Lest We Forget: Chicago's Awful Theater Horror
Herbert Cawthorn, the Irish comedian who took the part of Pat Shaw in the play "Bluebeard," assisted many of the chorus girls from the stage exits in the panic.
"While the stage fireman was working in an endeavor to use the chemicals the flames suddenly swooped down and out, Eddie Foy shouted something about the asbestos curtain and the fireman attempted to use it, and the stage hands ran to his assistance, but the curtain refused to work.
"In my opinion the stage fireman might have averted the whole terrible affair if he had not become so excited. The chorus girls and everybody, to my mind, were less excited than he. There were at least 500 people behind the scenes when the fire started. I assisted many of the chorus girls from the theater."
Said C. W. Northrop, who took the part of one of Bluebeard's old wives: "Many of us certainly had narrow escapes. Those who were in the dressing rooms underneath the stage at the time had more difficulty in getting out. I was in the dressing room under the stage when the fire broke out, and when I found that I could not reach the stage I tried to get out through the door connecting the extreme north end of the C shaped corridor with the smoking room. I joined other members of the company in their rush for safety, but when we reached the door we found it closed. Some of the members crawled out through a coal hole, while others broke down the locked door, through which the others made their way out."
Lolla Quinlan, one of Bluebeard's eight dancers, saved the life of one of her companions, Violet Sidney, at the peril of her own. The two girls, with five others, were in a dressing room on the fifth floor when the alarm was raised. In their haste Miss Sidney caught her foot and sank to the floor with a cry of pain. She had sprained her ankle. The others, with the exception of Miss Quinlan, fled down the stairs.
Grasping her companion around the waist Miss Quinlan dragged her down the stairs to the stage and crossed the boards during a rain of fiery brands. These two were the last to leave the stage. Miss Quinlan's right arm and hand were painfully burned and her face was scorched. Miss Sidney's face was slightly burned. Both were taken to the Continental hotel.
Herbert Dillon, musical director, at the height of the panic broke through the stage door from the orchestra side, hastily cleared away obstructions with an ax, and assisted in the escape of about eighty chorus girls who occupied ten dressing rooms under the stage.
"We were getting ready for the honey and fan scene," said Miss Nina Wood, "talking and laughing, and not thinking of danger. We were so far back of the orchestra that we did not hear sounds of the panic for several moments. Then the tramping of feet came to our ears. We made our way through the smoking room and one of the narrow exits of the theater."
Miss Adele Rafter, a member of the company, was in her dressing room when the fire broke out.
"I did not wait an instant," said Miss Rafter. "I caught up a muff and boa and rushed down the stairs in my stage costume and was the first of the company to get out the back entrance. Some man kindly loaned me his overcoat and I hurried to my apartments at the Sherman house. Several of the girls followed, and we had a good crying spell together."
Miss Rafter's mother called at the hotel and spent the evening with her. Telegrams were sent to her father, who is rector of a church at Dunkirk, N. Y.
Edwin H. Price, manager of the "Mr. Bluebeard" company, was not in the building when the fire started. He said:
"I stepped out of the theater for a minute, and when I got back I saw the people rushing out and knew the stage was on fire. I helped some of the girls out of the rear entrance. With but one or two exceptions all left in stage costume.
"One young woman in the chorus, Miss McDonald, displayed unusual coolness. She remained in her dressing room and donned her entire street costume, and also carried out as much of her stage clothing as she could carry."
Quite a number of the chorus girls live in Chicago, and Mr. Price furnished cabs and sent them all to their homes.
Through some mistake it was reported that Miss Anabel Whitford, the fairy queen of the company, was dying at one of the hospitals. She was not even injured, having safely made her way out through the stage door.
Miss Nellie Reed, the principal of the flying ballet, which was in place for its appearance near the top part of the stage, was so badly burned by the flames before she was able to escape that she afterward died at the county hospital. The other members of the flying ballet were not injured.
Robert Evans, one of the principals of the Bluebeard company, was in his dressing room on the fourth floor. He dived through a mass of flame and landed three stairways below. He helped a number of chorus girls to escape through the lower basement. His hands and face are burned severely. He lost all his wardrobe and personal effects.
STORY OF HOW A SMALL BLAZE TERMINATED IN TERRIBLE LOSSThe fire started while the double octet was singing "In the Pale Moonlight." Eddie Foy, off the stage, was making up for his "elephant" specialty.
On the audience's left – the stage right – a line of fire flashed straight up. It was followed by a noise as of an explosion. According to nearly all accounts, however, there was no real explosion, the sound being that of the fuse of the "spot" light, the light which is turned on a pivot to follow and illuminate the progress of the star across the stage.
This light caused the fire. On this all reports of the stage folk agree. As to manner, accounts differ widely. R. M. Cummings, the boy in charge of the light, said that it was short circuited.
Stage hands, as they fled from the scene, however, were heard to question one another, "Who kicked over the light?" The light belonged to the "Bluebeard" company.
The beginning of the disaster was leisurely. The stage hands had been fighting the line of wavering flame along the muslin fly border for some seconds before the audience knew anything was the matter.
The fly border, made of muslin and saturated with paint, was tinder to the flames.
The stage hands grasped the long sticks used in their work. They forgot the hand grenades that are supposed to be on every stage.
"Hit it with the sticks!" was the cry. "Beat it out!" "Beat it out!"
The men struck savagely. A few yards of the border fell upon the stage and was stamped to charred fragments.
That sight was the first warning the audience had. For a second there was a hush. The singers halted in their lines; the musicians ceased to play.
Then a murmur of fear ran through the audience. There were cries from a few, followed by the breaking, rumbling sound of the first step toward the flight of panic.
At that moment a strange, grotesque figure appeared upon the stage. It wore tights, a loose upper garment, and the face was one-half made up. The man was Eddie Foy, chief comedian of the company, the clown, but the only man who kept his head.
Before he reached the center of the stage he had called out to a stage hand: "Take my boy, Bryan, there! Get him out! There by the stage way!"
The stage hand grabbed the little chap. Foy saw him dart with him to safety as he turned his head.
Freed of parental anxiety, he faced the audience.
"Keep quiet!" he shouted. "Quiet."
"Go out in order!" he shouted. "Don't get excited!"
Between exclamations he bent over toward the orchestra leader.
ORCHESTRA PLAYS IN FACE OF DEATH"Start an overture!" he commanded. "Start anything. For God's sake play, play, play, and keep on playing."
The brave words were as bravely answered. Gillea raised his wand, and the musicians began to play. Better than any one in the theater they knew their peril. They could look slantingly up and see that the 300 sets of the "Bluebeard" scenery all were ablaze. Their faces were white, their hands trembled, but they played, and played.
Foy still stood there, alternately urging the frightened people to avoid a panic and spurring the orchestra on. One by one the musicians dropped fiddle, horn, and other instruments and stole away.
"CLOWN" PROVES A HEROFinally the leader and Foy were left alone. Foy gave one glance upward and saw the scenery all aflame. Dropping brands fell around him, and then he fled – just in time to save his own life. The "clown" had proved himself a hero.
The curtain started to come down. It stopped, it swayed as from a heavy wind, and then it "buckled" near the center.
ALL HOPE LOST FOR GALLERYFrom that moment no power short of omnipotent could have saved the occupants of the upper gallery.
The coolness of Foy, of the orchestra leader and of other players, who begged the audience to hold itself in check, however, probably saved many lives on the parquet floor. Tumultuous panic prevailed, but the maddest of it – save in the doomed gallery – was at the outskirts of the ground floor crowd.
CHAPTER V.
EXCITING EXPERIENCES IN THE FIRE
"If you ever saw a field of timothy grass blown flat by the wind and rain of a summer storm, that was the position of the dead at the exits of the second balcony," said Chief of Police O'Neill.
"In the rush for the stairs they had jammed in the doorway and piled ten deep; lying almost like shingles. When we got up the stairs in the dark to the front rows of the victims, some of them were alive and struggling, but so pinned down by the great weight of the dead and dying piled upon them that three strong men could not pull the unfortunate ones free.
"It was necessary first to take the dead from the top of the pile, then the rest of the bodies were lifted easily and regularly from their positions, save as their arms had intertwined and clutched.
"Nothing in my experience has ever approached the awfulness of the situation and it may be said that from the point of physical exertion, the police department has never been taxed as it has been taxed tonight. Men have been worn out simply with the carrying out of dead bodies, to say nothing of the awfulness of their burdens."
The strong hand of the chief was called into play when the dead had been removed and when the theater management appeared at the exit of the second balcony, seeking to pass the uniformed police who guarded the heaps of sealskins, purses, and tangled valuables behind them. A spokesman for the management, backed up by a negro special policeman of the house, stood before the half dozen city police on guard, asking to be admitted that these valuables might be removed to the checkrooms of the theater.
"But these things are the property of the coroner," replied the chief, coming up behind the delegation.
"But the theater management wishes to make sure of the safety of these valuables," insisted the spokesman.
"The department of police is responsible," replied Chief O'Neill.
EXPERIENCE OF CHICAGO UNIVERSITY MENClyde A. Blair, captain of the University of Chicago track team, and Victor S. Rice, 615 Yale avenue, a member of the team, accompanied Miss Majorie Mason, 5733 Monroe avenue, and Miss Anne Hough, 361 East Fifty-eighth street, to the matinee. They were sitting in the middle of the seventh row from the rear of the first floor. When the first flames broke through from the stage Miss Mason became alarmed. Seizing the girl, and leaving his overcoat and hat, Blair dragged her through the crush toward the door, closely followed by Rice and Miss Hough.
"The crush at the door," said Blair, "was terrific. Half of the double doors opening into the vestibule were fastened. People dashed against the glass, breaking it and forcing their way through. One woman fell down in the crowd directly in front of me. She looked up and said, 'For God's sake, don't trample on me.' I stepped around her, unable to help her up, and the crowd forced me past. I could not learn whether she was trampled over or not."
BISHOP BRAVES DANGER IN HEROIC WORK OF RESCUE"I was passing the theater when the panic began," said Bishop Samuel Fallows of the St. Paul's Reformed Episcopal church. "I heard the cry for volunteers and joined the men who went into the place to carry out the dead and injured. I had no idea of the extent of the disaster until I became actively engaged in the work.
"The sight when I reached the balconies was pitiful beyond description. It grew in horror as I looked over the seats. The bodies were in piles. Women had their hands over their faces as if to shield off a blow. Children lay crushed beneath their parents, as if they had been hurled to the marble floors.
"I saw the great battlefields of the civil war, but they were as nothing to this. When we began to take out the bodies we found that many of the audience had been unable to get even near the exits. Women were bent over the seats, their fingers clinched on the iron sides so strongly that they were torn and bleeding. Their faces and clothes were burned, and they must have suffered intensely.
"I ministered to all I could and some of them seemed to welcome the presence of a clergyman as it were a gift from God. There appeared to be little system in the work of rescue, but that was due, I believe, to the intense excitement."
WOMEN AND FOUR CHILDREN SUFFERMrs. Anna B. Milliken, who is staying at Thompson's hotel, had four children in her charge, Felix, Jessie, Tony, and Jennie Guerrier, of 135 North Sangamon street, their ages ranging from 11 to 17 years. She and her charges were in the balcony, standing against the wall, when the fire started.
"Something told me to be calm," said Mrs. Milliken. "I had passed through one dreadful experience in the Chicago fire, and, though there was a great deal of confusion, I kept the children together, telling them not to be frightened. Men and women hurried past me, shouting like wild beasts, and if I had joined them the children and I would have been trampled under foot. It was minutes before I could leave with the two younger children. The two elder are lost. What shall I tell their folks," and the poor woman began to weep. Her face, as she stood in the lobby of the Northwestern building, was blistered and swollen. The back of her dress was burned through.
"What are the names of the missing children?" inquired a physician. "They are in here," and he led the distracted woman into one of the "first aid hospitals." There Mrs. Milliken saw her two charges so swathed in bandages that they could not be recognized.
LEARNS CHILDREN HAVE ESCAPED"I'm looking for two little girls – Berien is the name," shouted H. E. Osborne. "They live in Aurora."
"They've been here," answered Mr. Weisman. "They are all right and have been sent to their home in Aurora."
With a glad shout Osborne ran back to the office of the National Cash Register company, 50 State street, to inform Miss Mary Stevenson, whom the children had been visiting.
The Berien children were among the first to reach the offices of the Hallwood company after the fire broke out. By some chance they had made their way out uninjured. The story of their plight touched a stranger, who took them to a railway station and bought them tickets to their home in Aurora. One was about 14 and the other about 9 years old.
FINDS HIS DAUGHTEROne young woman, terrified but uninjured, had found her way to this office and was sitting in a frightened stupor, when an elderly man hurried in from the street.
"Have you seen – " he started to ask, and then, catching sight of the forlorn little figure, he stopped. With a glad cry, father and daughter rushed into each other's arms, and the father bore his child away. Their names were not learned.
James Sullivan of Woodstock was probably the last man who got out of the parquet uninjured. With him was George Field, also of Woodstock, and the two fought their way out together.
MR. FIELD'S NARRATIVE"We were seated in the twelfth row," said Mr. Field, "when we saw fire at the top of the proscenium arch. At the same time some sparks fell on the stage.
"Eddie Foy came out and told the audience not to be afraid, to avoid a panic, and there would be no trouble. While he was speaking, however, a burning brand fell alongside of him, and then came what looked like a huge globe of fire. The moment it struck the stage fire spread everywhere.
"The panic started at once and everybody rushed for the doors. Sullivan and I were in the rear of the fleeing mass and made our way out as best we could without getting mixed up in the panic. As long as the women and children were struggling through the straight aisles there was not so much trouble except that some of the fugitives fell to the floor and had to be helped on their feet again. At times the women and children would be lying four deep on the floor of the aisles, and in several instances we had to set them on their feet before we could go further. There was not much smoke and had the aisles been straight to the entrances every one could have got out practically unhurt.
"But when it came to the turns where they focus into the lobby the poor women and children were piled up into indiscriminate heaps. The screams and cries they uttered were something terrible. It was an impossibility to allay the panic and the frightened people simply trampled on those in front of them.
"Some of the people in the orchestra chairs immediately in front of the stage must have been burned by the fire. The fire darted directly among them and the chairs began burning at once. Those on this floor far enough in the rear to escape these flames would have been all right except for the crush of the panic.
"Sullivan, who was with me, was the last man out of the orchestra chairs who was not injured. Whoever was behind us must have been suffocated or burned to death. How many there were I have no means of knowing."
NARROW ESCAPES OF YOUNG AND OLDOne of the narrow escapes in the first rush for the open air was that of Winnie Gallagher, 11 years old, 4925 Michigan avenue. The child, who was with her mother in the third row, was left behind in the rush for safety. She climbed to the top of the seat and, stepping from one chair to another, finally reached the door. There she was nearly crushed in the crowd. At the Central police station the child was restored to her mother.
Miss Lila Hazel Coulter, of 476 °Champlain avenue, was sitting with Mr. Kenneth Collins and Miss Helen Dickinson, 3637 Michigan avenue, in the eighth row in the parquet. She escaped in safety.
"I was sitting in the fifth seat from the aisle," said Miss Coulter, "but the fire, which was bursting out from both sides of the stage, had such a fascination for me."
D. W. Dimmick, of Apple River, Ill., an old man of 70, with a long, white beard, was standing in the upper gallery when the fire broke out.
"I was with a party of four," said Mr. Dimmick. "I saw small pieces of what looked like burning paper dropping down from above at the left of the curtain. At the same time small puffs of smoke seemed to shoot out into the house. A boy in the gallery near me called 'fire,' but there were plenty of people to stop him.
"'Keep quiet!' I told him. 'If you don't look out, you'll start a panic.'
"Then all of a sudden the whole front of the stage seemed to burst out in one mass of flame. Then everybody seemed to get up and start to get out of the place at once. From all over the house came shrieks and cries of 'fire,' I started at once, hugging the wall on the outside of the stairway as we went down.
"When we got down to the platform where the first balcony opens it seemed to me that people were stacked up like cordwood. There were men, women, and children in the lot. At the same time there were some people whom I thought must be actors, who came running out from somewhere in the interior of the house, and whose wigs and clothes were on fire. We tried to beat out the flames as we went along. By crowding out to the wall we managed to squeeze past the mass of people who were writhing on the floor, and practically blocking the entrance so far as the people still in the gallery were concerned.
PULLS WOMEN FROM MASS ON FLOOR"As we got by the mass on the floor I turned and caught hold of the arms of a woman who was lying near the bottom pinned down by the weight resting on her feet. I managed to pull her out, and I think she got down in safety. One of the men with me also pulled out another woman from the heap. I tried to rescue a man who was also caught by the feet, but, although I braced myself against the stairs, I was unable to move him.
"I came in from Apple River to see the sights in Chicago, and I have seen all I can stand."
Six little girls from Evanston, in a party occupying seats in the parquet, escaped by the side entrance. In the crush they lost most of their clothing. Four of the children stayed together, the other two being for the time lost in the street. The four were Hannah Gregg, 12 years old, 1038 Sheridan road; Florence and May Lang, 14 and 13 years old, Buena Park; Beatrice Moore, 12 years old, Buena Park.
CHAPTER VI.
HEROES OF THE FIRE
One of the heroes of the Iroquois theater fire was Peter Quinn, chief special agent of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad system, who assisted in saving the lives of 100 or more of the performers. But for the prompt service of Quinn and two citizens who assisted him it is believed that most of the performers would have met the fate of the victims in the theater proper.
Mr. Quinn had attended a trial in the Criminal court and in the middle of the afternoon started for the downtown district, intending to proceed to his office. Reaching Randolph and Dearborn streets the railroad official had his attention attracted to a man who rushed from the theater bare-headed and without his coat. What followed Quinn describes as follows:
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