The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling RuinWalker, James Herbert
History
The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin
The largest morgue is at the Fourth ward school-house, a two-story brick
building which stands just at the edge of the high mark of the flood.
The bodies were laid across the school children's desks until they got
to be so numerous that there was not room for them, excepting on the
floor. Soldiers with crossed bayonets keep out the crowd of curious
people who have morbid appetites to gratify. None of these people are
of Johnstown. People of Johnstown do not have time to come to look for
friends, and they give the morgue a wide berth. Those who do come have
that dazed, miserable look that has fallen to all the residents of the
unhappy town. They walk through slowly and look at the bodies and go
away looking no sadder nor any less perplexed than when they came in.
One of the doctors in charge at the morgue told me that many of these
people had come in and looked at the bodies of their own fathers and
brothers and gone away without recognizing them, though not at all
disfigured.
"That's Jim."
In some instances it had been necessary for other persons, who knew the
people, to point out the dead to the living and assure them positively
of the identification before they could be aroused. I saw a railroad
laborer who had come in to look for a friend. He walked up and down the
aisles like a man in a trance. He looked at the bodies, and took no
apparent interest in any of them. At last he stopped before one of them
which he had passed twice before, muttered, "That's Jim," and went out
just as he had come in. Two other identifications I saw during the hour
I was there were just like this. There was no shedding of tears nor
other showing of emotion. They gazed upon the features of their dead as
if they were totally unable to comprehend it all, and reported their
identification to the attendants and watched the body as it was put into
a coffin and went away. Many came to look for their loved ones, but I
did not see one show more grief or realization of the dreadful character
of their errand than this. Arrangements with the morgues are complete
and efficient. The bodies are properly prepared and embalmed and a
description of the clothing is placed upon each.
Hospital Arrangements.
The same praise cannot be given the hospital arrangements. The only
hospital is a small wooden church, in which apartments have been roughly
improvised, with blankets for partitions. Only twenty patients can be
cared for here, and the list of wounded is more than two hundred. The
rest have been taken to the private houses that were not overcrowded
with the homeless survivors, to farmers in the country and to outlying
towns. Two have died. It did not occur to any one until lately to get
any nurses from other places to take care of the patients, and even now
most of the nurses are Johnstown people who have lost relatives and have
their own cares. These persons sought out the hospital and volunteered
for the work.
A Procession of Coffins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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