Lest We Forget: Chicago's Awful Theater Horror. Everett Marshall

maelstrom of fire. But it was a sight they had seen before. Surely something would happen to extinguish it. America's newest and most modern fireproof playhouse was not going to disappear before an insignificant fire in the rigging loft. So they continued to sway in sinuous steps to the rhythm of the throbbing orchestra. Their presence stilled the nervousness of the vast audience, which knew that something was wrong, but had no means of realizing what that something was.

      So the gorgeously attired men and dashing, voluptuous young women danced on. The throng feasted its eyes on the moving scene of life and color, little knowing that for them it was the last dance – the dance of death!

      That dance was not the only one in progress. Far above the element of death danced from curtain to curtain. The fire fiend, red and glowing with exultation, snapping and crackling in anticipation of the feast before it, grew beyond all bounds. Glowing embers and blazing sparks – crumbs from its table – began to shower upon the merry dancers, and they fell back with blanched faces and trembling limbs. Eddie Foy rushed to the front of the stage to reassure the spectators, who now realized the peril at hand and rose in their seats struggling against the impulse to fly. Others joined the comedian in his plea for calmness.

      Suddenly their voices were drowned in a volley of sounds like the booming of great guns. The manila lines by which the carloads of scenery in the loft above was suspended gave way before the fire like so much paper and the great wooden batons fell like thunder bolts upon the now deserted stage.

      Still the audience stood, terror bound.

      "Lower the fire curtain!" came a hoarse cry.

      Something shot down over the proscenium, then stopped before the great opening was closed, leaving a yawning space of many feet beneath. With the dropping of the curtain a door in the rear had been opened by the performers, fleeing for their lives and battling to escape from the devouring element fast hemming them in on every side. The draft thus caused transformed the stage in one second from a dark, gloomy, smoke concealed scene of chaos into a seething volcano. With a great puff the mass of flame swept out over the auditorium, a withering blast of death. Before it the vast throng broke and fled.

      Doors, windows, hallways, fire escapes – all were jammed in a moment with struggling humanity, fighting for life. Some of the doors were jammed almost instantly so that no human power could make egress possible. Behind those in front pushed the frenzied mass of humanity, Chicago's elect, the wives and children of its most prosperous business men and the flower of local society, fighting like demons incarnate. Purses, wraps, costly furs were cast aside in that mad rush. Mothers were torn from their children, husbands from their wives. No hold, however strong, could last against that awful, indescribable crush. Strong men who sought to the last to sustain their feminine companions were swept away like straws, thrown to the floor and trampled into unconsciousness in the twinkling of an eye. Women to whom the safety of their children was more than their own lives had their little ones torn from them and buried under the mighty sweep of humanity, moving onward by intuition rather than through exercise of thought to the various exits. They in turn were swept on before their wails died on their lips – some to safety, others to an unspeakably horrible death.

      While some exits were jammed by fallen refugees so as to become useless, others refused to open. In the darkness that fell upon the doomed theater a struggle ensued such as was never pictured in the mind of Dante in his visions of Inferno. With prayers, curses and meaningless shrieks of terror all faced their fate like rats in a trap. The darkness was illumined by a fearful light that burst from the sea of flame pouring out from the proscenium, making Dore's representations of Inferno shrink into the commonplace. Like a horizontal volcano the furnace on the stage belched forth its blast of fire, smoke, gas and withering, blighting heat. Like a wave it rolled over every portion of the vast house, dancing.

      Dancing! Yes, the pillars of flame danced! To the multitude swept into eternity before the hurricane of flame and the few who were dragged out hideously disfigured and burned almost beyond all semblance of human beings it seemed indeed a dance of death.

      Withering, crushing, consuming all in its path, forced on as though by the power of some mighty blow pipe, impelled by the fearful drafts that directed the fiery furnace outward into the auditorium instead of upward into the great flues constructed to meet just such an emergency, the sea of fire burned itself out. There was little or nothing in the construction of the building itself for it to feed upon, and it fell back of its own weight to the stage, where it roared and raged like some angry demon.

      And those great flues that supposedly gave the palatial Iroquois increased safety! Barred and grated, battened down with heavy timbers they resisted the terrific force of the blast itself. There they remained intact the next day. Anxiety to throw open the palace of pleasure to the public before the builders had time to complete in detail their Herculean task had resulted in converting it into a veritable slaughter pen.

      "Mr. Bluebeard's" chamber of horrors, lightly depicted in satire to settings of gold and color, wit and music, had evolved within a few minutes into an actuality. Chamber of horrors indeed – grim, silent, smoldering and sending upon high the fearful odor of burning flesh.

      Policemen and firemen, hardened to terrible sights, crept into the smoldering sepulchre only to turn back sickened by the sight that met their eyes. Tears and groans fell from them and they were unnerved as they gazed upon the scene of carnage. Some gave way and were themselves the subjects of deep concern. It was a scene to wring tears from the very stones. No words can adequately describe it.

      Perhaps the best description of that quarter hour of carnage and the sense of horror when the seared, scorched sepulchre was entered for the removal of the dead and dying is found in the words of the veteran descriptive writer, Mr. Ben H. Atwell, who was present from the beginning to the end of the holocaust, and after visiting the deadly spot in the gray dawn of the following day wrote his impressions as follows:

      "Where at 3:15 yesterday beauty and fashion and the happy amusement seeker thronged the palatial playhouse to fall a few moments later before a deadly blast of smoke and flame sweeping over all with irresistible force, the dawn of the last day of the passing year found confusion, chaos and an all-pervading sense of the awful. It seemed to radiate the chilling, depressing volume from the streaked, grime-covered walls and the flame-licked ceilings overhead. Against this fearful background the few grim firemen or police, moving silently about the ruins, searching for overlooked dead or abandoned property, loomed up like fitful ghosts.

WAVE OF FLAME GREETS AUDIENCE

      "The progress of their noiseless and ghastly quest proved one circumstance survivors are too unsettled to realize. With the opening of the stage door to permit the escape of the members of the 'Mr. Bluebeard' company and the breaking of the skylight above the flue-like scene loft that tops the stage, the latter was converted into a furnace through which a tremendous draft poured like a blow pipe, driving billows of flame into the faces of the terrified audience. With exits above the parquet floor simply choked up with the crushed bodies of struggling victims, who made the first rush for safety, the packed hundreds in balcony and gallery faced fire that moved them up in waves.

      "With a swirl that sounded death, the thin bright sheet of fire rolled on from stage to rear wall. It fed on the rich box curtains, seized upon the sparse veneer of subdued red and green decorations spread upon wall, ceiling and balcony facings. It licked the fireproof materials below clean and rolled on with a roar. Over seat tops and plush rail cushions it sped. Then it snuffed out, having practically nothing to feed upon save the tangled mass of wood scene frames, batons and paint-soaked canvas on the stage.

FEW REALIZED APPALLING RESULT

      "There firemen were directing streams of water that poured over the premises in great cascades in volume, aggregating many tons. A few streams were directed about the body of the house, where vagrant tongues of flame still found material on which to feed. Silence reigned – the silence of death, but none realized the appalling story behind the awful calm.

      "The stampede that followed the first alarm, a struggle in which most contestants were women and children, fighting with the desperation of death, terminated with the sudden sweep of the sea of flames across the body of the house. The awful battle ended before the irresistible hand of death, which fell upon contestants and those behind alike. Somehow those on the main floor managed to force