IN FRONT OF THE THEATER AT THE TIME OF THE FIRE,
December 30th, 1903, 4 P.M.

"LEST WE FORGET"

Chicago's Awful Theater Horror

By THE SURVIVORS AND RESCUERS

WITH INTRODUCTION BY
BISHOP FALLOWS

Presenting a Vivid Picture, both by Pen and Camera, of One of the Greatest
Fire Horrors of Modern Times.

Embracing a Flash-Light Sketch of the Holocaust, Detailed Narratives by Participants in the
Horror, Heroic Work of Rescuers, Reports of the Building Experts as to the Responsibility
for the Wholesale Slaughter of Women and Children, Memorable Fires of the Past, etc., etc.

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED WITH VIEWS OF THE SCENE OF
DEATH BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE FIRE

MEMORIAL PUBLISHING CO.

Copyright, 1904, by
D. B. McCURDY

HON. CARTER H. HARRISON,
Mayor of Chicago.

LEADING ACTRESS IN THE "BLUEBEARD, JR.,"
COMPANY. MISS BONNIE MAGINN.

DOOR TO THE FIRE ESCAPE THAT COULD
NOT BE OPENED; MANY DIED HERE.

FRONT VIEW OF THE IROQUOIS THEATER.

MEASURING THE EXIT WHERE HUNDREDS WERE KILLED AND BURNED.

FIREMEN RESCUING THE LIVING.

JEWELRY AND CLOTHING OF THE VICTIMS OF THE FIRE.

IN FRONT OF THE THEATER; LAYING DEAD ON THE SIDEWALK.

FRONT ROWS OF SEATS AND FRONT OF STAGE.

RUINS ON THE STAGE.

SKYLIGHT ON ROOF OF THEATER, WHICH WAS NAILED DOWN DURING THE FIRE.

BACK PART OF THE THEATER
WHILE THE FIRE RAGED.

INTRODUCTION.

By the Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows, D.D., LL.D.

When Chicago was burning, a little girl in a christian home in a neighboring city stamped her foot indignantly on the floor and said: "Why doesn't God put out the fire?"

The cry of many an agonized heart, beating in children of a larger growth, has been: "Why doesn't a God of wisdom and love prevent such an awful occurrence as the Iroquois fire?" "I have lost all faith in God," said a dear friend of mine, as its full meaning began to break upon him.

When we were carrying out the dying and the dead from that horrible darkness and choking smoke to the outer air, those of us who were wont to pray could only say, "O God have mercy! O God have mercy!"

But there must be no panic in our faculties. Reason must not desert her rightful throne. Blinded by tears, we must not in our consuming passion of resentment against the sickening catastrophe, attempt with our puny arms to strike against God. He did not cause the calamity. No responsibility for it can be rolled upon Him. God is law; and his laws had been palpably broken by human negligence and incompetency. God is love; and human greed and selfishness had violated every principle of love which "worketh no ill to his neighbor."

God cannot coerce man, as one by sheer brute force can another. The savage father may break both the body and soul of his child. Not so God, those of his children. Man must render a voluntary obedience to the Divine command. By pains and crosses and sorrows and shame he may be led to that surrender. But he must say with a free, princely spirit at last, "I will to do thy will O God."

It is the old problem of evil with which this terrible tragedy has brought us face to face. The generic evil, out of which all evils spring, every giant intellect of the ages has grappled with, and it has thrown them all. The question is not "Why should God permit this special evil to come to us, which has well nigh paralyzed our city and thrilled the civilized world both with horror and sympathy, but why did he create the world at all and put man upon it?" The finite cannot measure the Infinite. Imperfection belongs to the one; perfection to the other. Where there is imperfection there is always the possibility of evil.

A reverent faith will bow before the mystery and yet master it with an undaunted courage. Evil must exist if the Universe is to be. The Universe is, and it is the best possible Universe God can create. If he could have given us a better one he would not be the God we revere.

Evil is the vast, dark background against which He brings out the brightest pictures of beauty and life. From a "Paradise Lost" comes forth a "Paradise Regained" with its transcendent glory of progress, and allegiance to law and love.

"Calvary and Easter Day,
Earth's saddest day and gladdest day,
Were but one day apart."

God did not forsake his son in that supreme hour of anguish upon the Cross, when he cried out "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He has never forsaken his world, nor the sinning and suffering souls that are in it. "God in history," is faith's jubilant assertion. He is in its minutest incidents and in its mightiest events, "in the rocking of a baby's cradle and the shaking of a monarch's throne," in the fiery furnace of the Iroquois Theater and in the most joyous assembly of his adoring saints.

God permitted this great evil in harmony with man's free will; he did not cause it. The evidence is overwhelming that human law, as well as divine law, had been consciously or unconsciously defied. Two thousand lives or more were brought together in a building professedly fire-proof, and warranted as the best, because the latest of its kind, in the city if not of the continent. It was not fire proof. The law forbade the crowding of aisles; they were filled from end to end, until almost every inch of standing room was taken up. The unusual number of exits was boasted of. Most of them were unseen or actually bolted and locked. The alleged fire proof curtain was a flimsy sham, and was resolved in almost a moment of time, into scattered fragments by the surging flames. The scenery was of the most combustible material, loaded down with paint and oil. Not a bucket of water was on the stage, and only one water stand-pipe without any hose. There never had been a fire apparatus of any kind in the balcony or the gallery. There was none in the auditorium except one small water stand pipe. There was not a fireman to answer the call for help. At no time had there been a fire drill by the employes of the theater. There were no notices posted to tell what to do in case of fire. There was no fire alarm box anywhere in the structure. Common prudence and common sense were completely set aside. Coroner Traeger in advance of the final finding of the jury, is reported to have said: "Sufficient proof has been already found to show that there was gross mismanagement and carelessness. There is no need of denial. Instead of being the safest theater in Chicago, the Iroquois was the unsafest."

But He who "maketh the wrath of man to praise him," who is ever bringing good out of evil, will overrule and is already overruling this dire calamity for the well being of mankind.

As I looked upon the charred and mangled and bruised bodies of tender women and little children and once strong men; as I listened to the moans of agony, and the cry of the living, tortured ones for help and for loved friends whom they had left behind or been separated from as the fiery blast swept them onward and outward, I said in my haste, "you all are 'martyrs by the pang without the palm'." I do not say it now. Martyrs indeed they were, by the criminal neglect of recreant men. But the palm is theirs. They have saved others, themselves they could not save. Thousands, perhaps millions, will in the future be secure in their places of resort, because these went on that fateful day to their inevitable doom. Mayors, architects, fire-inspectors, managers, stage carpenters, electricians, ushers and chiefs of police in every city have had their duty burned into their inmost consciousness by this consuming fire.

Human law, which has been so flagrantly set at naught, demands punishment. The public conscience will be outraged if the guilty parties do not meet stern, inexorable justice. It is not vengeance that is sought, for "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord."

But those who are immediately responsible, have not been the only transgressors, although they must suffer for their own guilt, and also vicariously for the sins of omission by others. For we have all sinned and come short of our duty. A common blame rests upon the whole community. Many a minister has been preaching upon the fire, but has his own church, perhaps crowded to the door, been safe while his eager congregation has listened to his impassioned utterances? Suppose the unexpected had happened, and the cry of fire had been heard and bursting flames been seen, would his hearers have escaped unhurt? Not if the church doors swung inward instead of outward; not if the means of escape were not abundant; not if camp chairs blocked the passages to the street. Who then would have been responsible? The clergymen, the church officers, the janitor, with the municipal or legal authorities would have had to share the blame.

Nearly two score of our city school teachers perished in the theater. How many school buildings are in such an imperfect condition today that thousands of young lives are in constant danger? Suppose again the unexpected should happen and tragedies be enacted which might even surpass the Iroquois disaster, would the Mayor, and his subordinates and the Board of Education and the teachers be held guiltless? Yet that fearful contingency might have taken place.

It is a question seriously to be considered whether or not the great majority of the apartment buildings in Chicago have the doors of the main entrance swinging outwards. I have climbed to the fourth and fifth stories of some of these edifices in which there are dark, narrow stair cases, and all the doors swing inwards. There is not a single element of fire proofing in them. I have gone up, in open elevators, in manufactories and office buildings where scores and hundreds of persons are employed, and have never felt safe a moment while remaining in them. They are fire traps of the worst description.

There are hotels whose very construction invites the devouring flames. There are stores crowded literally with thousands of persons on special occasions, where the consequences in case of fire would eclipse by far the Iroquois holocaust. No coaxing, or pleading, or grafting, or business considerations should stand in the way both of speedy condemnation and renovation in all these cases by our city officers.

Man is greater than Mammon. The sanctity of human life must be held supreme. The body is more than raiment and the soul than the body. A new civic spirit must pervade the people as the saltness the sea. Duty must tower infinitely above self-indulgence. Law must take the place of luck.

The plain lesson for our whole country and the world is to be alert to meet the dangers which may menace human life in the home, the workshop, the manufactory, the hotel, the theater, the church. Let ample means of exit be provided and always known to audiences. The tendency to a panic is always increased when people are apprehensive of danger and believe that they are hemmed in. Fear is contagious. A crowd feels and does not reason. Self-preservation, the first law of nature, asserts itself the more vehemently when the way of escape is uncertain. Panics may not always be prevented, but their dangers will be greatly diminished if every individual knows that he may with comparative leisure get out when he wishes so to do.

In the theater let it be known that every modern contrivance has been employed to secure safety. Let the curtain be of steel and so arranged that it will have full play to work in its grooves. Let automatic sprinklers be provided. Let the firemen in costume be in plain sight. Let the policemen be in full evidence. Let the aisles always be clear. Let there be ample room between the seats, and let the seats be easily raised to afford rapid departure. Let the ushers be drilled like soldiers to keep their places and allay confusion. All these and other things of like character appeal forcibly to the reasoning powers and tend to give an audience self command.

In many of our public schools the pupils are occasionally called from their rooms, during recitation hours, and promptly assembling are marched in an orderly way out of the building. This is an excellent plan.

Two marked instances of superb self-control among children in the panic at the Iroquois theater have been brought to my notice. Two little daughters of a highly esteemed friend slid down the balusters from the upper balcony and reached the main floor unhurt. One of my Sunday School teachers met a young lad she knew, leading by the hand a girl younger than himself to her home. They were sitting together when the stampede took place. "Jump on my shoulders," said the boy. Then holding her fast by her feet, he said: "Now use your fists and fight for all you're worth." Bending his head he forced his way with his conquering heroine to life. Let every safeguard that human ingenuity can devise be furnished and yet there always remains the personal element to be taken into the account. Habitual practice of self-control in daily life will help give coolness and calmness in times of peril. Keeping one's head in the ordinary things prevents its losing when the extraordinary occurs.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MEMORIAL PRAYER.

The Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows wrote this prayer for Chicago on its appointed day of mourning. It is a prayer for all mourners of all creeds:

"O God, our Heavenly Father, we pray for an unshaken faith in Thy goodness as our hearts are bowed in anguish before Thee.

Come with Thy touch of healing to those who are suffering fiery pain.

Open wide the gates of Paradise to the dying.

Comfort with the infinite riches of Thy grace the bereaved and mourning ones.

Forgive and counteract all our sins of omission and commission.

All this we ask for Thy dear name and mercy's sake. Amen."

MEMORIAL HYMN.

Bishop Muldoon selected as the one familiar hymn most deeply expressive of the city's mourning, "Lead, Kindly Light," which he declared should be the united song of all Chicagoans on Memorial Day.

POEM BY A CHILD VICTIM.

The following poem, written by Walter Bissinger, a boy victim of the Iroquois Theater fire, fifteen years old, was composed two years ago, in honor of the tenth anniversary of the youthful poet's uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Max Pottlitzer, of Lafayette, Ind., whose son Jack, aged ten, perished with his cousin in the terrible disaster:

HAVE A THOUGHT.

VERDICT OF CORONER'S JURY.

From the testimony presented to us we, the jury, find the following were the causes of said fire:

Grand drapery coming in contact with electric flood or arc light, situated on iron platform on the right hand of stage, facing the auditorium.

City laws were not complied with relating to building ordinances regulating fire-alarm boxes, fire apparatus, damper or flues on and over the stage and fly galleries.

We also find a distinct violation of ordinance governing fireproofing of scenery and all woodwork on or about the stage.

Asbestos curtain totally destroyed; wholly inadequate, considering the highly inflammable nature of all stage fittings, and owing to the fact that the same was hung on wooden bottoms.

Building ordinances violated inclosing aisles on each side of lower boxes and not having any fire apparatus, dampers or signs designating exits on balcony.

LACK OF FIRE APPARATUS.

Building ordinances violated regulating fire apparatus and signs designating exits on dress circle.

Building ordinances violated regulating fire apparatus and signs designating exits on balcony.

Generally the building is constructed of the best material and well planned, with the exception of the top balcony, which was built too steep and therefore difficult for people to get out of especially in case of an emergency.

We also note a serious defect in the wide stairs in extreme top east entrance leading to ladies' lavatory and gallery promenade, same being misleading, as many people mistook this for a regular exit, and, going as far as they could, were confronted with a locked door which led to a private stairway preventing many from escape and causing the loss of fifty to sixty lives.

HOLDING OF DAVIS AND HARRISON.

We hold Will J. Davis, as president and general manager, principally responsible for the foregoing violations in the failure to see that the Iroquois theater was properly equipped as required by city ordinances, and that his employes were not sufficiently instructed and drilled for any and all emergencies; and we, the jury, recommend that the said Will J. Davis be held to the grand jury until discharged by due course of law.

We hold Carter H. Harrison, mayor of the city of Chicago, responsible, as he has shown a lamentable lack of force in his efforts to shirk responsibility, evidenced by testimony of Building Commissioner George Williams and Fire Marshal William H. Musham as heads of departments under the said Carter H. Harrison; following this weak course has given Chicago inefficient service, which makes such calamities as the Iroquois theater horror a menace until the public service is purged of incompetents; and we, the jury, recommend that the said Carter H. Harrison be held to the grand jury until discharged by due course of law.

RESPONSIBILITY OF WILLIAMS.

We hold the said George Williams, as building commissioner, responsible for gross neglect of his duty in allowing the Iroquois Theater to open its doors to the public when the said theater was incomplete, and did not comply with the requirements of the building ordinances of the city of Chicago; and we, the jury, recommend that the said George Williams be held to the grand jury until discharged by due process of law.

We hold Edward Loughlin, as building inspector, responsible for gross neglect of duty and glaring incompetency in reporting the Iroquois theater "O. K." on a most superficial inspection; and we, the jury, recommend that the said Edward Loughlin be held to the grand jury until discharged by due course of law.

We hold William H. Musham, fire marshal, responsible for gross neglect of duty in not enforcing the city ordinances as they relate to his department, and failure to have his subordinate, William Sallers, fireman at the Iroquois Theater, report the lack of fire apparatus and appliances as required by law; and we, the jury, recommend that the said William H. Musham be held to the grand jury until discharged by due course of law.

NEGLECT OF DUTY BY SALLERS.

We hold the said William Sallers, as fireman of Iroquois Theater, for gross neglect of duty in not reporting the lack of proper fire apparatus and appliances; and we, the jury, recommend that the said William Sallers be held to the grand jury until discharged by due course of law.

We hold William McMullen, electric-light operator, for gross neglect and carelessness in performance of duty; and we, the jury, recommend that the said William McMullen be held to the grand jury until discharged by due process of law.

We hold James E. Cummings, as stage carpenter and general superintendent of stage, responsible for gross carelessness and neglect of duty in not equipping the stage with proper fire apparatus and appliances; and we, the jury, recommend that the said James E. Cummings be held to the grand jury until discharged by due course of law.

From testimony presented to this jury, same shows a laxity and carelessness in city officials and their routine in transacting business, which calls for revision by the mayor and city council; and we, the jury demand immediate action on the following:

BUILDING DEPARTMENT.

Should have classified printed lists, to be filled out by an inspector, then signed by head of department, before any public building can secure amusement license, and record kept thereof in duplicate carbon book.

All fire escapes should have separate passageways to the ground, without passing any openings in the walls.

All scenery and paraphernalia of any kind kept on the stage should be absolutely fireproof.

Asbestos curtains should be reinforced by steel curtains and held by steel cables.

There should be two electric mains entering all places of amusement, one from the front, with switchboard in box office, controlling entire auditorium and exits, and one on stage, to be used for theatrical purposes.

All city officials and employes should familiarize themselves with city ordinances as they relate to their respective departments, and pass a rigid and signed examination on same before they are given positions. This same rule should be made to apply to those holding office.

FIRE DEPARTMENT.

All theaters and public places should be supplied with at least two city firemen, who shall be under the direction of the fire department and paid by the proprietors of said places.

We recommend that the office and detail work of the fire department, as imposed on the fire marshal, be made a separate and distinct work from fire fighting, as it is hardly to be expected of any fire marshal to give good and efficient service in both of these branches.

Also a police officer in full uniform detailed in and about said place at each and every performance.

In testimony wherof, the said coroner and jury of this inquest have hereunto set their hands the day and year aforesaid.

CHAPTER I.

THE STORY OF THE FIRE.

No disaster, by flood, volcano, wreck or convulsion of nature has in recent times aroused such horror as swept over the civilized world when on December 30, 1903, a death-dealing blast of flame hurtled through the packed auditorium of the Iroquois theater, Chicago, causing the loss of nearly 600 lives of men, women and children, and injuries to unknown scores.

Strong words pale and appear meaningless when used in describing the full enormity of this disaster, which has no recent parallel save in the outbreaks of nature's irresistible forces. There have been greater losses of life by volcanoes, earthquakes and floods, but no fire horror of modern times has equaled this one, which in a brief half-hour turned a beautiful million-dollar theater into an oven piled high with corpses, some burned and mutilated and others almost unmarked in death.

Coming, as it did, in the midst of a holiday season, when the second greatest city in the United States was reveling in the gaiety of Christmas week, this sudden transformation of a playhouse filled with a pleasure-seeking throng into an inferno filled with shrieking living and mutilated dead, came as a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

It was a typical holiday matinee crowd, composed mostly of women and children, with here and there a few men. The production was the gorgeous scenic extravaganza "Mr. Bluebeard," with which the handsome new theater had been opened not a month before. "Don't fail to have the children see 'Mr. Bluebeard,'" was the advertisement spread broadcast throughout the city, and the children were there in force when the scorching sheet of flame leaped from the stage into the balcony and gallery where a thousand were packed.

The building had been heralded abroad as a "fireproof structure," with more than enough exits. Ushers and five men in city uniform were in the aisles. All was apparently safety, mirth and good cheer.

Then came the transformation scene!

The auditorium and the stage were darkened for the popular song "The Pale Moonlight." Eight dashing chorus girls and eight stalwart men in showy costume strolled through the measures of the piece, bathed in a flood of dazzling light. Up in the scenes a stage electrician was directing the "spot-light" which threw the pale moonlight effect on the stage.

Suddenly there was a startled cry. Far overhead where the "spot" was shooting forth its brilliant ray of concentrated light a tiny serpentine tongue of flame crept over the inside of the proscenium drape. It was an insignificant thing, yet the horrible possibilities it entailed flashed over all in an instant. A spark from the light had communicated to the rough edge of the heavy cloth drape. Like a flash it stole across the proscenium and high up into the gridiron above.

Accustomed as they were to insignificant fire scares and trying ordeals that are seldom the lot of those who lead a less strenuous life, the people of the stage hurried silently to the task of stamping out the blaze. In the orchestra pit it could readily be seen that something was radically wrong, but the trained musicians played on.

Members of the octette cast their eyes above and saw the tiny tongue of flame growing into a whirling maelstrom of fire. But it was a sight they had seen before. Surely something would happen to extinguish it. America's newest and most modern fireproof playhouse was not going to disappear before an insignificant fire in the rigging loft. So they continued to sway in sinuous steps to the rhythm of the throbbing orchestra. Their presence stilled the nervousness of the vast audience, which knew that something was wrong, but had no means of realizing what that something was.

So the gorgeously attired men and dashing, voluptuous young women danced on. The throng feasted its eyes on the moving scene of life and color, little knowing that for them it was the last dance—the dance of death!

That dance was not the only one in progress. Far above the element of death danced from curtain to curtain. The fire fiend, red and glowing with exultation, snapping and crackling in anticipation of the feast before it, grew beyond all bounds. Glowing embers and blazing sparks—crumbs from its table—began to shower upon the merry dancers, and they fell back with blanched faces and trembling limbs. Eddie Foy rushed to the front of the stage to reassure the spectators, who now realized the peril at hand and rose in their seats struggling against the impulse to fly. Others joined the comedian in his plea for calmness.

Suddenly their voices were drowned in a volley of sounds like the booming of great guns. The manila lines by which the carloads of scenery in the loft above was suspended gave way before the fire like so much paper and the great wooden batons fell like thunder bolts upon the now deserted stage.

Still the audience stood, terror bound.

"Lower the fire curtain!" came a hoarse cry.

Something shot down over the proscenium, then stopped before the great opening was closed, leaving a yawning space of many feet beneath. With the dropping of the curtain a door in the rear had been opened by the performers, fleeing for their lives and battling to escape from the devouring element fast hemming them in on every side. The draft thus caused transformed the stage in one second from a dark, gloomy, smoke concealed scene of chaos into a seething volcano. With a great puff the mass of flame swept out over the auditorium, a withering blast of death. Before it the vast throng broke and fled.

Doors, windows, hallways, fire escapes—all were jammed in a moment with struggling humanity, fighting for life. Some of the doors were jammed almost instantly so that no human power could make egress possible. Behind those in front pushed the frenzied mass of humanity, Chicago's elect, the wives and children of its most prosperous business men and the flower of local society, fighting like demons incarnate. Purses, wraps, costly furs were cast aside in that mad rush. Mothers were torn from their children, husbands from their wives. No hold, however strong, could last against that awful, indescribable crush. Strong men who sought to the last to sustain their feminine companions were swept away like straws, thrown to the floor and trampled into unconsciousness in the twinkling of an eye. Women to whom the safety of their children was more than their own lives had their little ones torn from them and buried under the mighty sweep of humanity, moving onward by intuition rather than through exercise of thought to the various exits. They in turn were swept on before their wails died on their lips—some to safety, others to an unspeakably horrible death.

While some exits were jammed by fallen refugees so as to become useless, others refused to open. In the darkness that fell upon the doomed theater a struggle ensued such as was never pictured in the mind of Dante in his visions of Inferno. With prayers, curses and meaningless shrieks of terror all faced their fate like rats in a trap. The darkness was illumined by a fearful light that burst from the sea of flame pouring out from the proscenium, making Dore's representations of Inferno shrink into the commonplace. Like a horizontal volcano the furnace on the stage belched forth its blast of fire, smoke, gas and withering, blighting heat. Like a wave it rolled over every portion of the vast house, dancing.

Dancing! Yes, the pillars of flame danced! To the multitude swept into eternity before the hurricane of flame and the few who were dragged out hideously disfigured and burned almost beyond all semblance of human beings it seemed indeed a dance of death.

Withering, crushing, consuming all in its path, forced on as though by the power of some mighty blow pipe, impelled by the fearful drafts that directed the fiery furnace outward into the auditorium instead of upward into the great flues constructed to meet just such an emergency, the sea of fire burned itself out. There was little or nothing in the construction of the building itself for it to feed upon, and it fell back of its own weight to the stage, where it roared and raged like some angry demon.

And those great flues that supposedly gave the palatial Iroquois increased safety! Barred and grated, battened down with heavy timbers they resisted the terrific force of the blast itself. There they remained intact the next day. Anxiety to throw open the palace of pleasure to the public before the builders had time to complete in detail their Herculean task had resulted in converting it into a veritable slaughter pen.

"Mr. Bluebeard's" chamber of horrors, lightly depicted in satire to settings of gold and color, wit and music, had evolved within a few minutes into an actuality. Chamber of horrors indeed—grim, silent, smoldering and sending upon high the fearful odor of burning flesh.

Policemen and firemen, hardened to terrible sights, crept into the smoldering sepulchre only to turn back sickened by the sight that met their eyes. Tears and groans fell from them and they were unnerved as they gazed upon the scene of carnage. Some gave way and were themselves the subjects of deep concern. It was a scene to wring tears from the very stones. No words can adequately describe it.

Perhaps the best description of that quarter hour of carnage and the sense of horror when the seared, scorched sepulchre was entered for the removal of the dead and dying is found in the words of the veteran descriptive writer, Mr. Ben H. Atwell, who was present from the beginning to the end of the holocaust, and after visiting the deadly spot in the gray dawn of the following day wrote his impressions as follows:

"Where at 3:15 yesterday beauty and fashion and the happy amusement seeker thronged the palatial playhouse to fall a few moments later before a deadly blast of smoke and flame sweeping over all with irresistible force, the dawn of the last day of the passing year found confusion, chaos and an all-pervading sense of the awful. It seemed to radiate the chilling, depressing volume from the streaked, grime-covered walls and the flame-licked ceilings overhead. Against this fearful background the few grim firemen or police, moving silently about the ruins, searching for overlooked dead or abandoned property, loomed up like fitful ghosts.

WAVE OF FLAME GREETS AUDIENCE.

"The progress of their noiseless and ghastly quest proved one circumstance survivors are too unsettled to realize. With the opening of the stage door to permit the escape of the members of the 'Mr. Bluebeard' company and the breaking of the skylight above the flue-like scene loft that tops the stage, the latter was converted into a furnace through which a tremendous draft poured like a blow pipe, driving billows of flame into the faces of the terrified audience. With exits above the parquet floor simply choked up with the crushed bodies of struggling victims, who made the first rush for safety, the packed hundreds in balcony and gallery faced fire that moved them up in waves.

"With a swirl that sounded death, the thin bright sheet of fire rolled on from stage to rear wall. It fed on the rich box curtains, seized upon the sparse veneer of subdued red and green decorations spread upon wall, ceiling and balcony facings. It licked the fireproof materials below clean and rolled on with a roar. Over seat tops and plush rail cushions it sped. Then it snuffed out, having practically nothing to feed upon save the tangled mass of wood scene frames, batons and paint-soaked canvas on the stage.

FEW REALIZED APPALLING RESULT.

"There firemen were directing streams of water that poured over the premises in great cascades in volume, aggregating many tons. A few streams were directed about the body of the house, where vagrant tongues of flame still found material on which to feed. Silence reigned—the silence of death, but none realized the appalling story behind the awful calm.

"The stampede that followed the first alarm, a struggle in which most contestants were women and children, fighting with the desperation of death, terminated with the sudden sweep of the sea of flames across the body of the house. The awful battle ended before the irresistible hand of death, which fell upon contestants and those behind alike. Somehow those on the main floor managed to force their way out. Above, where the presence of narrower exits, stairways that precipitated the masses of humanity upon each other and the natural air current for the billows of flame to follow, spelled death to the occupants of the two balconies, the wave of flame, smoke and gas smote the multitude.

DROP WHERE THEY STAND.

"Dropping where they stood, most of the victims were consumed beyond recognition. Some who were protected from contact with the flames by masses of humanity piled upon them escaped death and were dragged out later by rescuers, suffering all manner of injury. The majority, however, who beheld the indescribably terrifying spectacle of the wave of death moving upon them through the air died then and there without a moment for preparation. Few survived to tell the tale. The blood-curdling cry of mingled prayers and curses, of pleas for help and meaningless shrieks of despair died away before the roar of the fire and the silence fell that greeted the firemen upon their entry.

"Survivors describe the situation as a parallel of the condition at Martinique when a wave of gas and fire rolled down the mountain side and destroyed everything in its path. Here, however, one circumstance was reversed, for the wave of death leaped from below and smote its victims, springing from the very air beneath them.

MANY HEROES ARE DEVELOPED.

"In a few minutes it was all over—all but the weeping. In those few minutes obscure people had evolved into heroes; staid business men drove out patrons to convert their stores into temporary hospitals and morgues; others converted their trucks and delivery wagons into improvised ambulances; stocks of drugs, oils and blankets were showered upon the police to aid in relief work and a corps of physicians and surgeons sufficient to the needs of an army had organized.

"Rescues little short of miraculous were accomplished and life and limb were risked by public servants and citizens with no thought of personal consequences. Public sympathy was thoroughly aroused long before the extent of the horror was known and before the sickening report spread throughout the city that the greatest holocaust ever known in the history of theatricals had fallen upon Chicago.

"While the streets began to crowd for blocks around with weeping and heartbroken persons in mortal terror because of knowledge that loved ones had attended the performance, patrol wagons, ambulances and open wagons hurried the injured to hospitals. Before long they were called upon to perform the more grewsome task of removing the dead. In wagon loads the latter were carted away. Undertaking establishments both north, south and west of the river threw open their doors.

DEAD PILED IN HEAPS.

"Piled in windows in the angle of the stairway where the second balcony refugees were brought face to face and in a death struggle with the occupants of the first balcony, the dead covered a space fifteen or twenty feet square and nearly seven feet in depth. All were absolutely safe from the fire itself when they met death, having emerged from the theater proper into the separate building containing the foyer. In this great court there was absolutely nothing to burn and the doors were only a few feet away. There the ghastly pile lay, a mute monument to the powers of terror. Above and about towered shimmering columns and facades in polished marble, whose cold and unharmed surfaces seemed to bespeak contempt for human folly. In that portion of the Iroquois structure the only physical evidences of damages were a few windows broken during the excitement.

EXITS WERE CHOKED WITH BODIES.

"To that pile of dead is attributed the great loss of life within. The bodies choked up the entrance, barring the egress of those behind. Neither age nor youth, sex, quality or condition were sacred in the awful battle in the doorway. The gray and aged, rich, poor, young and those obviously invalids in life lay in a tangled mass all on an awful footing of equality in silent annihilation.

"Within and above equal terrors were encountered in what at first seemed countless victims. Lights, patience and hard work brought about some semblance of system and at last word was given that the last body had been removed from the charnel house. A large police detail surrounded the place all night and with the break of day search of the premises was renewed, none being admitted save by presentation of a written order from Chief of Police O'Neill. Fire engines pumped away removing the lake of water that flooded the basement to the depth of ten feet. As the flood was lowered it began to be apparent that the basement was free of dead.

SURVEY SCENE WITH HORROR.

"Searchers gazing down from the heights of the upper balcony surveyed the scene of death below with horror stamped upon their faces. Fire had left its terrifying blight in a colorless, garish monotony that suggests the burned-out crater of an extinct volcano. In the wreckage, the scattered garments and purses, fragments of charred bodies and other debris strewn within thousands of bits of brilliantly colored glass, lay as they fell shattered in the fight against the flames. A few skulls were seen.

FIND BUSHELS OF PURSES.

"Five bushel baskets were filled with women's purses gathered by the police. A huge pile of garments was removed to a near-by saloon, where an officer guards them pending removal to some more appropriate place. The shoes and overshoes picked up among the seats fill two barrels to overflowing.

"The fire manifested itself in the flies above the stage during the second act. The double octette was singing 'In the Pale Moonlight' when the tragedy swept mirth and music aside, to give way to a more somber and frightful performance. Confusion on the stage, panic in the auditorium, phenomenal spread of the incipient blaze, failure of the asbestos fire curtain to fall in place when lowered followed in rapid progress, with the holocaust as the climax."

But to return to the narrative of what happened immediately after the first alarm, as gathered by the collaborators of this work. There was a wild, futile dash—futile because few of the terrified participants succeeded in reaching the outer air. Persons in the rear of the theater building knew full well that a holocaust was in progress. There fire escapes and stage doors thronged with refugees, half clad and hysterical chorus girls flocking into the alley, and crackling flames leaping higher and higher from the flimsy stage and bursting from windows, told only too plainly what was in progress within. At the front, half a block distant, in Randolph street, ominous silence maintained. A mere handful of people burst out, those who had occupied rear seats and pushed by the ushers who sought to restrain them and quiet their fears. Loiterers about the ornate lobby scarcely sniffed a suggestion of impending disaster before the fire apparatus began to arrive with clanging bells.

Those ushers who held back the straining, anxious spectators who sought escape at the first mild suggestion of danger—for what widespread woe are they responsible!

Mere boys of tender years and meager experience, what knew they of the awful possibilities behind the spell of excitement upon the stage? Only two weeks before there had been an incipient blaze there that had been extinguished without the knowledge of the audience.

Like all the rest of the world that now stands in shuddering wonderment, these boys scoffed at the thought of real danger in the massive pile of steel, stone and terra cotta, with its brave and shimmering veneer of glistening marble, stained glass of many hues, rich tapestries and drapings, and cold, aristocratic tints of red and old gold. And so with uplifted hands they turned back those whose sense of caution prompted them to leave at the outset. Surely disaster could not overtake the regal Iroquois in its first flush of pomp, pride and superiority. It was their sacred duty to see that no unseemly break marred the decorum established for the guidance of audiences at the Iroquois, and that duty was fully discharged.

Thus it was that the wild hegira did not begin from the front until the arrival of the fire department. Then pandemonium itself broke loose. All restraining influences from the stage had ceased. At the appearance of the all-consuming wave of flame sweeping across the auditorium the boy ushers abandoned their posts and fled for their lives, leaving the packed audience to do the same unhampered.

Unhampered—not quite! Darkness descending upon the scene, doors locked against the frightened multitude, fire escapes cut off by tongues of flame and exits and stairways choked with the bodies of those who died fighting to reach safety hampered many—at least the six hundred carried out later mangled and roasted, their features and limbs twisted and distorted until little semblance to humanity remained. After the first wild dash, in which a large portion of those on the main floor escaped, the blackness of night settled upon the long marble foyer leading from Randolph street to the auditorium. It settled in a cloud of black, fire laden smoke—death in nebulous forms defying fire fighter and rescuer alike to enter the great corridor. None entered, and, more pitiful still, none came forth.

While this situation maintained in front a vastly different scene unfolded in the rear. The theater formed a great L, extending north from Randolph street to an alley and, in the rear, west to Dearborn street. This last projection, the toe of the L, was occupied by the stage, theoretically the finest in America, if not in the world. Thus the auditorium and stage occupied the extreme northern part of the structure, paralleling an alley extending on a line with Randolph street from State street to Dearborn street. This alley wall was pierced by many windows and emergency exits and was studded with fire escapes built in the form of iron galleries, and stairways hugging close to the wall leading to the alley.

To these exits and the long, grim galleries of fire escapes the herded, fire-hunted audience surged. Those who reached doors that responded to their efforts found themselves pushed along the galleries by the resistless crush behind. As was the case in front, half way to safety another stream of humanity was encountered pouring out at right angles from another portion of the house. Coming together with the impact of opposing armies the two hosts of refugees gave unwilling and terrible answer to the time worn problem as to the outcome of an irresistible force encountering an immovable body. Both in front and rear great mounds of dead spelled annihilation as the answer. In front over 200 corpses piled in a twenty-foot angle of a stairway where two balcony exits merged told the terrible tale, and rendered both passages useless for egress, the dead being piled up in wall-like formation ten feet high.

In the rear an alley strewn with mangled men, women and children writhing in agony on the icy pavement, or relieved of their sufferings by death, lent eloquent corroboration to the solution of the problem.

It was in the rear that the true horror of the fire was most fully disclosed. There no towering mosaic studded walls or kindly mantle of smoke shut out the horrid sight. From its opening scene to its silent, ghastly denouement the successive details of this greatest of modern tragedies was forced upon the view to be stamped upon the memory of the unwilling beholder with an impressiveness that only death will blot out.

After the first great impact had hurled the overflow of the fire-escape gallery into the alley yawning far below, the crush of humanity swept onward, downward to where safety beckoned. When the advance guard had all but reached the precious goal, with only a few feet of iron gallery and one more stairway to traverse, the crowning horror of the day unfolded itself. Right in the path of the advancing horde a steel window shutter flew back, impelled by the terrific energy of an immeasurable volume of pent up superheated air.

The clang of the steel shutter swinging back on its hinges against the brick wall sounded the death knell of another host of victims, for in its wake came a huge tongue of lurid flame, leaping on high in the ecstasy of release from its stifling furnace. Fiercely in the faces of the refugees beat this agency of death. Before its withering blast the victims fell like prairie grass before an autumn blaze. Those further back waited for no more, but precipitated themselves headlong into the alley rather than face the fiery furnace that loomed up barring the way to hope.

It would be well to draw the curtain upon this awful scene of suffering and death in the gloomy alley were it not for one circumstance that stands forth a glorious example of the heights that may be attained by the modest hero who moves about unsuspected in his daily life until calamity affords opportunity to show the stuff he is made of. High up in the building occupied by the law, dental and pharmacy schools of the Northwestern University, directly across the alley from the burning theater, a number of such men were at work. They were horny handed sons of toil—painters, paper hangers and cleaners repairing minor damage caused by an insignificant fire in the university building a few weeks before. One glance at the seething vortex of death below transformed them into heroes whose deeds would put many a man to shame whose memory is kept alive by stately column or flattering memorial tablet.

Trailing heavy planks used by them in the erection of working scaffolds, they rushed to a window in the lecture room of the law school directly opposite the exit and fire escape platform leading from the topmost balcony of the theater. By almost superhuman effort and ingenuity they raised aloft the planks, scarce long enough to span the abyss, and dropped them. The prayers of thousands below and a multitude stifling in the aperture opposite were raised that the planks might fall true. All eyes followed their course as they poised in mid-air, then descended. Slow seemed their fall, a veritable period of torture, and awed silence reigned as they dropped.

Then there arose a glad cry. With a crash the great planks landed true, the free ends squarely upon the edge of the platform of the useless fire escape, the others resting firmly upon the narrow window ledge where the painters stood defying flame, smoke and torrents of burning embers and blazing sparks hurled upon them as from the crater of a volcano.

Death alley had been bridged! Across the narrow span came a volume of bedraggled humanity as though shot from a gun. A mad, screaming stream, pushed on by those behind, simply whirled across the frail support, direct from the very jaws of death, the blistering gates of hell.

Only for a moment, a brief second it seemed, the wild procession moved. Yet in that limited period scores, perhaps hundreds, poured from the seething inferno—practically all that escaped from the lofty balcony that was a moment later transformed into the death chamber of helpless hundreds. Then the wave of flame, previously described, swept over the interior of the theater, greedily searching every nook and corner as though hungry for the last victim within reach.

The last refugees to cross the narrow span, the dizzy line sharply drawn between life and death in its most terrifying aspect, staggered over with their clothing in flames, gasping, fainting with pain and terror. The workmen, students and policemen who had rushed to their assistance dashed across into the heat and smoke and dragged forth many more who had reached the platform only to fall before the deadly blast. Then the rescuers were beaten back and the fire fiend was left to claim its own.

And claim them it did, searching them out with ruminating tongues of flame. Over every inch of paint and decoration, every tapestry, curtain and seat top it licked its way with insinuating eagerness. It pursued its victims beyond the confines of the theater walls, grasping in its deadly embrace those who lay across windows or prostrate on galleries and platforms. Thousands gazed on in helpless horror, watching the flames bestow a fatal caress upon many who had crept far, far from the blaze and almost into a zone of safety. With a gliding, caressing movement that made beholders' blood run cold it crept upon such victims, hovered a moment and glided on with sinuous motion and what approached a suggestion of intelligence in searching out those who fled before it. A shriek, a spasmodic movement and the victims lay still, their earthly troubles over forever.

A few minutes later, possibly not more than half an hour after the discovery of the fire, when the firemen had beaten back the flames to the raging stage another procession moved across that same plank again. It moved in silence, for it was a procession of death. The great tragedy began and ended in fifteen minutes. Its echoes may roll down as many centuries, compelling the proper safeguarding of all places of amusement, in America at least. If so, the Iroquois victims did not give up their lives in vain.

When the removal of the victims across the improvised bridge over death alley ended the tireless official in charge of that work, James Markham, secretary to Chief of Police O'Neill, had checked off 102 corpses. No attempt was made to keep count of the dead as they were removed from other portions of the theater and by other exits. The counting was done when the patrol wagons, ambulances, trucks and delivery wagons used in removing the dead deposited their ghastly loads at the morgues.

The instance cited was not an isolated example of heroism, but rather merely a striking instance among scores. Police, firemen and citizens vied with each other in the work of humanity. Merchants drove out customers and threw open their business houses as temporary hospitals and morgues. Others donated great wagon loads of blankets and supplies of all kinds and the municipal government was embarrassed by the unsolicited relief funds that poured in. All manner of vehicles were given freely for the removal of dead and injured. So informal was the removal of the latter that many may have reached their homes unreported. For that reason a complete list of the injured may never be secured.

An illustration of the possibilities in that direction is found in the case of one man who wrapped the dead body of his wife in his overcoat and carried it to Evanston, many miles away, where the circumstances became known days later when a burial permit was sought. Another is the case of an injured man who revived on a dead wagon en route to a morgue and was removed by friends.

All these and other details are elaborated upon elsewhere, together with the touching story of the scores of young women employed in the production, "Mr. Bluebeard," who would have been stranded penniless in a strange city a thousand miles from home but for the prompt and noble relief afforded by Mrs. Ogden Armour.

CHAPTER II.

FIRST AID TO THE INJURED AND CARE FOR THE DEAD.

On the heels of the firemen came the police, intent on the work of rescue. Chief O'Neill and Assistant Chief Schuettler ordered captains from a dozen stations to bring their men, and then they rushed to the theater and led the police up the stairs to the landing outside the east entrance to the first balcony.

The firemen, rushing blindly up the stairs in the dense pall of smoke, had found their path suddenly blocked by a wall of dead eight or ten feet high. They discovered many persons alive and carried them to safety. Other firemen crawled over the mass of dead and dragged their hose into the theater to fight back the flames that seemed to be crawling nearer to turn the fatal landing into a funeral pyre.

O'Neill and Schuettler immediately began carrying the dead from the balcony, while other policemen went to the gallery to begin the work there.

In the great mass of dead at the entrance to the first balcony the bodies were so terribly interwoven that it was impossible at first to take any one out.

"Look out for the living!" shouted the chief to his men. "Try to find those who are alive."

From somewhere came a faint moaning cry.

"Some one alive there, boys," came the cry. "Lively, now!"

The firemen and police long struggled in vain to move the bodies.

The raging tide of humanity pouring out of the east entrance of the balcony during the panic had met the fighting, struggling crowd coming down the stairs from the third balcony at right angles. The two streams formed a whirlpool which ceased its onward progress and remained there on the landing where people stamped each other under foot in that mad circle of death.

In a short time the blockade in the fatal angle must have been complete. Then into this awful heap still plunged the contrary tides of humanity from each direction. Many tried to crawl over the top of the heap, but were drawn down to the grinding mill of death underneath. The smoke was heavy at the fatal angle, for the majority of those taken out at that point bore no marks of bruises.

Many, and especially the children, were trampled to death, but others were held as in a vise until the smoke had choked the life from their bodies.

It was toward this that the firemen directed O'Neill and Schuettler as they rushed into the theater. The smoke was still heavy and the great gilded marble foyer of the "handsomest theater in America" was somber and dark and still as a tomb, except for the whistling of the engines outside and now and then the shouting of the firemen. Water was dripping everywhere and stood inches deep on the floor and stairs.

Two flickering lanterns shed the only light by which the policemen worked, and this very fact, perhaps, made their task more horrible and gruesome, if such a thing were possible.

GREAT PILE OF CHARRED BODIES FOUND EVERYWHERE IN THEATER.

All through the gallery the bodies were found. Some were those of persons who had decided to stay in their seats and not to join in the mad rush for the doors and run the risk of being trampled to death. Many of them no doubt had trusted to the cries, "There is no danger; keep your seats!"

They had stuck to their seats until, choked by the heavy smoke, they had been unable to move.

Some bodies were in a sitting position, while others had fallen forward, with the head resting on the seat in front, as though in prayer. Almost all were terribly burned.

In the aisles lay women and children who had staid in their seats until they finally were convinced that the danger was real. Then they had attempted to get to the door.

The smoke was so heavy the firemen worked with difficulty, but finally it cleared and workmen who were hastily sent by the Edison company equipped forty arc lights, which shone bravely through the smoke. With this help the firemen searched to better effect, and found bodies that in the blackness they had missed.

"Give that girl to some one else and get back there," shouted Chief Musham to a fireman. The fireman never answered but kept on with his burden.

"Hand that girl to some one else," shouted the battalion chief.

The fireman looked up. Even in the flickering light of the lantern the chief carried one could see the tears coming from the red eyes and falling down the man's blackened cheeks.

"Chief," said the fireman, "I've got a girl like this at home. I want to carry this one out."

"Go ahead," said the chief. The little group working at the head of the stairs broke apart while the fireman, holding the body tightly, made his way slowly down the stairs.

One by one the dead were taken from the pile in the angle. The majority of them were women. On some faces was an expression of terrible agony, but on others was a look of calmness and serenity, and firemen sometimes found it hard to believe they were dead. Three firemen carried the body of a young woman down the stairs in a rubber blanket. She appeared alive. Her hands were clasped and held flowers. Her eyes were closed and she seemed almost to smile. She looked as though she was asleep, but it was the sleep of death.

In the dark and smoke, with the dripping water and the dead piled in heaps everywhere, the Iroquois theater had been turned into a tomb by the time the rescue parties had begun their work.

MOAN INSPIRES WORKERS IN MAD EFFORT TO SAVE.

The moan that the frantic workers heard as they struggled to untangle the mass of bodies gave the police hope that many in the heap might be alive.

"We can't do it, chief," shouted one of the policemen. "We can't untangle them."

"We must take these bodies out of the way to get down to those who are alive," replied the chief. "This man here is dead; lay hold, now, boys, and pull him out."

Two big firemen caught the body by the shoulders and struggled and pulled until they had it free. Then another body was taken out, and then again the workers seemed unable to unloose the dead. Again came that terrible moan through the mass.

"For God's sake, get down to that one who's alive," implored O'Neill, almost in despair.

The policemen pulled off their heavy overcoats and worked frantically at the heap. Often a body could not be moved except when the firemen and police dragged with a "yo, heave," like sailors hauling on a rope. As fast as the bodies were freed one policeman, or sometimes two or three, would stagger down the stairs with their burdens.

Over the heap of bodies crawled a fireman carrying something in his arms.

"Out of the way, men, let me out! The kid's alive."

The workers fell back and the fireman crawled over the heap and was helped out. He ran down the stairs three steps at a time to get the child to a place where help might be given before it was too late. Then other firemen from inside the theater passed out more bodies, which were handed from one policeman to another until some on the outside of the heap could take the dead and carry them downstairs.

Suddenly a policeman pulling at the heap gave a shout.

"I've got her, chief!" he said. "She's alive, all right!"

"Easy there, men, easy," cried Schuettler; "but hurry and get that woman to a doctor!"

A girl, apparently 18 years old, was moaning faintly. The policeman released her from the tangled heap, and a big fireman, lifting her tenderly in his arms, hurried with her to the outside of the building.

"There must be more alive," said the chief. "Work hard, boys."

There was hardly any need to ask the men to work harder, for they were pulling and hauling as though their own lives depended on their efforts. Everybody worked.

The reporters, the only ones in the theater besides the police and firemen, laid aside their pencils and note books and struggled down the wet, slippery stairs, carrying the dead. Newspaper artists threw their sketch books on the floor to jump forward and pick up the feet or head of a body that a fireman or policeman found too heavy to carry alone. Constantly now a stream of workers was passing slowly down the stairs. Usually two men supported each body, but often some giant policeman or fireman strode along with a body swung over his shoulders. Coming down the stairs was a fireman with a girl of 16 clasped in his arms.

"Isn't that girl alive?" asked the chief.

"No," shouted two or three men, who had jumped to see. "She's dead, poor thing, rest her soul," said the fireman reverently, and then he picked his way down the stairs. Half-way down the marble steps two arms suddenly clasped the fireman's neck.

He started so he missed his footing and would have fallen had not a policeman steadied him.

"She's alive, she's alive!" shouted the fireman. "Git out of the way, there, out of the way, men," and he went dashing headlong out into the open air and through the crowd to a drug store.

One child after another was taken from the heap and passed out to be carried downstairs. Some were little boys in new suits, sadly torn, and with their poor little faces wreathed in agony. On their foreheads was the seal of death.

A big fireman came crawling from the heavy smoke of the inner balcony. He carried a girl of 10 years in his arms. Her long, flaxen hair half covered the pure white face.

A gray haired man with a gash on his head apparently had fallen down the stairs. A woman's face bore the mark of a boot heel. A woman with a little boy clasped tight in her arms was wedged into a corner. Her clothes were almost torn from her, and her face was bruised. The child was unmarked, as she had thrown her own body over his to protect him.

Out of the mass of bodies when the police began their work protruded one slender little white hand, clinching a pair of pearl opera glasses, which the little owner had tried to save, in spite of the fact that her own life was being crushed out of her. Watches, pocketbooks and chatelaine bags were scattered all through the pile. One man was detailed to make a bag out of a rubber coat and take care of the property that was handed to him.

While the police were working so desperately at the fatal angle, another detail of police and firemen were working on the third floor. At the main entrance of the gallery lay another heap of bodies, and there was still another at the angle of the head of the stairs leading to the floor below. Here the sight was even worse than the terrible scene presented at the landing of the first balcony.

The bodies on the landing were not burned. A jam had come there, and many had been stamped under foot and either killed outright or left to suffocate. Many of the bodies were almost stripped of clothing and bore the marks of remorseless heels.

After these had been carried out, the firemen returned again and again from the pitchy blackness of the smoke-filled galleries, dragging bodies, burned sometimes beyond recognition.

NONE LEFT ALIVE IN GALLERY.

While now and then some one had been found alive in the other fatal angle, no one was rescued by searchers in the top gallery. The bodies had to be laid along the hall until the merchants in State street began sending over blankets. Men from the streets came rushing up the stairs, bending under the weight of the blankets they carried on their shoulders. Soon they went back to the street again, this time carrying their blankets weighed down with a charred body.

DEAD AND DYING CARRIED INTO NEARBY RESTAURANT BY SCORES.

The scenes in John R. Thompson's restaurant in Randolph street, adjoining the theater, were ghastly beyond words.

Few half hours in battle bring more of horror than the half hour that turned the cafe into a charnel house, with its tumbled heaps of corpses, its shrieks of agony from the dying, and the confusion of doctors and nurses working madly over bodies all about as they strove to bring back the spark of life.

Bodies were everywhere—piled along the walls, laid across tables, and flung down here and there—some charred beyond recognition, some only scorched, and others black from suffocation; some crushed in the rush of the panic, others but the poor, broken remains of those who leaped into death. And most of them—almost all of them—were the forms of women and children. It is estimated that more than 150 bodies were accounted for in Thompson's alone.

The continuous tramp of the detachments of police bearing in more bodies, the efforts of the doctors to restore life, and the madness of those who surged in through the police lines to ransack piles of bodies for relatives and friends, made up a scene of pandemonium of which it is hard to form a conception. There was organization of the fifty physicians and nurses who fought back death in the dying; there was organization of the police and firemen; but still the restaurant was a chaos that left the head bewildered and the heart sick.

The work was too much for even the big force of doctors that had flocked there to volunteer their services. Everybody in which there was the slightest semblance of life was given over to the physicians, who with oxygen tanks and resuscitative movements sought to revive the heart beats. As soon as death was certain the body was drawn from the table and laid beneath, to give place to another. But systematic as was this effort, heaps of bodies remained which the doctors had not touched.

In a dozen instances, even when the end of the work was in sight, a hand or foot was seen to move in this or that heap. Instantly three or four doctors were bending over rolling away the dead bodies to drag forth one still warm with life. In a thrice the body was on a table and the oxygen turned on while the doctors worked with might and main to force respiration. Almost always it was in vain—life went out. Two or three were resuscitated, though it is uncertain with what chances of ultimate recovery. One of these was a Mrs. Harbaugh, who had been brought in for dead and her body tossed among the lifeless forms that ranged the walls.

When the first rush of people from the theater gave notice of the fire to persons in the street there were less than a score of patrons in the restaurant. These rushed into the street, too, while a panic spread among the waitresses and kitchen force. By this time fire company 13 was on the ground in the alley side of the theater and the police were at the front attempting to lead the audience from its peril with some semblance of order. In another minute women and children with blistered faces were dashing screaming into the street, taking refuge in the first doorways at hand.

Another minute, and every policeman knew in his heart the horror that was at hand. A patrolman dashed into Thompson's and ordered the tables cleared and arranged to care for the injured. Captain Gibbons dispatched another policeman to issue a general call for physicians and a detachment to take charge of the restaurant and the first aid to be administered there. Within five minutes the first of the injured were being laid on the marble topped dining tables where the police ambulance corps were getting at work.

These steps scarcely had been taken when word came from the burning theater that the fire was under control, but that the loss of life would be appalling. Chief O'Neill hurried to the scene, sending back word as he ran that Secretary James Markham should summon doctors and ambulances from every place available. The west side district of the medical schools and hospitals was called upon to send all the volunteers possible, together with hospital equipment. One hundred students from Rush Medical College were soon on their way by street car and patrol wagon to the scene.

TERRIBLE REALITY COMES TO AWESTRICKEN CROWD.

It was only fifteen minutes after the first tongue of flame shot out from behind the scenes that a lull came in the awful drama of death within the theater. The firemen had quenched the fire and all the living had escaped. All that remained were dead. But now the scenes within the improvised hospital and morgue rose to the height of their horror.

But for a narrow lane the length of the cafe the floor was covered with bodies or the tumbled bundles of clothing that told where a body was concealed. And over the scene of the dead rose the groans of the tortured beings who writhed upon the tables in the throes of their passing. And over the cries of the suffering rose the shouts of command of the Red Cross corps—now the directions of Dr. Lydston as to attempts at resuscitation, now the megaphone shouts of Senator Clark ordering the disposition of bodies and the organization of the constantly arriving volunteer nurses.

In the narrow lane of the dead surged the policemen, bringing ever more and more forms to cord up beneath the tables. Then came the press of people, who, frantic with anxiety, had beaten back the police guard to look for loved ones in the charnel house. There was Louis Wolff, Jr., searching for two nephews and his sister. There was Postmaster Coyne, who had hurried from a meeting of the crime committee to lend his aid. There were Aldermen Minwegen and Alderman Badenoch, and besides them scores of men and women anxiously looking and looking, and nerving themselves to fear the worst.

"Have you found Miss Helen McCaughan?" shrieked a hysterical woman. "She's from the Yale apartments, and——"

"I'm looking for a Miss Errett—she's a nurse," cried another.

"My little boy—Charles Hennings—have you found him, doctor?" came from another.

From every side came the heartrending appeals, while the din was so great that no single plaint rose above the volume of sounds. And all the time the doorway was a place of frightful sights.

"O, please go back for my little girl," gasped a woman whose face and hands were a blister and whose clothing was burned to the skin. She staggered across the threshold and fell prone. Her last breath had gone out of her when two policemen snatched up the body and bore it to an operating table.

"O, where's my Annie?" screamed another woman, horribly burned, whom two policemen supported between them into the restaurant. But at the word she collapsed, and, though three physicians worked over her for ten minutes, she never breathed again.

ONE LIFE BROUGHT BACK FROM DEATH.

Of a sudden Dr. E. E. Vaughan saw a finger move in a mass of the dead against the far wall of the restaurant.

"Men, there's a live one in there," he cried, and, while others came running, the physician flung aside the bodies till he had uncovered a woman of middle age, terribly burned about the face, and with her outer garments a mass of charred shreds.

In a second the woman was undergoing resuscitative treatment on a table, while the oxygen streamed into her lungs. Two doctors worked her arms like pumps, while a nurse manipulated the region of the heart. At length there was a flutter of a respiration, while a doctor bending over with his stethoscope announced a heart beat just perceptible. Another minute passed and the eyelids moved, while a groan escaped the lips.

"She lives!" simply said Dr. Vaughan, as he ordered the oxygen tube removed and brandy forced between the lips. In five minutes the woman was saved from immediate death, at least, though suffering terribly from burns. She was just able to murmur that her name was Mrs. Harbaugh, but that was all that could be learned of her identity before she was taken away to a hospital.

ONE HUNDRED FEET IN AIR, POLICE CARRY INJURED ACROSS ALLEY.

Over a narrow, ice covered bridge made of scaffold planks, more than 100 feet above the ground the police carried more than 100 bodies from the rear stage and balcony exits of the Iroquois theater to the Northwestern University building, formerly the Tremont house. The planks rested on the fire escape of the theater and on the ledge of a window in the Tremont building.

Two men who first ventured on this dangerous passageway in their efforts to reach safety, blinded by the fire and smoke, lost their footing and fell to the alley below. They were dead when picked up.

The bridge led directly into the dental school of the university, and at one time there were more than a score of charred bodies lying under blankets in the room. The dead were carried from the pile of bodies at the theater exits faster than the police could take them away in the ambulances and patrol wagons.

As soon as the police began to take the injured into the university building the classrooms were drawn upon for physicians, and in a few minutes professors and dental students gathered in the offices and stores to lend their assistance. Wounds were dressed, and in cases of less serious injury the unfortunates were sent to their homes. In other cases they were sent to hospitals.

When the smoke had cleared away the rescuers first realized the extent of the horror. From the bridge could be seen the rows of balcony and gallery seats, many occupied by a human form. Incited by the sight, the police redoubled their efforts, and heedless of the dangers of the narrow, slippery bridge, pressed close to each other as they worked.

While a dozen policemen were removing the dead from the theater, twice as many were engaged in carrying them to the patrol wagons and ambulances at the doors of the university building. All the afternoon the elevators carried down police in twos and fours carrying their burdens of dead in blankets. So fast were they carried down that many of the patrol wagons held five and more bodies when they were driven away.

CROWDS OF ANXIOUS FRIENDS.

Behind the lines of police that guarded the passage of the dead, hundreds of anxious men and women crowded with eager questions. The rotunda of the building between 3 and 7 p. m. was thronged by those seeking knowledge of friend or relative who had been in the play. Some made their way to the third floor and looked hopelessly at the charred bodies lying there. In one corner lay the bodies of husband and wife, clasped in each other's arms. From under one sheltering blanket protruded the dainty high heeled shoes of some woman, and from the next blanket the rubber boots of a newsboy.

A Roman Catholic priest made his way into the room. He was looking for a little girl, the daughter of a parishioner.

"Have you the name of Lillian Doerr in your list?" he asked James Markham, Chief O'Neill's secretary, who was in charge of the police. Markham shook his head.

"She and another little girl named Weiskopp were with three other girls," continued the priest. "Three of the girls in the party have got home, but Lillian and the Weiskopp girl are missing. I suppose we must wait until all the bodies are identified before we can find her."

The priest's mission and its futile results were duplicated scores of times by anxious inquirers.

BALCONY AND GALLERY CLEARED.

The rescue work went on until the balcony and gallery had been cleared of the dead, and then the police were called away. The exits were barred and the hotel building cleared of visitors. While the work of rescue was going on inside the building, the streets about the entrances were thronged with thousands of curious spectators. As soon as an ambulance backed up to the entrance the crowd pressed forward to get a view of the bundles placed in the wagon. Even after this work had ended the crowds remained in the cold and darkness.

Many of the small shops and offices in the University building threw open their doors to the injured and those who had been separated from their friends. When those who had escaped by the alley exits reached Dearborn street they found the doors of the Hallwood Cash Register offices, 41 Dearborn street, open to them. L. A. Weismann, Harry Snow, Harry Dewitt, and C. J. Burnett of the office force at once prepared to care for the injured. More than fifty persons were cared for.

While these men were caring for strangers they themselves were haunted by the dread that Manager H. Ludwig of the company with his wife and two daughters were among the dead. The Ludwig family lives in Norwood Park, and the father had left the office with them early in the afternoon. At 6 o'clock he had not returned for his overcoat.

FINANCE COMMITTEE OF CITY COUNCIL ACTS PROMPTLY.

"Spare no expense," was the order given by the finance committee of the council which was in session when the extent of the disaster became known at the city hall. First to grasp the import of the news was Ald. Raynier, whose wife and four children had left him at noon to attend the matinee. With a gasp he hurried from the room to go to the scene.

"You are instructed," said Chairman Mavor to Acting Mayor McGann, "to direct the fire marshal, the chief of police, and the commissioner of public works to proceed in this emergency without any restrictions as to expense. Do everything needful, spend all the money needed, and look to the council for your warrant. We will be your authority."