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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 HERO

      Finally 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 GALLERY

      From 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 MEN

      Clyde 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 СКАЧАТЬ