"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
"In the second act, in the 'Pale Moonlight' scene, I was sitting on a
bench, and there were two or three more of the boys. About ten feet from
the front of the fly gallery I saw a bright light. The other boys saw it,
I guess, at the same time and we ran over there. I saw a small blaze on
one of the borders. I don't know exactly which one. I hallooed across the
stage to Joe Dougherty. He was the man taking Seymour's place. Seymour was
sick. I said, 'Down with the asbestos curtain.' Smithey and I got
tarpaulins and we slapped the flame with them. We did the best we could
and then it got out of our reach. It went right along the border toward
the center. Then it burned and one end of it fell down, bent like. Then it
blazed all over and I saw there was no possibility of doing anything. I
ran upstairs to the sixth floor and hallooed to the girls. I led them down
in front of me, and I kept telling them to be careful and not to have a
stampede or anything of that kind, and then I came down and went outside
the building."
SCHOOL TEACHER'S THRILLING EXPERIENCE.
Alice Kilroy, 67 Oregon avenue, Chicago, a Chicago school teacher:
"During the performance I stood in the upper balcony, right near the
alley; a few feet from the top exit south, about the third or fourth seat
from the end. I stood right back of that. When the fire first began we
thought it was part of the performance and my sister said to me, very
calmly, 'Even if there is no fire, let us go out in the exit.' We knew
this was an exit because we had seen it opened. An usher had been out and
we stepped out there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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