"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 was about the middle of the second act when I noticed the blaze on the
upper left-hand corner of the stage. Those on the stage seemed to be in
semi-panic. The people didn't know what to do. Then there seemed to be
somebody giving directions for them to put down the curtains after a
burning piece of scenery or something fell on the stage. A man came out
and gave instructions for them to pull down the curtain and after that we
went out the door, downstairs and came to a door on the left hand side in
the foyer, facing the street, and in the inner vestibule. There was a man
there. He was not in uniform. He was trying to open the door, which was
locked. There was a pair--two doors--and one of them was open and a great
crowd was going out. This man was trying to unlock the other door and he
could not do it. I broke the glass, and that wouldn't do either, so I
kicked the whole door out and we escaped."
DIDN'T BOTHER ABOUT LOCKED DOORS.
That the foyer doors, which the van of the fleeing audience found closed,
were locked during the performance was the statement of Harry Weisselbach
of Chicago. He was at the ticket office in the outer vestibule off
Randolph street, some time before the fire and saw two men in an argument
regarding the doors. They were coming out of the theater.
"That's a mean trick, to lock the doors so people can't get out," said one
of the men. "They have locked the doors again," he continued, looking back
at the door man. "I wonder if there is a policeman around here."
The man's companion replied that he wasn't going to bother about the
matter and the two left the theater. Weisselbach went around to the
Northwestern University school and was there only a short time when the
fire in the theater started. His story of the fire from that viewpoint was
similar to that told by Witness Fred H. Rea.
CHAPTER XXII.
DANCED IN PRESENCE OF DEATH.
Heroes and heroines--every one of them--the members of the octette told
the coroner how they sang and danced to reassure the vast audience of
women and children while death lowered overhead and swept through the
scene loft, a chariot of flame. Modestly they revealed the part they
played in the catastrophe while billows of flame, death's red banners,
menaced their lives.
Madeline Dupont, 145 Franklin avenue, New York:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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