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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 SUFFER

      Mrs. 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 DAUGHTER

      One 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 OLD

      One 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 СКАЧАТЬ