"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
"Dillea--God bless him, his ranks already thinning out in the orchestra
pit--struck up the 'Sleeping Beauty and the Beast' overture. Of the
thirty odd musicians in the pit not over half a dozen remained to follow
Dillea and his baton. But the little fellow, ashen pale, his eyes glued on
the raging mass of flame above, never whimpered. He kept right on, and
only left his post when the flames drove him away from his leader's stand.
When Dillea disappeared down the opening in the orchestra pit half of the
lower floor had been emptied. This I noticed only in an aside, for my eyes
were fastened on the sea of agonized, distracted little ones in the
balcony and gallery."
AN ELEVATOR BOY HERO.
The bottom of the elevator shaft in the doomed theater was a scene of
pandemonium when the stage hands tried to get the girls out. Archie
Barnard headed the chain gang and behind him were J. R. O'Mally, Arthur
Hart and William Price. As soon as the women reached the floor they began
to run wild, and had to be caught and tossed from one man to another. The
women in the first tier of dressing rooms were the first down and they
were helped out without much trouble.
On his second trip up with the elevator young Robert Smith ascended into
an atmosphere that was so thick with smoke that he could not see or
breathe. He found one of the girls on the sixth floor and then took on
another load from the fifth. By the time he had come down with these, the
flames and smoke were threatening the men in the chain. The clothing of
Barnard and William Price was on fire and their hair was burning.
Nevertheless they threw the girls out and waited for the third load.
This load came near not arriving. The smoke was so thick that Smith had to
find the girls and drag them into the elevator and by the time he had
done this he was almost overcome. The elevator was burning at the place
where the controller was located, and Smith had to place his left hand in
the flame to start the car. The hand was badly burned, but the car was
started and came down in time for the girls to receive assistance from the
men who were waiting. When the last girl was out the men left the
building.
Up in the gridiron, where the smoke was thickest, the four German boys who
worked the aerial apparatus were caught, fully sixty feet from the stage
floor, and no one had time to come to their assistance or to pay any
attention to them, because there were too many other people to be saved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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