"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
"We saw the fire start about the time we made our entrance, but continued
with our 'turn,' reaching the center of the stage. The fire was spreading
and large sparks and fragments of burning material were falling, but we
kept on until Miss Williams fainted. I saw the people in front commence to
get excited and I put up my hands and told the people to keep as quiet and
move out as easily as they could and not to get excited. I looked up again
and I saw the drop curtain coming down. I should call it the asbestos
curtain. It came down, as near as I could judge, about six or eight feet.
Then I turned to look for my partner and she had gone. I looked on the
stage to see her and I could not find her. She had gone off the stage. I
merely went off the stage, out of the same side I had entered--I could not
say exactly which entrance--and then out of the stage door, which was wide
open."
Victor Lozard, 235 Bower street, Jersey City:
"I was coming out with the boys, eight of us, at the right side. We came
up and met our partners and we got down as far front as the footlights,
when Miss Williams fainted, which attracted my attention to some flames
up at the first entrance on the right side. I then immediately turned
around and helped pick Miss Williams up, and by that time my partner had
left me, and I left the stage on the right side. I went up and was going
to leave by the stage door, but people were going out there, and so I went
over to the back drop, to the right of the stage, and there, about the
middle of the stage, I was blown down or knocked down, I don't know what
happened to me, and the next I knew of myself I was out in the alley. I
don't know how I got there."
John J. Russell, Boston, Mass.:
"I had taken the first twelve steps of the dance when I first noticed the
fire. It was in the first entrance, prompt side, about fifteen feet above
the stage. The flame then was about five inches in length.
"I noticed that for about a second. I continued on with the rest of the
business, and me and my partner, as I always had done in that number, went
down to the footlights. When we got there we continued in the business for
about three or four seconds after getting down. Then Miss Williams
fainted. The flames were falling to the stage, large pieces of burning
material, and seemed to create quite a little disturbance among the people
in the audience. I spoke to a number and tried to quiet them.
"I told them to be seated, that everything would be all right, and to
quiet down, and quite a number did. After Miss Williams fainted it
attracted my attention, of course, to what was going on on the stage. I
saw one of the moonlight boys pick Miss Williams up in his arms and go
toward the stage entrance, other members of the octet following, except
myself. I staid until they were out of sight. I left the stage by the
second entrance on the prompt side. I went down stairs by the stairway
beside the stage elevator.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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