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

out. Above, where the presence of narrower exits, stairways that precipitated the masses of humanity upon each other and the natural air current for the billows of flame to follow, spelled death to the occupants of the two balconies, the wave of flame, smoke and gas smote the multitude.

DROP WHERE THEY STAND

      "Dropping where they stood, most of the victims were consumed beyond recognition. Some who were protected from contact with the flames by masses of humanity piled upon them escaped death and were dragged out later by rescuers, suffering all manner of injury. The majority, however, who beheld the indescribably terrifying spectacle of the wave of death moving upon them through the air died then and there without a moment for preparation. Few survived to tell the tale. The blood-curdling cry of mingled prayers and curses, of pleas for help and meaningless shrieks of despair died away before the roar of the fire and the silence fell that greeted the firemen upon their entry.

      "Survivors describe the situation as a parallel of the condition at Martinique when a wave of gas and fire rolled down the mountain side and destroyed everything in its path. Here, however, one circumstance was reversed, for the wave of death leaped from below and smote its victims, springing from the very air beneath them.

MANY HEROES ARE DEVELOPED

      "In a few minutes it was all over – all but the weeping. In those few minutes obscure people had evolved into heroes; staid business men drove out patrons to convert their stores into temporary hospitals and morgues; others converted their trucks and delivery wagons into improvised ambulances; stocks of drugs, oils and blankets were showered upon the police to aid in relief work and a corps of physicians and surgeons sufficient to the needs of an army had organized.

      "Rescues little short of miraculous were accomplished and life and limb were risked by public servants and citizens with no thought of personal consequences. Public sympathy was thoroughly aroused long before the extent of the horror was known and before the sickening report spread throughout the city that the greatest holocaust ever known in the history of theatricals had fallen upon Chicago.

      "While the streets began to crowd for blocks around with weeping and heartbroken persons in mortal terror because of knowledge that loved ones had attended the performance, patrol wagons, ambulances and open wagons hurried the injured to hospitals. Before long they were called upon to perform the more grewsome task of removing the dead. In wagon loads the latter were carted away. Undertaking establishments both north, south and west of the river threw open their doors.

DEAD PILED IN HEAPS

      "Piled in windows in the angle of the stairway where the second balcony refugees were brought face to face and in a death struggle with the occupants of the first balcony, the dead covered a space fifteen or twenty feet square and nearly seven feet in depth. All were absolutely safe from the fire itself when they met death, having emerged from the theater proper into the separate building containing the foyer. In this great court there was absolutely nothing to burn and the doors were only a few feet away. There the ghastly pile lay, a mute monument to the powers of terror. Above and about towered shimmering columns and facades in polished marble, whose cold and unharmed surfaces seemed to bespeak contempt for human folly. In that portion of the Iroquois structure the only physical evidences of damages were a few windows broken during the excitement.

EXITS WERE CHOKED WITH BODIES

      "To that pile of dead is attributed the great loss of life within. The bodies choked up the entrance, barring the egress of those behind. Neither age nor youth, sex, quality or condition were sacred in the awful battle in the doorway. The gray and aged, rich, poor, young and those obviously invalids in life lay in a tangled mass all on an awful footing of equality in silent annihilation.

      "Within and above equal terrors were encountered in what at first seemed countless victims. Lights, patience and hard work brought about some semblance of system and at last word was given that the last body had been removed from the charnel house. A large police detail surrounded the place all night and with the break of day search of the premises was renewed, none being admitted save by presentation of a written order from Chief of Police O'Neill. Fire engines pumped away removing the lake of water that flooded the basement to the depth of ten feet. As the flood was lowered it began to be apparent that the basement was free of dead.

SURVEY SCENE WITH HORROR

      "Searchers gazing down from the heights of the upper balcony surveyed the scene of death below with horror stamped upon their faces. Fire had left its terrifying blight in a colorless, garish monotony that suggests the burned-out crater of an extinct volcano. In the wreckage, the scattered garments and purses, fragments of charred bodies and other debris strewn within thousands of bits of brilliantly colored glass, lay as they fell shattered in the fight against the flames. A few skulls were seen.

FIND BUSHELS OF PURSES

      "Five bushel baskets were filled with women's purses gathered by the police. A huge pile of garments was removed to a near-by saloon, where an officer guards them pending removal to some more appropriate place. The shoes and overshoes picked up among the seats fill two barrels to overflowing.

      "The fire manifested itself in the flies above the stage during the second act. The double octette was singing 'In the Pale Moonlight' when the tragedy swept mirth and music aside, to give way to a more somber and frightful performance. Confusion on the stage, panic in the auditorium, phenomenal spread of the incipient blaze, failure of the asbestos fire curtain to fall in place when lowered followed in rapid progress, with the holocaust as the climax."

      But to return to the narrative of what happened immediately after the first alarm, as gathered by the collaborators of this work. There was a wild, futile dash – futile because few of the terrified participants succeeded in reaching the outer air. Persons in the rear of the theater building knew full well that a holocaust was in progress. There fire escapes and stage doors thronged with refugees, half clad and hysterical chorus girls flocking into the alley, and crackling flames leaping higher and higher from the flimsy stage and bursting from windows, told only too plainly what was in progress within. At the front, half a block distant, in Randolph street, ominous silence maintained. A mere handful of people burst out, those who had occupied rear seats and pushed by the ushers who sought to restrain them and quiet their fears. Loiterers about the ornate lobby scarcely sniffed a suggestion of impending disaster before the fire apparatus began to arrive with clanging bells.

      Those ushers who held back the straining, anxious spectators who sought escape at the first mild suggestion of danger – for what widespread woe are they responsible!

      Mere boys of tender years and meager experience, what knew they of the awful possibilities behind the spell of excitement upon the stage? Only two weeks before there had been an incipient blaze there that had been extinguished without the knowledge of the audience.

      Like all the rest of the world that now stands in shuddering wonderment, these boys scoffed at the thought of real danger in the massive pile of steel, stone and terra cotta, with its brave and shimmering veneer of glistening marble, stained glass of many hues, rich tapestries and drapings, and cold, aristocratic tints of red and old gold. And so with uplifted hands they turned back those whose sense of caution prompted them to leave at the outset. Surely disaster could not overtake the regal Iroquois in its first flush of pomp, pride and superiority. It was their sacred duty to see that no unseemly break marred the decorum established for the guidance of audiences at the Iroquois, and that duty was fully discharged.

      Thus it was that the wild hegira did not begin from the front until the arrival of the fire department. Then pandemonium itself broke loose. All restraining influences from the stage had ceased. At the appearance of the all-consuming wave of flame sweeping across the auditorium the boy ushers abandoned their posts and fled for their lives, leaving the packed audience to do the same unhampered.

      Unhampered – not quite! Darkness descending upon the scene, doors locked against the frightened multitude, fire escapes cut off by tongues of flame and exits and stairways choked with the bodies of those who died fighting to reach safety hampered many – at least the six hundred carried out later mangled and roasted, their features and limbs twisted and distorted until little semblance to humanity remained. After the first wild dash, in which a large portion of those on the main floor escaped, the blackness of night settled upon the long marble foyer leading from Randolph street to the auditorium. It settled in a cloud of black, fire laden