Before reading the newspaper article below about the tragic burning of the Chicago Iroquois Theater, know that, unlike newspaper articles today, the account is both graphic and upsetting.
There were a great number of tragic fires in the 1800 and 1900s. Fire escapes were just starting to be added to buildings, and even then, people had difficulty reaching the escapes. Building codes were slim to none, and the methods of putting out fires still involved the use of buckets and near primitive leather hoses.
HOLIDAY MATINEE TURNED IN FEW MINUTES TO FEARFUL TRAGEDY
564 PERSONS DIE IN FIRE IN CHICAGO THEATER
Men, Women, and Children Burned, Suffocated or Trampled Beneath Rushing Feet
People in Galleries Cut Off from All Escape and Await Awful Fate
Firemen and Police in Heroic Rescue Work
Bodies Found Piled in Heaps
The story of the destruction of the Iroquois theater by fire on the afternoon of Dec. 30, by which 600 lives were lost, is as follows:
The theater was almost in darkness in the second act. The stage was lighted only by the soft artificial beams from the calcium, which lent beauty to the scene during the singing of “The Pale Moonlight” by the double sextet.
A flash of flame shot across through the flimsy draperies, started by a spark from the calcium. A show girl screamed hysterically. The singers stopped short, but with presence of mind the director increased the volume of the music.
Scores rose in their seats as the stage manager shouted an order for a continuation of the song. It was obeyed with feeble hearts. The brave girls forces the words from their throats until two of their number swooned, The audience could no longer be controlled.
Reassuring Words in Vain
Eddie Foy, the principal comedian, rushed from the wings to the footlights, but his words of reassurance were in vain. Clouds of smoke poured from the stage into the auditorium, enveloping the struggling mass of panic stricken men, women and children.
Behind the scenes all was confusion. It required but a moment to perceive that the fire had gone too far to be conquered by the amateur fire brigade formed by the stage hands.
In the dressing rooms as high as the sixth story were the scores of girls of the ballet. At the first alarm the elevator boy fled from his post and the flames soon shot upward in the wings and made escape by the narrow stairways impossible.
The screams and groans of despair from the imprisoned girls in the upper rows of dressing rooms came to the ears of the more fortunate below as they rushed to the stage doors. Some stopped for a brief moment, thinking to give aid, but the clouds of smoke, growing denser and denser, forced them to flee. Their escape even then was miraculous.
Escape from Stage Easy
Those who had been singing on the stage escaped easily. Two of their number who had fainted were carried in the arms of the others, and were revived in the alley in the rear of the theater. In a terrified and hysterical group the girls clustered in the narrow passage.
Some had sisters and all had friends in the blazing building. The bitter cold pierced them through and through, for they were clad only in their thin stage gowns, with necks and arms wholly exposed. Nevertheless they had to be dragged from their station in the alley and into neighboring stores.
The blackened bodies which choked the aisles and stairways, the lines of policemen and firemen carrying limp forms from the building, the overtaxed hospitals, the rows of dead and dying in the surrounding buildings, which were thrown open to the sufferers, tell briefly the tale. Only a few of the heartrending incidents will ever be known.
Mass of Struggling Humanity
The first seconds of the rush for life were quiet, say those who live to tell the tale. Few if any in that throng realized what was to come. They thought only of themselves and their dear ones as they pushed and struggled for every inch as they advanced towards the exits.
It was but a moment until the stairways leading from the balcony were a mass of struggling humanity, with scores behind constantly pushing closer and fighting to get out. Those in the van, unable to keep their footing, fell headlong. Those behind fell over their prostrate forms, crushing and suffocating them.
The scene was then a veritable bedlam. Women and children were in the majority in the fighting crowd, and their shrieks of agonizing fear mingled with the groans of the dying the prayers of supplication. In those dark moments poor souls who had perhaps long unheeded religion called upon their God.
Mothers Plead for Babes
Women seized their babes in their arms and frantically clung to them, beseeching ears that were deaf to entreaty to save them from the terrible fate impending. Had the others been so disposed they could not have given the assistance so piteously besought.
In the last hope, born of desperation, scores climbed to the railing and leaped to the pit of the theater, many feet below. Their mangled bodies were found long afterward when the smoke cleared away and the firemen could grope their way with lanterns into the gruesome house of death.
The dense smoke quickly rose to the top and added new horror to the ghastly spectacle. To a score of those who had sought to jump from the gallery the smoke was kind, for it brought death more quickly. Their bodies were found hanging over the rail, their faces distorted with agonies of death.
Firemen Quick, But Too Late
From a dozen sources the alarm went to fire headquarters, but before the vanguard of engines wheeled into the street a dense crowd had gathered in front of the theater. The firemen were quick to act, but hundreds of bodies were already motionless within the walls of the playhouse.
An awe stricken crowd stood fixedly as those who had been nearest the doors rushed out, their eyes wild with fear. These yelled “Fire!” at the top of their lungs, and the cry was taken up by the crowd and carried far into busy State street and the other avenues of commerce.
None realized at that minute what had occurred. Each man asked his neighbor if there had been loss of life or injury. Not until the first blackened and limp body was borne forth in the arms of a policeman did the enormity of the disaster begin to dawn on those in the street.
Rapid Growth of Death List
In fifteen minutes, nineteen dead bodies were carried out. Then they came so fast that all count was lost.
Many of those first brought out were still alive. Their pitiful moans struck terror to the hearts of those who witnessed the scene.
A restaurant next door was at once thrown open for temporary use as a hospital. The long tables offered admirable means of service, and upon them the bleeding, burned, and moaning injured were laid.
Within a block are a dozen great buildings occupied almost exclusively by doctors, and in a remarkably short time a great host of physicians came to give voluntary service to those in distress. They saved the lives of scores of women and children, frenzied with pain, who would have died in the street or under the kindly shelter of the neighboring buildings.
Rush from Orchestra Seats
The great majority of those who occupied orchestra seats had escaped with their lives, though scores were badly hurt in the rush. Some were knocked down, and, with broken limbs, were unable to rise. They had been left to die with a number of women who fainted from fright. With these bodies were found the corpses of those who had leaped from the balcony and gallery.
In the exits of the balcony and galleries the greatest loss of life occurred. When the firemen went to remove the bodies they found 100 or more piled in indescribable mass in each place. The clothes were torn completely away from some of the bodies. Here and there a jeweled hand protruded from the pile. All the faces were distorted with the death agonies.
Moan from Heap of Dead
From beneath this mangled mass of humanity there suddenly came the moan of a woman. It was a cry of anguish, not of pain. The cry, faint though it was, pierced to the very soul, sounding above the yells of the firemen, the moans of agony from within the smoke filled auditorium, and the shrieks of grief maddened fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers in the street without.
Trembling hands plunged their way into the tangle of human forms, and with a mighty effort pulled to the surface the woman — could such a thing be a human being? — from whose lips had come the cry. The blackened lips parted, and a fireman bent over her to catch the words.
Mother Love is Uppermost
“My child, my poor little boy! Where is he? Oh, do bring him to me.”
There in that awful hour, her body bruised beyond recognition in the fight for life that followed the first flash of flame across the stage — there was mother love uppermost. Again the trembling lips parted.
“Is he safe? Tell me he is safe and I can die.”
“He is safe,” the fireman muttered, and all knew his reply was best.
She died and her body was lifted tenderly with those of the hundred others in that one spot.
The calamity was so overwhelming that the firemen and the policemen who were the first to reach the upper part of the house could not realize its astounding extent. They began by dragging a body or two from the terrible piles at the head of the stairways, as if they did not know the piles were made of human bodies.
Gradually the full significance of the catastrophe dawned upon them. All the lights of the theater had been extinguished. The lanterns of the firemen cast only a dim glow over the piles of dead. From the bodies arose small curls of steam. The firemen had drenched the piles before they knew they were made of human corpses.
Through the tiers of dead and dying in the building all about men and women searched with frenzied faces. Now and again a searcher would find one for whom he looked. One could but turn the face from such scenes.
Source (1904, January 08). Holiday matinee turned in few minutes to fearful tragedy. The Rice Belt Journal, p. 3.
