Lest We Forget: Chicago's Awful Theater Horror

The Gaiety Theater in Milwaukee on November 5, 1869, furnished more than thirty victims to the fire fiend, but only two of these were burned to death. The Central Theater in Philadelphia was destroyed April 28, 1892, and six persons perished. A panic occurred at the Front Street playhouse in Baltimore December 27, 1895, among an audience composed entirely of Polish Jews. There was no fire, but a woman who had seen a bright light on the stage thought there was, and her cries caused a stampede that resulted in twenty-four deaths.

Statisticians show that theaters as a rule do not attain an old age, but that their average life in all countries is but twenty-two and three-fourths years. In the United States the average is but eleven to thirteen years, and here almost a third are destroyed before they have been built five years. More playhouses feed the flames just prior to and after than during performances, because of the added precautions of employes.

Two deadly conflagrations occurred in New York in 1900. The first the Windsor hotel fire, which resulted in the death of 80 persons. Fire broke out in the old hotel on Fifth avenue about midnight. With lightning rapidity the flames shot up the light and air shafts, filling the rooms with smoke and making them as light as day. The guests suddenly aroused from sleep became panic stricken. The fire department was unable to throw up ladders and give aid as fast as frightened faces appeared at the windows. The result was that many jumped to death. They were picked up dead and dying in the streets. Others ran from their rooms into the fire-swept hallways and were burned to death.

A short time later fire broke out one afternoon on the docks across the river from New York at Hoboken. The fire was on a pier piled high with combustible material. It burned like powder, spreading to the ocean liners tied to the pier and the efforts of the fire department were not effective in checking it. The cables which held the blazing vessels to the piers burned through and they drifted into the river, carrying fire and death among the shipping. Longshoremen unloading and loading the vessels jumped in panic into the river. Others found themselves cut off from both land and water by the flames on all sides and were burned like rats in a trap. It was estimated that 300 lives were lost. Many bodies were never recovered and others were found miles down the river.

Property losses are seldom proportionate to the financial losses from fire. In the Iroquois theater fire the property loss was almost inconsequential, while at the burning of Moscow by the Russians, Sept. 4, 1812, the property loss amounted to more than $150,000,000, while no lives were lost.

Constantinople, with its squalid and crowded streets, has always been a fruitful spot for fires. They are of annual occurrence and as the Turkish fire department is a travesty, are usually of considerable magnitude. The great fire of that city was in 1729, when 12,000 houses were destroyed and 7,000 persons burned to death. Aug. 12, 1782, a three days' fire started in which 10,000 houses, 50 corn mills and 100 mosques were burned and 100 lives lost. In February of the same year, 600 houses were burned, and in June 7,000 more. Fires are the best safeguards for Constantinople's health.

Great Britain has had comparatively few fires. In 1598 one at Tiverton destroyed 400 houses and 33 lives. In 1854 50 persons were killed at Gateshead. The great fire of London raged from Sept. 2 to 6, 1666. It began in a wooden building in Pudding Lane and consumed the buildings on 436 acres, blotting out 400 streets, 13,200 houses, St. Paul's and 86 other churches, 58 halls and all public buildings, three of the city gates and four stone bridges. The property loss was $53,652,500, while only six persons were killed.

Nearly every large city of the United States has had its great fire. That of Boston was on Nov. 9 and 10, 1872. Fire started at Summer and Kingston streets and 65 acres were burned over. The property loss was about $75,000,000 and there was no loss of life.

The great fire in New York began in Merchant street, Dec. 16, 1835. No lives were lost, but the property loss was $15,000,000 and 52 acres were devastated, 530 buildings being destroyed. Ten years later a much smaller fire in the same district caused the death of 35 persons.

July 9, 1850, thirty lives were lost in Philadelphia, and February 8, 1865, twenty persons were killed by another fire. Large fires in that city have almost invariably been accompanied by loss of life.

As the result of a Fourth of July celebration in 1866, nearly half of Portland, Md., was swept away by fire. The property loss was $10,000,000, but there was no loss of life. In September and October of 1871 forest fires raged in Wisconsin and Michigan. An immense territory was swept over and more than 1,000 persons lost their lives.

The greatest fire of modern times was the one which started in Chicago, October 8, 1871. A strip through the heart of the city, four miles long and a mile and a half wide, was burned over. The total loss was $196,000,000 and 250 persons lost their lives. By the fire 17,450 buildings were destroyed and 98,860 persons were made homeless. Within four years the entire burned district had been rebuilt.

Fires in Chicago attended with loss of life have been of increasing frequency in the past few years. Fire in the Henning & Speed building on Dearborn street, in 1900, caused four girls to lose their lives. Since it and before the Iroquois disaster have come: The St. Luke Sanitarium horror, 10 lives lost, 43 injured; the Doremus laundry explosion, 8 lives lost; the American Glucose Sugar refinery blaze, 8 killed; Northwestern railroad boiler explosion, 8 killed, Stock Yards boiler explosion, 18 killed, and about a year ago the Lincoln hotel fire, 14 visiting stockmen suffocated.

In view of this terrible array of suffering and death, it would seem that no precaution could be too great to avert future calamities. But although human life is beyond price, it is probable that the world at large will move on very much in the same old way – an arousing and an upheaval of public sentiment for a time after the burned and maimed have been laid away, and then a gradual return of carelessness. It would seem impossible, however, that the United States could forget for many generations the Iroquois disaster, and that it must result in a final reform of all arrangements looking to the safety of theater goers.

CHAPTER XIV.

STORIES AND NARRATIVES OF THE HOLOCAUST

From two women who sat within a few feet of the stage when the fire broke out in the theater, and who remained calm enough to observe the actual beginning of the holocaust, there came one of the most thrilling and significant stories of that afternoon of panic.

Mrs. Emma Schweitzler and Mrs. Eva Katherine Clapp Gibson, of Chicago, were the two women who told this story. They occupied seats in the fifth row of the orchestra circle. Mrs. Schweitzler was the last woman to walk out unassisted from the first floor. Mrs. Gibson was carried out badly burned.

"The curtain that was run down," said Mrs. Schweitzler, "was the regular drop curtain painted with the 'autumn scene,' It was the same curtain that was lowered before the show started and the same one used during the interval following the first act. No other curtain was lowered.

"As soon as the drop curtain came down it caught fire. A hole appeared at the left hand side. Then the blaze spread rapidly, and instantly a great blast of hot air came from the stage through the hole in the curtain and into the audience. Big pieces of the curtain were loosened by the terrific rush of air and were blown into the people's faces. Scores of women and children must have been burned to death by these fragments of burning grease and paint. I was in the theater until the curtain had entirely burned. It went up in the flames as if it had been paper, and did more damage than good."

"So far as could be observed from the audience, the asbestos curtain was not lowered at all," said Mrs. Schweitzler. "I was particularly interested in that 'autumn-scene' curtain because I paint oil pictures myself.

"Before the show started I sat for a long time examining the painting. From our seats in the fifth row we could see every detail. The 'autumn scene' was done in heavy red and in order to get some of the effects the artist had to use great daubs of paint, smearing it on pretty thick in some places. I am certain that the backing was common canvas and if this was so it must have been covered with wax before the paint was put on. This same curtain came down after the first act, so I had plenty of time to know it.

"When the fire started my first feeling was that the stage people were acting recklessly. For several minutes the fire was no bigger than a handkerchief. A bucket of water would have saved the lives of every one. But there seemed to be no water on the stage.

"One of the stage hands first took his hand and then used a piece of plank to smother the flames. It kept spreading. After Eddie Foy had made his speech the 'autumn scene' curtain came down. 'Pull down the curtain,' was all the cry I heard. They did not say 'Pull down the asbestos curtain,' nor was there any mention of any fireproof curtain. The 'autumn scene,' with its highly inflammable paint, came down, and it was like pouring fire into the people's faces. It was a great piece of bungling – far worse than if no curtain had been lowered at all.

"It has been said that noise and panic-like screaming followed the burning of the curtain. This is absolutely not true. The whole place was almost gruesomely silent.

"Mrs. Gibson and I were half way in from the aisle and had to wait for many to go out before we started. At the aisle some one stepped on Mrs. Gibson's dress and she fell to the floor. Men, women and children trampled over her, and having done all I could I started out. In the lobby I begged some men to return for Mrs. Gibson, but they said it was no use. The curtain by that time was burned up."

Mrs. Gibson, wife of Dr. Charles B. Gibson, confirmed Mrs. Schweitzler's assertions that no asbestos curtain was visible from the audience. "From the place where I fell," said Mrs. Gibson, "I crawled on hands and knees to the entrance. When I got to the rear the curtain was all burned away."

ESCAPE OF MOTHER AND TWO SMALL CHILDREN

Mrs. William Mueller, Jr., 333 °Calumet avenue, who at the time was confined to her bed from injuries sustained by trying to get out of the Iroquois as the panic began and from bruises sustained by being trampled upon, tells the story that she with her two children, Florence, 5 years old, and Belle, 3 years old, occupied three seats in the second row from the back on the ground floor on the right side of the theater. The children became restless as the second act began and Mrs. Mueller took them to a retiring room.

After the children had been in the retiring room for some minutes, they wanted to go back and see the performance. Mrs. Mueller started back into the lobby to go to her seats, when she saw, in a glass, the reflection of the flames. She hurried back into the retiring room and asked for the children's wraps, saying she thought something was wrong and did not want to stay in the theater any longer. The maid in the room asked her what was the matter and Mrs. Mueller told her.

"Oh, that's all right. I won't give you the things now," the maid replied. "I'll go and see what is the matter."

Mrs. Mueller demanded the children's wraps, but they were refused. Just then Mrs. Mueller thinks she must have heard the first cry of alarm and she ran to the front doors with the children. She tried one door and found it locked. Then she tried another, and that was locked. She pushed against it and then threw herself against it, trying to force it open. She does not remember seeing any employee near the outer door.

Mrs. Mueller then heard people in the audience shrieking and then she fainted. It is thought that the oldest little girl, Florence, also fainted.

As the people pushed out of the theater they trampled upon Mrs. Mueller and the child. Mrs. Mueller was horribly bruised and was either kicked in the eyes or else some one stepped on her face. It was at first feared she would lose her eyesight.

The first person carried out when the rescue began was Mrs. Mueller; she was right in front of the doors. Near her was Florence. Just before the men entered, and after every one else seemed to be out, little Belle came walking out. A man ran to her, picked her up and took her to a barber shop, where she continued to cry for her mother. The little girl, Florence, was also carried out and was taken to the same barber shop, where the two children were later found by Mr. Mueller. Mrs. Mueller was taken to the Samaritan hospital, where she was found that night.

EXPRESSION OF THE DEAD

John Maynard Harlan visited the morgue in search of the body of Mrs. F. Morton Fox and her three children, who were intimate friends of Mrs. Harlan. In speaking of his experience he said:

"I was profoundly impressed by the expressions on the faces of many of the dead. Perhaps it was only a fancy, but it seemed to me that the faces of those having the higher order of intelligence showed less horror and more resignation. Some of these seemed to have passed away almost with a smile of faith, so serene were their countenances. But the faces of the less intelligent were uniformly struck with suffering to a terrible degree.

"When I found Mrs. Fox's little boy the smile of courage on his face was one of the most noble sights that I ever saw. It seemed to me that I could see the brave little fellow trying to reassure his mother and facing death with a heroism not expected of his years."

ONLY SURVIVOR OF LARGE THEATER PARTY

Mrs. W. F. Hanson, of Chicago, was the only member of a theater party of nine to escape. She wept as she talked of her companions and shuddered as she recalled the manner of their death.

"I cannot tell how I got out of the theater," she said. "I remember starting for one of the aisles when the panic was at its height. I was separated from my friends. We had a row of seats in the second balcony. Suddenly someone seized me and I was tossed and dragged along the aisle and I lost consciousness. When I came to my senses I was in a store across the street. Every one of my companions perished. We composed a holiday theater party and we were all related by marriage."

ALL HIS FAMILY GONE

Arthur E. Hull, of Chicago, who lost his entire family in the Iroquois fire, tells the following pathetic story:

"It is too terrible to contemplate. I can never go to my home again. To look at the playthings left by the children just where they put them, to see how my dear dead wife arranged all the details of her home so carefully, the very walls ring with the names of my dear dead ones. I can never go there again.

"Mrs. Hull had called the children from their play to go and see the show. They were laughing and shouting about the house in childish glee, when she, all radiant with smiles, came to tell them of the surprise she had planned for them.

"They left their toys just where they were. She fixed the things about the house a bit, and then took them with her.

"Mary, our maid, went with them. She, too, was joyous at the prospect, and a happier party never started anywhere. Everything was smiles and sunshine.

"They had planned for a day of joy, and it turned out a day of sorrow. Sorrow more deep than can be fathomed by human mind. Sorrow so acute that it is indescribable."

The party consisted of Mrs. Hull, her little daughter, Helen Muriel, her two adopted sons, Donald DeGraff and Dwight Moody, together with Mary Forbes.

The two boys had been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Hull but three weeks before, and had lately come from Topeka, Kan., where their father, Fred J. Hull, had died.

The party was gotten up for them particularly, and it was the first and last time they were ever to witness a stage production. This was only one of a score of recorded cases where the unselfish desire to give pleasure to the young caused their death.

A FAMILY PARTY BURNED

Dr. Charles S. Owen, a physician and one of the most prominent men in Wheaton, died at the Chicago homeopathic hospital from injuries sustained at the Iroquois fire. On Christmas day Dr. Owen held a family reunion, and eight relatives came from Ohio to spend the holiday week. Wednesday a theater party was arranged and twelve seats were secured at the Iroquois in the front row of the first balcony. Out of the entire party of twelve Dr. Owen was the only one to escape.

CARRIES DAUGHTER'S BODY HOME IN HIS ARMS

It appears that Miss Blackburn had attended the matinee with her father, James Blackburn. They had seats in the first balcony. In the panic father and daughter became separated. The father escaped to the Randolph street lobby and then started back for his daughter. He found her body on the staircase horribly burned. Catching up the lifeless form and wrapping it in his overcoat, Mr. Blackburn rushed to the street and procured a cab, in which he was driven with his burden directly to the Northwestern station. He caught the first train for Glen View and had the body of his child at home in half an hour.

SAD ERROR IN IDENTIFICATION

Mrs. Lulu Bennett, Chicago, whose daughter, Gertrude Eloise Swayze, 16 years old, was a victim of the holocaust, thought she would avoid the gruesome task of making a tour of the morgues, so she asked a friend to search for her daughter's body. After visiting a number of morgues he finally found the body of a girl at Rolston's, in Adams street, which he identified as Miss Swayze. The body was conveyed to the mother's residence, but when she looked at the body she turned away with a moan and said: "That is not my Gertrude; take it away, take it away. There has been some terrible mistake made."

Mrs. Bennett made a personal tour of the morgues afterward and found her daughter's body.

THE HANGER OF THE ASBESTOS CURTAIN

The asbestos curtain at the Iroquois theater was not hung in a manner satisfactory to Lyman Savage, the stage carpenter who put it up, according to a statement he made to his son, C. B. Savage, head electrician at Power's theater, a short time before his death which occurred indirectly as a result of the fire.

Mr. Savage, who lived at 1750 Wrightwood avenue and who was a stage carpenter in Chicago for twenty-five years, worked at the Iroquois theater until two weeks before the fire, when he was compelled to leave because of kidney trouble. His son ascribes his death to excitement over the Iroquois fire. That disaster was uppermost in his mind.

Mr. Savage said: "I asked my father if he hung the asbestos curtain at the Iroquois theater and he said he did. I then asked him if he hung the curtain according to his own ideas, and he replied in substance: 'No, that curtain was not hung my way, but Cummings' (the stage carpenter's) way. If you want to see a curtain hung my way you should see the curtain in a theater I worked on in Michigan last fall.'

"My father did not specify what point about the hanging of the curtain he did not approve, and I do not know what feature of the work he was not satisfied with.

"I asked my father if the curtain was hung on Manila ropes, and he said that it was not, but that it was hung on wire cables. I know that to be a fact, for I saw the cables myself.

"I do not desire to shield any negligent person, but Stage Carpenter Cummings was not responsible for the lowering of the curtain only in so far as he was responsible for having some one there to lower it.

"I was on the stage when the fire broke out, having gone to the theater to see Archie Bernard, the chief electrician. The statement has been made that the lights were not thrown on in the auditorium after the fire was discovered. Just before the fire broke out Bernard was stooping down preparing to change the lights, and he had just said to me: 'I will show you how I change my lights.'

"When the fire was discovered I saw him reach down to throw a switch. Whether he threw the switch that lights the auditorium I do not know, but I do know that the fire from the draperies fell all around the switchboard and burned out the fuses. Consequently if the lights had been turned on the fact that the fuses were burned out would cause them to go out.

"The first I knew of the fire was when I heard some one behind and above me clapping his hands. I looked up and saw McMullen trying to put out the blaze with his hands. If he could have reached far enough he would have extinguished the fire. He did the best he could.

"I carried four women out of the theater and burned my hands. I stayed on the stage as long as it was possible for me to do so."

KEEPSAKES OF THE DEAD

Many Chicago people spent a part of the Sabbath following the fire in the dingy little storeroom at 58 Dearborn street, where the effects and the valuables of the Iroquois theater victims are kept.

The storeroom was crowded all day. The line formed at Randolph street and pushed its way to the north. A mother stepped to one of the show cases. She had lost a boy and she had come to find his effects. She was looking through the glass when she called one of the policemen to her side.

"That's it. That's my little boy's," and she pointed at a prayer book.

The policeman took it from the case.

"Yes, that's it," she murmured.

From the street came the tolling of the half hour.

"Just a week ago he started for Sunday school with it. It was a Christmas present and he took it to church for the first time."

A young man, well dressed and prosperous looking, came in and walked along the wall, gazing at the dresses and the furs. Suddenly he seized a fur boa and kissed it.

"It was her's," he cried. "May I take it with me?"

The officer told him to visit the coroner and get a certificate.

Two young men entered the place and began making flippant remarks. The officers overheard their conversation and escorted them to the threshold of the door. Two heavy boots assisted in making their exit into the street a rapid one.

THE SCENE AT THOMPSON'S RESTAURANT

John R. Thompson's restaurant at 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the fatal day was an eating-house, decked here and there with late lunchers; at 3:20 it was a hospital, with the dead and dying stretched on the marble eating tables; at 4 o'clock it was a morgue, heaped with the dead; at 7:30 it was again a restaurant, but with chairs turned on top of the tables that had been the slabs of death, with the aisles cleared of the human debris, and the scrub woman at work mopping out the relics of human flesh, charred and as dust, and sweeping in pans the pieces of skulls that had lain about the mosaic floors, yet damp with the flowing length of woman's hair.

The terror, the horror, the tragedies, the martyrdom, the piercing screams of the dying, the agonized groans, the excitement of the surging mob, the hurrying back and forth of the police with their burdens of death and life that only lasted a moment, the pushing of physicians, the casting of dead about on the floors like cord wood, one on top of the other, to make room on the marble slabs of tables for the oncoming living, the cries of children, the sobbing of persons recognizing their loved one dead, or worse than dead – this unutterable horror can never be imagined, and was never known before in Chicago, not excepting the horrors of the great fire, or the martyrdom of war.

LIKE A FIELD OF BATTLE

The scene presented was most horrible. It was like a battlefield where the dead are being brought to the church or the residence that has at a moment's notice been turned into a hospital. In they came, the dead and the injured, at first at the rate of one every three minutes; then faster, several at a time, until the restaurant was heaped with maimed bodies lying on the tables or the floor, with surgeons bending over them, and on the cashier's counter, with the girl there sobbing with her face hidden in her hands, afraid to look at the ghastly spectacle.

There were scores of physicians, three to each table, and they worked with vigor and earnestness and skill, but with the tears coursing down the cheeks of many a one. At first the bodies were carried into Thompson's, then they went across the street; many of them were put in ambulances and taken to the emergency room for women in Marshall Field's store, and still many others of the injured – those yet able to walk – were half dragged, half carried to the offices of physicians in the Masonic temple.