Marshall Everett

“ One glance at the seething vortex of death below transformed them into heroes whose deeds would put many a man to shame whose memory is kept alive by stately column or flattering memorial tablet.
Trailing heavy planks used by them in the erection of working scaffolds, they rushed to a window in the lecture room of the law school directly opposite the exit and fire escape platform leading from the topmost balcony of the theater. By almost superhuman effort and ingenuity they raised aloft the planks, scarce long enough to span the abyss, and dropped them. ”

“ Then the wave of flame, previously described, swept over the interior of the theater, greedily searching every nook and corner as though hungry for the last victim within reach.
The last refugees to cross the narrow span, the dizzy line sharply drawn between life and death in its most terrifying aspect, staggered over with their clothing in flames, gasping, fainting with pain and terror. The workmen, students and policemen who had rushed to their assistance dashed across into the heat and smoke and dragged forth many more who had reached the platform only to fall before the deadly blast. ”

“ Fire was suddenly observed in the scenery, and a wild panic started. An iron curtain, designed for just such emergencies, was forgotten, and the flames, which might thus have been confined to the stage, spread furiously through the entire building. The scene was changed from light-hearted revelry, with gladsome music, to one of lurid horror.
The exits from the galleries were long and tortuous and quickly became choked. As in the Iroquois theater fire, those who had occupied the gallery seats were the ones who lost their lives. ”

“ In the darkness that fell upon the doomed theater a struggle ensued such as was [Pg 37] never pictured in the mind of Dante in his visions of Inferno. With prayers, curses and meaningless shrieks of terror all faced their fate like rats in a trap. The darkness was illumined by a fearful light that burst from the sea of flame pouring out from the proscenium, making Dore's representations of Inferno shrink into the commonplace. Like a horizontal volcano the furnace on the stage belched forth its blast of fire, smoke, gas and withering, blighting heat. ”

“ When the premonition of the impending disaster had been given out, and after the first great thrill of horror had, for the instant, frozen the blood of every spectator and caused an involuntary check to every heart, there came quickly the manifestation of a determination to 'do or die,' to escape from the angry flames if possible. And with this determination came the positive assurance of the growing calamity, through the person of one of the actors, who but a short time previous had been playing the buffoon, setting staid people agape with amusement and turning dull care into festivity. ”

“ Strong words pale and appear meaningless when used in describing the full enormity of this disaster, which has no recent parallel save in the outbreaks of nature's irresistible forces. There have been greater losses of life by volcanoes, earthquakes and floods, but no fire horror of modern times has equaled this one, which in a brief half-hour turned a beautiful million-dollar theater into an oven piled high with corpses, some burned and mutilated and others almost unmarked in death. ”

“ With a crash the great planks landed true, the free ends squarely upon the edge of the platform of the useless fire escape, the others resting firmly upon the narrow window ledge where the painters stood defying flame, smoke and torrents of burning embers and blazing sparks hurled upon them as from the crater of a volcano.
Death alley had been bridged! Across the narrow span came a volume of bedraggled humanity as though shot from a gun. A mad, screaming stream, pushed on by those behind, simply whirled across the frail support, direct from the very jaws of death, the blistering gates of hell. ”

“ Behind those in front pushed the frenzied mass of humanity, Chicago's elect, the wives and children of its most prosperous business men and the flower of local society, fighting like demons incarnate. Purses, wraps, costly furs were cast aside in that mad rush. Mothers were torn from their children, husbands from their wives. No hold, however strong, could last against that awful, indescribable crush. Strong men who sought to the last to sustain their feminine companions were swept away like straws, thrown to the floor and trampled into unconsciousness in the twinkling of an eye. ”

“ It pursued its victims beyond the confines of the theater walls, grasping in its deadly embrace those who lay across windows or prostrate on galleries and platforms. Thousands gazed on in helpless horror, watching the flames bestow a fatal caress upon many who had crept far, far from the blaze and almost into a zone of safety. With a gliding, caressing movement that made beholders' blood run cold it crept upon such victims, hovered a moment and glided on with sinuous motion and what approached a suggestion of intelligence in searching out those who fled before it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And at night, when she goes home worn with effort, there are songs to be learned, and then to be repeated over and over again in chorus the next day, to the accompaniment of a battered and expressionless piano shoved into the brightest spot on the gloomy half-dark stage, or, if there be no such thing, placed in the orchestra pit, where the musical director can enjoy the advantage of an electric light. ”

“ The plain lesson for our whole country and the world is to be alert to meet the dangers which may menace human life in the home, the workshop, the manufactory, the hotel, the theater, the church. Let ample means of exit be provided and always known to audiences. The tendency to a panic is always increased when people are apprehensive of danger and believe that they are hemmed in. Fear is contagious. A crowd feels and does not reason. Self-preservation, the first law of nature, asserts itself the more vehemently when the way of escape is uncertain. ”

“ Darkness descending upon the scene, doors locked against the frightened multitude, fire escapes cut off by tongues of flame and exits and stairways choked with the bodies of those who died fighting to reach safety hampered many—at least the six hundred carried out later mangled and roasted, their features and limbs twisted and distorted until little semblance to humanity remained. After the first wild dash, in which a large portion of those on the main floor escaped, the blackness of night settled upon the long marble foyer leading from Randolph street to the auditorium. ”

“ There are smoking ruins down in the heart of the city—ruins of one of the finest theaters in Chicago, which fell a prey to the devouring element last night. There are mourning households and rows of dead bodies at the morgue. There will be anxious inquiries on the lips of many persons with whom one will meet manifesting an eagerness to know whether friends were swallowed up in the flames or made good their escape. ”

“ When we were carrying out the dying and the dead from that horrible darkness and choking smoke to the outer air, those of us who were wont to pray could only say, "O God have mercy! O God have mercy!"
But there must be no panic in our faculties. Reason must not desert her rightful throne. Blinded by tears, we must not in our consuming passion of resentment against the sickening catastrophe, attempt with our puny arms to strike against God. He did not cause the calamity. No responsibility for it can be rolled upon Him. God is law ”

“ A few minutes later, possibly not more than half an hour after the discovery of the fire, when the firemen had beaten back the flames to the raging stage another procession moved across that same plank again. It moved in silence, for it was a procession of death. The great tragedy began and ended in fifteen minutes. Its echoes may roll down as many centuries, compelling the proper safeguarding of all places of amusement, in America at least. If so, the Iroquois victims did not give up their lives in vain. ”

“ He has never forsaken his world, nor the sinning and suffering souls that are in it. "God in history," is faith's jubilant assertion. He is in its minutest incidents and in its mightiest events, "in the rocking of a baby's cradle and the shaking of a monarch's throne," in the fiery furnace of the Iroquois Theater and in the most joyous assembly of his adoring saints. ”

“ The firemen and police long struggled in vain to move the bodies.
The raging tide of humanity pouring out of the east entrance of the balcony during the panic had met the fighting, struggling crowd coming down the stairs from the third balcony at right angles. The two streams formed a whirlpool which ceased its onward progress and remained there on the landing where people stamped each other under foot in that mad circle of death. ”

“ The World is the only newspaper office in the city that is standing. Once it was on fire and was saved only by the earnest, valiant and courageous work of the World employes and the goodness of God. To our suffering contemporaries we extend the greatest sympathy and to the hundreds of other sufferers also. For those thousands who are thrown out of work in the dead of winter, with sorrow and suffering staring them in the face, our heart throbs with a feeling that we cannot express. ”

“ Theaters are so built and so crammed with inflammable materials that a fire once started in them would in an incredibly short period gain such headway that nothing under heaven could check its mad and devouring career. Furthermore, the means of exit and all other avenues of escape are so limited that a panic once inaugurated in a crowded house would bring destruction upon the heads of a large proportion of the audience. ”

“ She may secure a decent room at a second or third class European hotel for $6 a week and buy her meals where she chooses. If some callow youth buys them for her in consideration of the pleasure of basking in her smiles, she is that much ahead. She can live within her means in the city and save money—if she wants to. But she seldom does, and no one can blame her, for she feels that nothing save the pleasures secured by extravagance can compensate her for what she has lost—comfort, repose, dignity, social recognition, and, most of all, home. ”

“ Opposite the westernmost exit of the balcony—on the alley—was a room in the Northwestern University building (the old Tremont house) where painters were working, wiping out the traces of another fire.
They heard the sound of the detonation of the fuse; they heard the rush of feet toward the exit across the way. Out on the iron stairway came a man, pushed by a power behind, himself crazy with fear. He would have run down the iron fire escape, but flames burst out of the exit beneath and wrapped themselves around the iron ladder. ”

“ Men were beating against the steel and glass barriers and women crowded with the desperation of death stamped upon their faces. Smoke was puffing out, filling the beautiful foyer and telling in awful eloquence of the triumph of death further in. I could do nothing to relieve the situation for there was nothing within the power of mortal man to do to stop the horror. ”

“ Persons in the rear of the theater building knew full well that a holocaust was in progress. There fire escapes and stage doors thronged with refugees, half clad and hysterical chorus girls flocking into the alley, and crackling flames leaping higher and higher from the flimsy stage and bursting from windows, told only too plainly what was in progress within. ”

“ Coming, as it did, in the midst of a holiday season, when the second greatest city in the United States was reveling in the gaiety of Christmas week, this sudden transformation of a playhouse filled with a pleasure-seeking throng into an inferno filled with shrieking living and mutilated dead, came as a thunderbolt from a clear sky.
It was a typical holiday matinee crowd, composed mostly of women and children, with here and there a few men. ”

“ Mayor McLane reflected local public sentiment when he sent out the following declaration to the world at large:
"Baltimore will now enter undaunted into the task of resurrection. A greater and more beautiful city will rise from the ruins and we shall make of this calamity a future blessing. We are staggered by the terrible blow, but we are not discouraged, and every energy of the city as a municipality and its citizens as private individuals will be devoted to a rehabilitation that will not only prove the stuff we are made of but be a monument to the American spirit." ”

“ For we have all sinned and come short of our duty. A common blame rests upon the whole community. Many a minister has been preaching upon the fire, but has his own church, perhaps crowded to the door, been safe while his eager congregation has listened to his impassioned utterances? Suppose the unexpected had happened, and the cry of [Pg xiii] fire had been heard and bursting flames been seen, would his hearers have escaped unhurt? Not if the church doors swung inward instead of outward; not if the means of escape were not abundant; not if camp chairs blocked the passages to the street. ”

“ They have saved others, themselves they could not save. Thousands, perhaps millions, will in the future be secure in their places of resort, because these went on that fateful day to their inevitable doom. Mayors, architects, fire-inspectors, managers, stage carpenters, electricians, ushers and chiefs of police in every city have had their duty burned into their inmost consciousness by this consuming fire. ”