"Lest We Forget": Chicago's Awful Theater HorrorEverett, Marshall
History
"Lest We Forget": Chicago's Awful Theater Horror
Everett, Marshall
Iroquois Theater, Chicago -- Fire, 1903; Theaters -- Fires and fire prevention
It appears that Miss Blackburn had attended the matinee with her father,
James Blackburn. They had seats in the first balcony. In the panic father
and daughter became separated. The father escaped to the Randolph street
lobby and then started back for his daughter. He found her body on the
staircase horribly burned. Catching up the lifeless form and wrapping it
in his overcoat, Mr. Blackburn rushed to the street and procured a cab, in
which he was driven with his burden directly to the Northwestern station.
He caught the first train for Glen View and had the body of his child at
home in half an hour.
SAD ERROR IN IDENTIFICATION.
Mrs. Lulu Bennett, Chicago, whose daughter, Gertrude Eloise Swayze, 16
years old, was a victim of the holocaust, thought she would avoid the
gruesome task of making a tour of the morgues, so she asked a friend to
search for her daughter's body. After visiting a number of morgues he
finally found the body of a girl at Rolston's, in Adams street, which he
identified as Miss Swayze. The body was conveyed to the mother's
residence, but when she looked at the body she turned away with a moan
and said: "That is not my Gertrude; take it away, take it away. There has
been some terrible mistake made."
Mrs. Bennett made a personal tour of the morgues afterward and found her
daughter's body.
THE HANGER OF THE ASBESTOS CURTAIN.
The asbestos curtain at the Iroquois theater was not hung in a manner
satisfactory to Lyman Savage, the stage carpenter who put it up, according
to a statement he made to his son, C. B. Savage, head electrician at
Power's theater, a short time before his death which occurred indirectly
as a result of the fire.
Mr. Savage, who lived at 1750 Wrightwood avenue and who was a stage
carpenter in Chicago for twenty-five years, worked at the Iroquois theater
until two weeks before the fire, when he was compelled to leave because of
kidney trouble. His son ascribes his death to excitement over the Iroquois
fire. That disaster was uppermost in his mind.
Mr. Savage said: "I asked my father if he hung the asbestos curtain at the
Iroquois theater and he said he did. I then asked him if he hung the
curtain according to his own ideas, and he replied in substance: 'No, that
curtain was not hung my way, but Cummings' (the stage carpenter's) way. If
you want to see a curtain hung my way you should see the curtain in a
theater I worked on in Michigan last fall.'
"My father did not specify what point about the hanging of the curtain he
did not approve, and I do not know what feature of the work he was not
satisfied with.
"I asked my father if the curtain was hung on Manila ropes, and he said
that it was not, but that it was hung on wire cables. I know that to be a
fact, for I saw the cables myself.
"I do not desire to shield any negligent person, but Stage Carpenter
Cummings was not responsible for the lowering of the curtain only in so
far as he was responsible for having some one there to lower it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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