FIRST AID TO THE INJURED AND CARE FOR THE DEAD.
On the heels of the firemen came the police, intent on the work of rescue.
Chief O'Neill and Assistant Chief Schuettler ordered captains from a dozen
stations to bring their men, and then they rushed to the theater and led
the police up the stairs to the landing outside the east entrance to the
first balcony.
The firemen, rushing blindly up the stairs in the dense pall of smoke, had
found their path suddenly blocked by a wall of dead eight or ten feet
high. They discovered many persons alive and carried them to safety. Other
firemen crawled over the mass of dead and dragged their hose into the
theater to fight back the flames that seemed to be crawling nearer to turn
the fatal landing into a funeral pyre.
O'Neill and Schuettler immediately began carrying the dead from the
balcony, while other policemen went to the gallery to begin the work
there.
In the great mass of dead at the entrance to the first balcony the bodies
were so terribly interwoven that it was impossible at first to take any
one out.
"Look out for the living!" shouted the chief to his men. "Try to find
those who are alive."
From somewhere came a faint moaning cry.
"Some one alive there, boys," came the cry. "Lively, now!"
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.
In a short time the blockade in the fatal angle must have been complete.
Then into this awful heap still plunged the contrary tides of humanity
from each direction. Many tried to crawl over the top of the heap, but
were drawn down to the grinding mill of death underneath. The smoke was
heavy at the fatal angle, for the majority of those taken out at that
point bore no marks of bruises.
Many, and especially the children, were trampled to death, but others were
held as in a vise until the smoke had choked the life from their bodies.
It was toward this that the firemen directed O'Neill and Schuettler as
they rushed into the theater. The smoke was still heavy and the great
gilded marble foyer of the "handsomest theater in America" was somber and
dark and still as a tomb, except for the whistling of the engines outside
and now and then the shouting of the firemen. Water was dripping
everywhere and stood inches deep on the floor and stairs.
Two flickering lanterns shed the only light by which the policemen worked,
and this very fact, perhaps, made their task more horrible and gruesome,
if such a thing were possible.
GREAT PILE OF CHARRED BODIES FOUND EVERYWHERE IN THEATER.
All through the gallery the bodies were found. Some were those of persons
who had decided to stay in their seats and not to join in the mad rush for
the doors and run the risk of being trampled to death. Many of them no
doubt had trusted to the cries, "There is no danger; keep your seats!"
They had stuck to their seats until, choked by the heavy smoke, they had
been unable to move.
Some bodies were in a sitting position, while others had fallen forward,
with the head resting on the seat in front, as though in prayer. Almost
all were terribly burned.
In the aisles lay women and children who had staid in their seats until
they finally were convinced that the danger was real. Then they had
attempted to get to the door.
The smoke was so heavy the firemen worked with difficulty, but finally it
cleared and workmen who were hastily sent by the Edison company equipped
forty arc lights, which shone bravely through the smoke. With this help
the firemen searched to better effect, and found bodies that in the
blackness they had missed.
"Give that girl to some one else and get back there," shouted Chief Musham
to a fireman. The fireman never answered but kept on with his burden.
"Hand that girl to some one else," shouted the battalion chief.
The fireman looked up. Even in the flickering light of the lantern the
chief carried one could see the tears coming from the red eyes and falling
down the man's blackened cheeks.
"Chief," said the fireman, "I've got a girl like this at home. I want to
carry this one out."
"Go ahead," said the chief. The little group working at the head of the
stairs broke apart while the fireman, holding the body tightly, made his
way slowly down the stairs.
One by one the dead were taken from the pile in the angle. The majority of
them were women. On some faces was an expression of terrible agony, but on
others was a look of calmness and serenity, and firemen sometimes found it
hard to believe they were dead. Three firemen carried the body of a young
woman down the stairs in a rubber blanket. She appeared alive. Her hands
were clasped and held flowers. Her eyes were closed and she seemed almost
to smile. She looked as though she was asleep, but it was the sleep of
death.
In the dark and smoke, with the dripping water and the dead piled in heaps
everywhere, the Iroquois theater had been turned into a tomb by the time
the rescue parties had begun their work.
MOAN INSPIRES WORKERS IN MAD EFFORT TO SAVE.
The moan that the frantic workers heard as they struggled to untangle the
mass of bodies gave the police hope that many in the heap might be alive.
"We can't do it, chief," shouted one of the policemen. "We can't untangle
them."
"We must take these bodies out of the way to get down to those who are
alive," replied the chief. "This man here is dead; lay hold, now, boys,
and pull him out."
Two big firemen caught the body by the shoulders and struggled and pulled
until they had it free. Then another body was taken out, and then again
the workers seemed unable to unloose the dead. Again came that terrible
moan through the mass.
"For God's sake, get down to that one who's alive," implored O'Neill,
almost in despair.
The policemen pulled off their heavy overcoats and worked frantically at
the heap. Often a body could not be moved except when the firemen and
police dragged with a "yo, heave," like sailors hauling on a rope. As fast
as the bodies were freed one policeman, or sometimes two or three, would
stagger down the stairs with their burdens.
Over the heap of bodies crawled a fireman carrying something in his arms.
"Out of the way, men, let me out! The kid's alive."
The workers fell back and the fireman crawled over the heap and was helped
out. He ran down the stairs three steps at a time to get the child to a
place where help might be given before it was too late. Then other firemen
from inside the theater passed out more bodies, which were handed from one
policeman to another until some on the outside of the heap could take the
dead and carry them downstairs.
Suddenly a policeman pulling at the heap gave a shout.
"I've got her, chief!" he said. "She's alive, all right!"
"Easy there, men, easy," cried Schuettler; "but hurry and get that woman
to a doctor!"
A girl, apparently 18 years old, was moaning faintly. The policeman
released her from the tangled heap, and a big fireman, lifting her
tenderly in his arms, hurried with her to the outside of the building.
"There must be more alive," said the chief. "Work hard, boys."
There was hardly any need to ask the men to work harder, for they were
pulling and hauling as though their own lives depended on their efforts.
Everybody worked.
The reporters, the only ones in the theater besides the police and
firemen, laid aside their pencils and note books and struggled down the
wet, slippery stairs, carrying the dead. Newspaper artists threw their
sketch books on the floor to jump forward and pick up the feet or head of
a body that a fireman or policeman found too heavy to carry alone.
Constantly now a stream of workers was passing slowly down the stairs.
Usually two men supported each body, but often some giant policeman or
fireman strode along with a body swung over his shoulders. Coming down the
stairs was a fireman with a girl of 16 clasped in his arms.
"Isn't that girl alive?" asked the chief.
"No," shouted two or three men, who had jumped to see. "She's dead, poor
thing, rest her soul," said the fireman reverently, and then he picked his
way down the stairs. Half-way down the marble steps two arms suddenly
clasped the fireman's neck.
He started so he missed his footing and would have fallen had not a
policeman steadied him.
"She's alive, she's alive!" shouted the fireman. "Git out of the way,
there, out of the way, men," and he went dashing headlong out into the
open air and through the crowd to a drug store.
One child after another was taken from the heap and passed out to be
carried downstairs. Some were little boys in new suits, sadly torn, and
with their poor little faces wreathed in agony. On their foreheads was the
seal of death.
A big fireman came crawling from the heavy smoke of the inner balcony. He
carried a girl of 10 years in his arms. Her long, flaxen hair half covered
the pure white face.
A gray haired man with a gash on his head apparently had fallen down the
stairs. A woman's face bore the mark of a boot heel. A woman with a little
boy clasped tight in her arms was wedged into a corner. Her clothes were
almost torn from her, and her face was bruised. The child was unmarked, as
she had thrown her own body over his to protect him.
Out of the mass of bodies when the police began their work protruded one
slender little white hand, clinching a pair of pearl opera glasses, which
the little owner had tried to save, in spite of the fact that her own life
was being crushed out of her. Watches, pocketbooks and chatelaine bags
were scattered all through the pile. One man was detailed to make a bag
out of a rubber coat and take care of the property that was handed to him.
While the police were working so desperately at the fatal angle, another
detail of police and firemen were working on the third floor. At the main
entrance of the gallery lay another heap of bodies, and there was still
another at the angle of the head of the stairs leading to the floor below.
Here the sight was even worse than the terrible scene presented at the
landing of the first balcony.
The bodies on the landing were not burned. A jam had come there, and many
had been stamped under foot and either killed outright or left to
suffocate. Many of the bodies were almost stripped of clothing and bore
the marks of remorseless heels.
After these had been carried out, the firemen returned again and again
from the pitchy blackness of the smoke-filled galleries, dragging bodies,
burned sometimes beyond recognition.
NONE LEFT ALIVE IN GALLERY.
While now and then some one had been found alive in the other fatal angle,
no one was rescued by searchers in the top gallery. The bodies had to be
laid along the hall until the merchants in State street began sending
over blankets. Men from the streets came rushing up the stairs, bending
under the weight of the blankets they carried on their shoulders. Soon
they went back to the street again, this time carrying their blankets
weighed down with a charred body.
DEAD AND DYING CARRIED INTO NEARBY RESTAURANT BY SCORES.
The scenes in John R. Thompson's restaurant in Randolph street, adjoining
the theater, were ghastly beyond words.
Few half hours in battle bring more of horror than the half hour that
turned the cafe into a charnel house, with its tumbled heaps of corpses,
its shrieks of agony from the dying, and the confusion of doctors and
nurses working madly over bodies all about as they strove to bring back
the spark of life.
Bodies were everywhere--piled along the walls, laid across tables, and
flung down here and there--some charred beyond recognition, some only
scorched, and others black from suffocation; some crushed in the rush of
the panic, others but the poor, broken remains of those who leaped into
death. And most of them--almost all of them--were the forms of women and
children. It is estimated that more than 150 bodies were accounted for in
Thompson's alone.
The continuous tramp of the detachments of police bearing in more bodies,
the efforts of the doctors to restore life, and the madness of those who
surged in through the police lines to ransack piles of bodies for
relatives and friends, made up a scene of pandemonium of which it is hard
to form a conception. There was organization of the fifty physicians and
nurses who fought back death in the dying; there was organization of the
police and firemen; but still the restaurant was a chaos that left the
head bewildered and the heart sick.
The work was too much for even the big force of doctors that had flocked
there to volunteer their services. Everybody in which there was the
slightest semblance of life was given over to the physicians, who with
oxygen tanks and resuscitative movements sought to revive the heart beats.
As soon as death was certain the body was drawn from the table and laid
beneath, to give place to another. But systematic as was this effort,
heaps of bodies remained which the doctors had not touched.
In a dozen instances, even when the end of the work was in sight, a hand
or foot was seen to move in this or that heap. Instantly three or four
doctors were bending over rolling away the dead bodies to drag forth one
still warm with life. In a thrice the body was on a table and the oxygen
turned on while the doctors worked with might and main to force
respiration. Almost always it was in vain--life went out. Two or three
were resuscitated, though it is uncertain with what chances of ultimate
recovery. One of these was a Mrs. Harbaugh, who had been brought in for
dead and her body tossed among the lifeless forms that ranged the walls.
When the first rush of people from the theater gave notice of the fire to
persons in the street there were less than a score of patrons in the
restaurant. These rushed into the street, too, while a panic spread among
the waitresses and kitchen force. By this time fire company 13 was on the
ground in the alley side of the theater and the police were at the front
attempting to lead the audience from its peril with some semblance of
order. In another minute women and children with blistered faces were
dashing screaming into the street, taking refuge in the first doorways at
hand.
Another minute, and every policeman knew in his heart the horror that was
at hand. A patrolman dashed into Thompson's and ordered the tables
cleared and arranged to care for the injured. Captain Gibbons dispatched
another policeman to issue a general call for physicians and a detachment
to take charge of the restaurant and the first aid to be administered
there. Within five minutes the first of the injured were being laid on the
marble topped dining tables where the police ambulance corps were getting
at work.
These steps scarcely had been taken when word came from the burning
theater that the fire was under control, but that the loss of life would
be appalling. Chief O'Neill hurried to the scene, sending back word as he
ran that Secretary James Markham should summon doctors and ambulances from
every place available. The west side district of the medical schools and
hospitals was called upon to send all the volunteers possible, together
with hospital equipment. One hundred students from Rush Medical College
were soon on their way by street car and patrol wagon to the scene.
TERRIBLE REALITY COMES TO AWESTRICKEN CROWD.
It was only fifteen minutes after the first tongue of flame shot out from
behind the scenes that a lull came in the awful drama of death within the
theater. The firemen had quenched the fire and all the living had escaped.
All that remained were dead. But now the scenes within the improvised
hospital and morgue rose to the height of their horror.
But for a narrow lane the length of the cafe the floor was covered with
bodies or the tumbled bundles of clothing that told where a body was
concealed. And over the scene of the dead rose the groans of the tortured
beings who writhed upon the tables in the throes of their passing. And
over the cries of the suffering rose the shouts of command of the Red
Cross corps--now the directions of Dr. Lydston as to attempts at
resuscitation, now the megaphone shouts of Senator Clark ordering the
disposition of bodies and the organization of the constantly arriving
volunteer nurses.
In the narrow lane of the dead surged the policemen, bringing ever more
and more forms to cord up beneath the tables. Then came the press of
people, who, frantic with anxiety, had beaten back the police guard to
look for loved ones in the charnel house. There was Louis Wolff, Jr.,
searching for two nephews and his sister. There was Postmaster Coyne, who
had hurried from a meeting of the crime committee to lend his aid. There
were Aldermen Minwegen and Alderman Badenoch, and besides them scores of
men and women anxiously looking and looking, and nerving themselves to
fear the worst.
"Have you found Miss Helen McCaughan?" shrieked a hysterical woman. "She's
from the Yale apartments, and----"
"I'm looking for a Miss Errett--she's a nurse," cried another.
"My little boy--Charles Hennings--have you found him, doctor?" came from
another.
From every side came the heartrending appeals, while the din was so great
that no single plaint rose above the volume of sounds. And all the time
the doorway was a place of frightful sights.
"O, please go back for my little girl," gasped a woman whose face and
hands were a blister and whose clothing was burned to the skin. She
staggered across the threshold and fell prone. Her last breath had gone
out of her when two policemen snatched up the body and bore it to an
operating table.
"O, where's my Annie?" screamed another woman, horribly burned, whom two
policemen supported between them into the restaurant. But at the word she
collapsed, and, though three physicians worked over her for ten minutes,
she never breathed again.
ONE LIFE BROUGHT BACK FROM DEATH.
Of a sudden Dr. E. E. Vaughan saw a finger move in a mass of the dead
against the far wall of the restaurant.
"Men, there's a live one in there," he cried, and, while others came
running, the physician flung aside the bodies till he had uncovered a
woman of middle age, terribly burned about the face, and with her outer
garments a mass of charred shreds.
In a second the woman was undergoing resuscitative treatment on a table,
while the oxygen streamed into her lungs. Two doctors worked her arms like
pumps, while a nurse manipulated the region of the heart. At length there
was a flutter of a respiration, while a doctor bending over with his
stethoscope announced a heart beat just perceptible. Another minute passed
and the eyelids moved, while a groan escaped the lips.
"She lives!" simply said Dr. Vaughan, as he ordered the oxygen tube
removed and brandy forced between the lips. In five minutes the woman was
saved from immediate death, at least, though suffering terribly from
burns. She was just able to murmur that her name was Mrs. Harbaugh, but
that was all that could be learned of her identity before she was taken
away to a hospital.
ONE HUNDRED FEET IN AIR, POLICE CARRY INJURED ACROSS ALLEY.
Over a narrow, ice covered bridge made of scaffold planks, more than 100
feet above the ground the police carried more than 100 bodies from the
rear stage and balcony exits of the Iroquois theater to the Northwestern
University building, formerly the Tremont house. The planks rested on the
fire escape of the theater and on the ledge of a window in the Tremont
building.
Two men who first ventured on this dangerous passageway in their efforts
to reach safety, blinded by the fire and smoke, lost their footing and
fell to the alley below. They were dead when picked up.
The bridge led directly into the dental school of the university, and at
one time there were more than a score of charred bodies lying under
blankets in the room. The dead were carried from the pile of bodies at the
theater exits faster than the police could take them away in the
ambulances and patrol wagons.
As soon as the police began to take the injured into the university
building the classrooms were drawn upon for physicians, and in a few
minutes professors and dental students gathered in the offices and stores
to lend their assistance. Wounds were dressed, and in cases of less
serious injury the unfortunates were sent to their homes. In other cases
they were sent to hospitals.
When the smoke had cleared away the rescuers first realized the extent of
the horror. From the bridge could be seen the rows of balcony and gallery
seats, many occupied by a human form. Incited by the sight, the police
redoubled their efforts, and heedless of the dangers of the narrow,
slippery bridge, pressed close to each other as they worked.
While a dozen policemen were removing the dead from the theater, twice as
many were engaged in carrying them to the patrol wagons and ambulances at
the doors of the university building. All the afternoon the elevators
carried down police in twos and fours carrying their burdens of dead in
blankets. So fast were they carried down that many of the patrol wagons
held five and more bodies when they were driven away.
CROWDS OF ANXIOUS FRIENDS.
Behind the lines of police that guarded the passage of the dead, hundreds
of anxious men and women crowded with eager questions. The rotunda of the
building between 3 and 7 p. m. was thronged by those seeking knowledge of
friend or relative who had been in the play. Some made their way to the
third floor and looked hopelessly at the charred bodies lying there. In
one corner lay the bodies of husband and wife, clasped in each other's
arms. From under one sheltering blanket protruded the dainty high heeled
shoes of some woman, and from the next blanket the rubber boots of a
newsboy.
A Roman Catholic priest made his way into the room. He was looking for a
little girl, the daughter of a parishioner.
"Have you the name of Lillian Doerr in your list?" he asked James Markham,
Chief O'Neill's secretary, who was in charge of the police. Markham shook
his head.
"She and another little girl named Weiskopp were with three other girls,"
continued the priest. "Three of the girls in the party have got home, but
Lillian and the Weiskopp girl are missing. I suppose we must wait until
all the bodies are identified before we can find her."
The priest's mission and its futile results were duplicated scores of
times by anxious inquirers.
BALCONY AND GALLERY CLEARED.
The rescue work went on until the balcony and gallery had been cleared of
the dead, and then the police were called away. The exits were barred and
the hotel building cleared of visitors. While the work of rescue was
going on inside the building, the streets about the entrances were
thronged with thousands of curious spectators. As soon as an ambulance
backed up to the entrance the crowd pressed forward to get a view of the
bundles placed in the wagon. Even after this work had ended the crowds
remained in the cold and darkness.
Many of the small shops and offices in the University building threw open
their doors to the injured and those who had been separated from their
friends. When those who had escaped by the alley exits reached Dearborn
street they found the doors of the Hallwood Cash Register offices, 41
Dearborn street, open to them. L. A. Weismann, Harry Snow, Harry Dewitt,
and C. J. Burnett of the office force at once prepared to care for the
injured. More than fifty persons were cared for.
While these men were caring for strangers they themselves were haunted by
the dread that Manager H. Ludwig of the company with his wife and two
daughters were among the dead. The Ludwig family lives in Norwood Park,
and the father had left the office with them early in the afternoon. At 6
o'clock he had not returned for his overcoat.
FINANCE COMMITTEE OF CITY COUNCIL ACTS PROMPTLY.
"Spare no expense," was the order given by the finance committee of the
council which was in session when the extent of the disaster became known
at the city hall. First to grasp the import of the news was Ald. Raynier,
whose wife and four children had left him at noon to attend the matinee.
With a gasp he hurried from the room to go to the scene.
"You are instructed," said Chairman Mavor to Acting Mayor McGann, "to
direct the fire marshal, the chief of police, and the commissioner of
public works to proceed in this emergency without any restrictions as to
expense. Do everything needful, spend all the money needed, and look to
the council for your warrant. We will be your authority."
A telegram at once was sent to Mayor Harrison informing him of the fire
and the executive returned from Oklahoma on the first train.
Acting Commissioner of Public Works Brennan sent word to Chief O'Neill and
Fire Marshal Musham that the public works department was at their service.
"We want men and lanterns," Chief Musham answered.
Supt. Solon was sent to a store near the theater with an order for as many
lanterns as might be needed. Supt. Doherty assembled 150 men in Randolph
street and seventy wagons employed on First ward streets. They were placed
at the disposal of the two chiefs.
Chief O'Neill was in the council chamber when the news arrived, hearing
charges against a police officer. Lieut. Beaubien came from his office and
whispered to him. The chief hurried to the fire. The trial board continued
its work.
On the ground floor of the city hall the fire trial board was in executive
session trying six firemen on a charge of carrying tales to insurance men
against the chief.
At 3:33 o'clock the alarm rang. Chief, assistant chiefs, and accused
firemen listened. Then the news of the magnitude of the fire reached
headquarters. The board hurriedly adjourned and Chief Musham led accusers
and accused to fight the fire.