Cremating Bodies by the Hundred in the Streets of Galveston--Negroes Faint
While Handling the Decomposed Corpses--How Some of Those Rescued Escaped
with Their Lives.
Fully 1,500 bodies were cremated at Galveston after it became apparent
that the time necessary to bury them or cast them into the sea could not
be taken, owing to their advanced state of decomposition.
Many of the negroes who handled the bodies fell from fright and nausea.
White volunteers took their places and the work went on. The volunteers
bandaged their mouths and noses with cotton cloths saturated with
disinfectants and were relieved by other volunteers every hour.
Fires could not be started every place where bodies were found. The usual
plan was to collect all bodies within two blocks in one spot and then
build the funeral pyre. On the remains of many women were valuable rings
and jewelry, but the men did not attempt to remove the jewelry. It was
burned with the owners.
Officers Mass and Woodward reported that their two gangs burned 100
bodies, the majority women and children. The percentage of deaths among
children was frightful. Sheriff Thomas and his negroes burned forty bodies
on the beach near Tremont street.
Catholic priests in charge of gangs reported 120 bodies burned. The
sanitary experts pushed the work of burning the dead. No other disposition
was considered. People who had lost relatives and friends made no
objection and looked on the plan with favor.
Disinfectants were used as never before in the world. The smell of the
charnel house was driven away and the whole city was filled with the
fumes of carbolic acid and lime in solution.
This is general order No. 9, issued by Brigadier General Thomas Scurry,
commanding the city forces:
"Guards, foreman of gangs, and working parties or others acting under the
authorities of this department will use diligence toward preventing any
hardships on private individuals or impressing men for service. The
conditions, however, are so critical, and it is so necessary that sanitary
precautions be taken to preserve the lives and health of the people of
this stricken city, that individual interests must give way to the general
good of all. If it is found feasible to secure volunteers, general
impressment will be avoided, but, the medical fraternity being a unit in
the opinion that further delay or procrastination will bring pestilence to
finish the dire work of the hurricane, the interests of no individual,
firm, or corporation will for one instant be spared to secure volunteers
for work, but, failing this, every able-bodied man is to be put to work to
clear the wreckage, burn the hundreds of bodies under it, and save, if
possible, the lives of those who yet remain. I trust this position may be
thoroughly appreciated and understood, so that all people will govern
themselves accordingly."
BOY FLOATS MILES ON A TRUNK.
The miracles of Galveston were many. Some of them will not be received
with full credit by readers. In the infirmary at Houston was a boy whose
name is Rutter. He was found on Monday morning lying behind a trunk on the
land near the town of Hitchcock, which is twenty miles to the northward of
Galveston. The boy was only 12 years old. His story was that his father,
mother, and two children remained in the house. There was a crash. The
house went to pieces. The boy said he caught hold of a trunk when he found
himself in the water and floated off with it. He was sure the others were
drowned. He had no idea of where it took him, but when daylight came he
was across the bay and out upon the still partially submerged mainland.
ESCAPED IN BATHING SUITS.
The wife of Manager Bergman of the Houston Opera House saw more of the
storm than fell to the lot of most women who live to tell of it. She had
been spending the heated term at a Rosenberg avenue cottage only a short
distance from the beach.
On Saturday morning the water had risen there three feet. Putting on a
bathing suit, Mrs. Bergman went to the Olympia to talk over the long
distance telephone with her husband in Houston. This was about 10 a. m. At
the Olympia she had to wade waist deep in the water. At 2 o'clock Mrs.
Bergman became alarmed, and with her sister she left the summer cottage
and started toward the more thickly settled part of the city. Neighbors
laughed at the fear of the women. Out of a family of fifteen in the next
house only three were saved.
Mrs. Bergman and her sister waded and swam alternately several blocks
until they reached the higher streets. Then they hired a negro with a dray
and told him to take them to the telephone exchange. Within two blocks
from where the start was made in this way the mule got into deep water and
was drowned. The women reached the telephone building, but when the
firemen began to bring in the dead bodies they left and went to Balton's
livery stable. This was only 600 yards away, but Mrs. Bergman says it was
the hardest part of the trip, with the air full of flying bits of glass,
slate, and wood. In the stable they remained until morning.
When the sun had risen the water had so far receded that they went out to
the site of their cottage. A hitching post was all that served to locate
the place. No houses were left standing for many blocks around. A dead
baby lay in the yard. The two women returned down-town. Passing a store
with plate glass windows and doors blown out, they went in and helped
themselves to the black cloth from which they made the gowns they still
wore when they reached Houston three days later. During the storm they
wore their bathing suits.
STRANGE INCIDENTS OF THE FLOOD.
Many instances of devotion of husband to wife, of wife to husband, of
child to parent and parent to child could be mentioned. One poor woman
with her child and her father was cast out into the raging waters. They
were separated. Both were in drift and both believed they went out in the
gulf and returned. The mother was finally cast upon the drift and there
she was pounded by the waves and debris until she was pulled into a house
against which the drift had lodged, and during all that frightful ride she
held to her eight months' old boy and when she was on the drift pile she
lay upon the infant and covered it with her body that it might escape the
blows of the planks. She came out of the ordeal cut and maimed, but the
infant had not a scratch.
STATUES ON ALTAR NOT HARMED.
St. Joseph's Catholic Church presents a strange contrast, with the roof
and rear wall back of the altar being carried away. The wall collapsed,
but the altar was not damaged and the frail lifesize statues of St.
Joseph and the Virgin on the altar were not harmed or moved.
When their home went to pieces the members of the Stubbs family--husband,
wife, and two children--climbed upon the roof of a house floating by. They
felt tolerably secure. Without warning the roof parted in two pieces. Mr.
and Mrs. Stubbs were separated. Each had a child. The parts of the raft
went different ways in the darkness. One of the children fell off and
disappeared. Not until some time Sunday was the family reunited. Even the
child was saved, having caught a table and clung to it until it reached a
place of safety.
Another man took his wife from one house to another by swimming until he
had occupied three. Each fell in its turn and then he took to the waves
and they were separated and each, as the persons above mentioned, believed
they were carried to sea. After three hours in the water he heard her call
and finally rescued her.
THREW $10,000 WORTH OF DIAMONDS INTO THE WATER.
Edward Zeigler, Thomas Farley and Alexander McCarthy arrived at Mobile,
Ala., Thursday evening from Galveston. They left Galveston that morning on
the tug Robinson with 130 other refugees and were taken to Houston. Until
they arrived at New Orleans they were clad in undergarments and were
coatless.
They escaped at 10:30 on Sunday morning from a house on the exposed beach
by clinging to a log and floating to high ground. Zeigler was struck by
floating wreckage, but was assisted by his companions to safety. An old
negress, who gave the sleeping men warning, was drowned.
Zeigler was naked and the other men were in their night garments when
they reached the crowd gathered near the Tremont house, but their
appearance was similar to that of hundreds, many women being rescued for
whom clothing had to be at once obtained. At noon Sunday they had
sufficient space to move around with comfort, although filled with anxiety
and penned in on all sides by the rapidly rising water. Four hours later
the few thoroughfares above water were congested with crowds of hysterical
women, crying children and frantic men.
The separation of families produced pathetic scenes when mothers mourned
their offspring and men lamented the loss of all dear to them. There was
no confusion, only a clinging closer together without discrimination of
class or sex as the waters advanced foot by foot.
At dark the misery deepened and the women occupied the hotel and
approaches, the highest point in the city, and the water continuing to
advance, buildings and stores were thrown wide open to provide refuge in
the upper stories. The men gave the better positions to the women.
As midnight approached conditions became worse; several women became
demented and one woman, a member of the demi-monde, threw $10,000 worth of
diamonds into the flood.
In the hotel the women kissed each other and said good-by. They prayed and
sang hymns in turn. With each announcement that the waters were rising
many men and women gave up to the terrible mental strain and fainted.
The survivors paid a high tribute to the bravery in the face of death of
the women of Galveston, and stated that, although abject melancholy had
fallen over all, that the spirit of fortitude displayed by the women
nerved the men. The horrors of that night were equaled on the succeeding
days as the water receded.
DARED EVERYTHING FOR WIFE AND SON.
Of all the heroism and dogged tenacity of purpose noted in connection with
the Galveston storm none was greater than that of W. L. Love of Houston.
Mr. Love was a compositor on the Houston Post, and his wife and little son
were visiting Mrs. Love's mother in Galveston when the storm struck the
city.
Early Sunday morning when the first news of the Galveston disaster began
to drift in, Mr. Love announced to the foreman of the composing-room,
under whom he was working, that he intended starting immediately for
Galveston.
He went to one of the depots and fortunately found a train leaving toward
Galveston. He boarded it, but the train was forced to stop eight miles
before it reached Galveston Bay. He walked eight miles, arriving at the
bay in about two hours. There was no boat in sight, not even a skiff or
canoe.
He found a large cypress railroad-tie near the water's edge and, procuring
a coal hook from a locomotive that had blown from the track, he got
astride the tie after having placed it in the water, and set out on a
difficult and perilous journey across the three miles of salt water. Thus
he labored for six trying hours, the sun beating down on him and with his
body half submerged in the brine of the bay.
At last the goal was reached and he pulled himself out of the water and
stepped on the once fair island.
After having passed on his way more than a hundred decaying bodies of the
storm victims, the heroic young man set about finding his wife and little
boy. This he did after a lengthy search. His wife had lost her mother,
father, brothers and sisters, numbering eight in all.
The little boy had been utterly stripped of his clothing by the wind and
both he and his mother had an experience that rarely comes to a mother and
son.
PITIFUL TALES OF SOME OF THE SURVIVORS.
The story of Thomas Klee was indeed most pitiful. Klee lived near Eleventh
and N streets. When the storm burst he was alone in his home with his two
infant children. He seized one under each arm and rushed from the frail
structure in time to cheat death among the falling timbers of his home.
Once in the open, with his babies under his arms, he was swept into the
bay among hundreds of others. He held to his precious burden and by
skillful maneuvering managed to get close to a tree which was sweeping
along with the tide. He saw a haven in the branches of the tree and raised
his two-year-old daughter to place her in the branches. As he did so the
little one was torn from his arm and carried away to her death.
The awful blow stunned but did not render him senseless. Klee retained his
hold on the other child, aged four years, and was whirled along among the
dying and dead victims of the storm's fury, hoping to effect a landing
somewhere.
An hour in the water brought the desired end. He was thrown ashore, with
wreckage and corpses, and, stumbling to a footing, lifted his son to a
level with his face. The boy was dead.
Klee remembered nothing until Thursday night, when he was put ashore in
Texas City. He had a slight recollection of helping to bury dead, clear
away debris and obey the command of soldiers. His brain, however, did not
execute its functions until Friday morning.
George Boyer's experience was a sad one. He was thrown into the rushing
waters, and while being carried with frightful velocity down the bay saw
the dead face of his wife in the branches of a tree. The woman had been
wedged firmly between two branches.
Margaret Lees' life was saved at the expense of her brother's. The woman
was in her Twelfth street home when the hurricane struck. Her brother
seized her and guided her to St. Mary's University, a short distance away.
He returned to search for his son, and was killed by a falling house.
HORRIBLE CONDITION OF THE CITY AFTER THE FLOOD.
I. J. Jones, sent to Galveston by Governor Sayers, of Texas, the day after
the storm to investigate the condition of the Texas State quarantine
there, reported to the Governor at Austin on September 14, said, among
other things, in his report:
"The sanitary condition of the city is very bad. Large quantities of lime
have been ordered to the place, but I doubt if any one will be found to
unload it from the vessels and attend its systematic distribution when it
arrives. The stench is almost unbearable. It arises from piles of debris
containing the carcasses of human beings and animals. These carcasses are
being burned whenever it can be done with safety, but little of the
wreckage can be destroyed. There is no water protection, and should a fire
break out the destruction of the city would soon be complete. When
searching parties come across a human body it is taken into an open space
and wreckage piled over it. This is set on fire and the body slowly
consumed. The odor of the burning bodies is horrible.
"The chairman of the finance relief committee at Galveston wanted me to
make the announcement that the city wants all the skilled mechanics and
contractors with their tools that can be brought to Galveston. There is
some repair work now going on, but it is impossible to find men who will
work at that kind of business. Those now in Galveston not engaged in the
relief work have their own private business to look after and mechanics
are not to be had. All mechanics will be paid regular wages and will be
given employment by private parties who desire to get their wrecked homes
in a habitable condition as rapidly as possible. There are many houses
which have only the roof gone. These residences are finely furnished, and
it is desired that the necessary repairs be made quickly.
"The relief work is fairly well organized. Nothing has been accomplished
except the distribution of food among the needy. About one-half of the
city is totally wrecked and many people are living in houses that are
badly wrecked. The destitute are being removed from the city as rapidly as
possible. It will take three or four days yet before all who want to go
have been removed from the island and city. A remarkably large number of
horses survived the storm, but there is no feed for them and many of them
will soon die of starvation.
"I am thoroughly satisfied after spending two days in Galveston that the
estimate of 5,000 dead is too conservative. It will exceed that number.
Nobody can ever estimate or will ever know within 1,000 of how many lives
were lost. In the city the dead bodies are being got rid of in whatever
manner possible. They are burying the dead found on mainland. At one place
250 were found and buried on Wednesday. There must be hundreds of dead
bodies back on the prairies that have not been found. It is impracticable
to make a search. Bodies have been found as far back as seven miles from
the mainland shore. It would take an army to search that territory on the
mainland.
"The waters of the gulf and bay are still full of dead bodies and they are
being constantly cast upon the beach. On my trip to and from the
quarantine I passed a procession of bodies going seaward. I counted
fourteen of them on my trip in from the station, and this procession is
kept up day and night. The captain of a ship who had just reached
quarantine informed me that he began to meet floating bodies fifty miles
from port.
"As an illustration of how high the water got in the gulf, a vessel which
was in port tried to get into the open sea when the storm came on. It got
out some distance and had to put back. It was dark and all the landmarks
had been obliterated. The course of the vessel could not be determined and
she was being furiously driven in toward the island by the wind. Before
her course could be established she had actually run over the top of the
north jetty. As the vessel draws twenty-five feet of water, some idea can
be obtained as to the height of the water in the gulf."
THRILLING EXPERIENCE OF A DALLAS GIRL.
One of the most thrilling descriptions of personal experience with the
fearful flood ever written was that of Miss Maud Hall, of Dallas, Tex.,
who was spending her school vacation with friends at Galveston. She wrote
an account of her adventures to her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Emory Hall:
"Dear Papa and Mamma: I suppose before this you will have received my
telegram and know I am safe. This has been a terrible experience. I hope I
will be spared any more such. I am just a nervous wreck--fever blisters
over my mouth, eyes with hollows under them, and shaking all over. When I
close my eyes I can't see anything but piles of naked dead and wild-eyed
men and women. I suppose I had better begin at the beginning, but I don't
know if I can write with any sense. Saturday at about 11 o'clock it began
raining, and the wind rose a little. Sidney Spann and two young lady
boarders could not get home to dinner. After the dinner the men left and
we sat around in dressing sacks watching the storm. All at once Birdie
Duff (Mrs. Spann's married daughter) said: 'Look at the water in the
street; it must be the gulf.'
"There was water from curb to curb. It rose rapidly as we watched it, and
Mrs. Spann sent us all to dress. It rose to the sidewalk, and the men
began to come home. The wind and rain rose to a furious whirlwind and all
the time the water crept higher and higher. We all crowded into the hall
of the house--a big, two-story one--and it rocked like a cradle. About 6
o'clock the roof was gone, all the blinds torn off, and all the windows
blown in. Glass was flying in all directions and the water had risen to a
level with the gallery.
"Then the men told us we would have to leave and go to a house across the
street at the end of the block, a big one. Mrs. Spann was wild about her
daughter Sidney, who had not been home, and the telephone wires were down.
The men told us we must not wear heavy skirts, and could only take a few
things in a little bundle. I took my watch and ticket and what money I had
and pinned them in my corset; took off everything from my waist down but
an underskirt and my linen skirt; no shoes and stockings. I put what
clothes I could find in my trunk and locked it. Tell mamma the last thing
I put in was her gray skirt, for I thought it might be injured.
"It took two men to each woman to get her across the street and down to
the end of the block. Trees thicker than any in our yard were whirled down
the street; pine logs, boxes and driftwood of all sorts swept past, and
the water looked like a whirlpool. Birdie and I went across on the second
trip. The wind and rain cut like a knife and the water was icy cold. It
was like going down into the grave, and I was never so near death, unless
it was once before, since I have been here. I came near drowning with
another girl. It was dark by this time, and the men put their arms around
us and down into the water we went. Birdie was crying about her baby that
she had to leave behind until the next trip, and I was begging Mr.
Mitchell and the other man not to turn me loose.
"Mrs. Spann came last. The water was over her chin. It was up to my
shoulders when I went over. One man brought a bundle of clothing, such as
he could find for us to put on, wrapped up in his mackintosh. He had to
swim over. I spent the night, such a horrible one, wet from shoulder to my
waist and from my knees down, and barefoot. Nobody had any shoes and
stockings. Mrs. Spann did not have anything but a thin lawn dress and
blanket wrapped around her from her waist down. Nellie had a lawn wrapper
and blanket, and Fannie had a skirt and winter jacket. Mr. Mitchell had a
pair of trousers and a light shirt and was barefooted. The house was
packed with people just like us.
"The house had a basement and was of stone. The windows were blown out,
and it rocked from top to bottom, and the water came into the first floor.
Of course no one slept. About 3 o'clock in the morning the wind had
changed and blew the water back to the gulf, and as we stood at the
windows watching it fall we saw two men and two girls wading the street
and heard Sidney calling for her mother. She and the young lady with her
spent the night crowded into an office with nine men in total darkness,
sitting on boxes, with their feet up off the floor. It was an immense
brick building four stories high. They were on the second floor. The roof
and one story was blown away and the water came up to the second floor. It
was down toward the wharf.
"As soon as we could we waded home. Such a home! The water had risen three
feet in the house and the roof being gone the rain poured in. I had not a
dry rag but a dirty skirt which was hanging in the wardrobe and an
underskirt with it. My trunk had floated and everything in it was stained
except the gray skirt. We had not had anything to eat since noon the day
before, and we lived on whisky. Every time the men would see us they would
poke a bottle of whisky at us, and make us drink some. All we had all day
Sunday was crackers at 50 cents a small box and whisky.
"We were all so weak we knew we could not get any more, so Miss Decker and
I went down about 10 o'clock. It was awful. Dead animals everywhere, and
the streets filled with fallen telegraph poles and brick stores blown
over. Hundreds of women and children and men sitting on steps crying for
lost ones, and half of them, nearly, injured. Wild-eyed, ghastly-looking
men hurried by and told of whole families killed.
"I could not stand any more and made them bring me home, and fell on the
bed with hysterics. They poured whisky down me, but the only effect it had
was to make my head ache worse. I had about got straightened out when a
girl and a woman came to the house--relatives of Mrs. Spann--who had lost
their mother and friends and house, and all they had. They had hysterics,
and everybody cried, and I had another spell. All day wagon after wagon
passed filled with dead--most of them without a thing on them--and men
with stretchers with dead bodies with just a sheet thrown over them, some
of them little children.
"We waited, every minute expecting to have the two bodies brought here.
But they had not been found up to now, and all hope is lost. There is a
little boy in the house that spent the night in the water clinging to a
log, and his father and mother and four sisters were drowned. He is all
alone. Last night Mr. Mitchell took Miss Decker and I to another boarding
house to find a dry bed. We slept on a folding bed, with nothing under us
but a rug and sheet, and I had to borrow something dry to sleep in. The
husband of the lady who lost her mother has just come from Houston. He
walked and swam all the way. He is nearly wild, and she is just screaming.
I cannot write any more. Am coming home soon as I can."
SAVED AS BY A MIRACLE.
The Stubbs family, consisting of father, mother and two children, was in
its home when it collapsed. They found refuge on a floating roof. This
parted and father and one child were swept in one direction, while the
mother and the other child drifted in another. One of the children was
washed off, but Sunday evening all four were reunited.
Mrs. P. Watkins became a raving maniac as the result of her experiences.
With her two children and her mother she was drifting on a roof, when her
mother and one child were swept away. Mrs. Watkins mistakes attendants in
the hospital for her lost relatives and clutches wildly for them.
Harry Steele, a cotton man, and his wife sought safety in three successive
houses which were demolished. They eventually climbed on a floating door
and were saved.
W. R. Jones, with fifteen other men, finding the building they were in
about to fall, made their way to the water tower and, clapping hands,
encircled the standpipe to keep from being washed or blown away.
Mrs. Chapman Bailey, wife of the southern manager of the Galveston Wharf
Company, and Miss Blanche Kennedy floated in the waters ten to twenty feet
deep all night and day by catching wreckage. Finally they got into a
wooden bath tub and were driven into the gulf overnight. The incoming tide
drove them back to Galveston and they were rescued the next day. They were
fearfully bruised. All their relatives were drowned.
A pathetic incident in the search for the dead occurred Friday. A squad of
men discovered in a wrecked building five bodies. Among these bodies was
one which a member of the burial party recognized as his own brother. The
bodies were all in an advanced state of decomposition. They were removed
and a funeral pyre was built, at which the brother assisted and, with
Spartan-like firmness, stood by and saw the bodies of the dead reduced to
ashes.
On Monday a brakeman of the Galveston, Houston and Northern left Virginia
Point and started to walk toward Texas City. He found a little child,
which he picked up and carried for miles. On his way he discovered the
bodies of nine women. These he covered with grass to protect them from the
vultures until some arrangements could be made for their interment.