parquet.

"The first intimation I had of the danger was when I saw one of the chorus girls look upward and turn pale. My eyes immediately followed her glance and I saw the telltale sparks shooting about through the flies. The singing continued until the blaze broke out. Then Mr. Foy appeared and asked the audience to keep their seats, assuring them that the theater was thoroughly fireproof. We obeyed, but when we saw the seething mass behind struggling for the door we rushed from our seats. I became separated from the other girls and had not gone far before I stumbled over the prostrate body of a woman who was trampled almost beyond recognition. For an instant I thought it was all over. Then I felt someone lift me and I knew no more until I revived in the street. It was the most awful experience I have ever had and I consider my escape nothing short of miraculous."

LITTLE GIRL'S MARVELOUS ESCAPE

"I'm the most grateful man in all Chicago," said J. R. Thompson, who owns the restaurant. "My sister was in the theater with my two children – John, aged 9, and Ruth, aged 7. Sister got almost to the door with both of them. Then Ruthie disappeared. She told me she knew the child must be safe, but I was like a maniac. It was an hour before we found her. How it happened I didn't know, but she ran back into the theater and out under the stage, out through the stage entrance."

"Where is the little girl now?" I asked him.

"I sent her home to her mother," he said.

Only ten feet away lay the chestnut-haired girl who "was a great one to scamper."

FOUR GENERATIONS REPRESENTED

Members of four generations of a family were turned into mourners, only one member remaining from a party of nine made up of Benjamin Moore and eight of his relatives, of whom only one, Mrs. W. S. Hanson, Hart, Mich., escaped. Following are the names of the eight victims: Mrs. Joseph Bezenek, 41 years old, West Superior, Wis., daughter of Benjamin Moore; Benjamin Moore, 72 years old, Chicago; Roland Mackay, 6 years old, Chicago, grandson of Mrs. Joseph Bezenek and great grandson of Benjamin Moore; Mrs. Benjamin Moore, 47 years old, wife of Benjamin Moore; Joseph Bezenek, 38 years old, West Superior, Wis., husband of Mrs. Bezenek and son-in-law of Benjamin Moore; Mrs. Perry Moore, 33 years old, Hart, Mich., daughter-in-law of Benjamin Moore; Miss Sibyl Moore, Hart, Mich., 13 years old, daughter of Mrs. Perry Moore and granddaughter of Benjamin Moore; Miss Lucile Bond, 10 years old, daughter of George H. Bond and granddaughter of Benjamin Moore, Chicago.

DAUGHTERS AND GRANDCHILDREN GONE

Three daughters and two grandchildren, constituting the entire family of Mr. and Mrs. Morris Eger, Chicago, perished in the fire. The daughters were Miss S. Eger, who was a teacher in the Mosely school; Mrs. Marion Rice, wife of A. Rice, and Mrs. Rose Bloom, wife of Max Bloom, and the children were: Erna, the 10-year-old daughter of Mrs. Rice, and her 11-year-old brother, Ernest.

After a long search among the many morgues of the city the bodies were all identified, two of them being found there.