Hearts Afire (19 page)

Mr.
Studley
escaped by other by other means, but
Mr. Murdoch, seeking his dressing room to save some valuables, perished. The
large majority of those on the stage waiting for their entrances made rapid
exits by the rear doors, except two or three scene shifters who heroically
remained behind to aid others, and suffered burns that would prove fatal.

The ushers for the most part preserved their presence of mind and endeavored
to enforce order among the rushing crowd, as did also the police in attendance.
Mr.
Rochfert
, the head usher, broke open a small door
at the farther end of the vestibule and increased the facilities of exit into
the open air, which regularly consisted of two doors five feet wide, opening
upon Washington Street. Mr.
Rochfert
also entered the
auditorium and endeavored to quell the excitement, but without effect.

The gallery was filled mostly by young men and boys. The only means of
escape, was by a separate, angular stairway. Here the panic was the worst. A
few got out in the first rush. A jam occurred at the second landing above the
lobby, and the staircase was blocked by a massive human wall. Some jumped over
the stair rail, others dropped into the parquet. Eventually the stairs gave way
and all fell into the lobby, the crushed and bleeding men and women and boys
bound and wound into a solid mass, were suffocated by the weight and the smoke.
Those who escaped this awful death, bruised and maimed, and with clothing torn,
scarcely knowing how they came forth from the falling stairway.

A fire alarm had been immediately sent from the First Precinct Station-House,
which is located next the theater, and a minute or two after a general alarm
and also a call for the reserved force of all the precincts. But by the time
the engines were in position and at work the fire was beyond control. The
occupants of the orchestra chairs and parquet had had but little difficulty in
making good their escape, but at least two-thirds and perhaps even a larger
fraction of the audience were still in the dress-circle and gallery. The lowest
estimate of the number in the gallery is that five or six hundred people were
in that portion of the house, and from among these were most of the three
hundred deaths. The exit from the first balcony was down a single flight of
stairs in the rear of the vestibule. Down these stairs the people came in
scores, leaping and jumping in wild confusion. The way out from the upper
gallery was down a short flight of stairs starting from the south wall of the
building, thence by a short turn down a long flight against the same wall to
the level of the balcony, and from this floor down a cased flight into
Washington Street. The main floor and first balcony were soon emptied through
their respective exits, but for the five or six hundred panic-stricken gallery
spectators to pass safely through the tortuous passage described was next to an
impossibility. Every indication points to the belief that, suffocated by the
smoke forced down like a wall from the roof, the mass of those in the upper
gallery thronged about the entrance to the stairs and were either blocked there
so as to make exit impossible, or were unable even to make the attempt to
escape, and sank down, one upon the other, to fall in a mass into the horrible
pit under the vestibule when the supports of the gallery were burned away.
Those near the entrance of the stairs were, probably, the only ones who were
able to escape from this terrible slaughter-pen. There was comparatively little
outcry here, and this again would seem to indicate that suffocation had
intervened to numb the sensibilities of the hundreds to whom death was to come
by fire.

As soon as the flames reached the rear of the theater, near the entrances,
where the hundreds of people were contending wildly, the horror of the scene
was increased tenfold. Some leaped madly from the gallery upon the orchestra
chairs, and only a few were sufficiently self-possessed to lower themselves by
the railings. One man escaped by the small window at the head of the gallery
stairs, letting himself down upon the roof of the station-house. Another, who
attempted the same escape, was suffocated or became insensible as he reached
the window, and was seen sitting motionless there until swept away. A few
lowered themselves from the second-story windows on the Flood’s alley side. But
the great mass stood helplessly blocked in. The smoke became unbearable, and
the police and firemen who had been able to penetrate the crowd at all were
obliged to retire. They seized as many of the paralyzed bodies as they could
and dragged them into the street, passing on their way out over piles of
insensible men and boys. Fifteen minutes after the fire broke out the interior
of the theater was wrapped in flames. Shortly after the roof fell in, and, at
11.45, a half an hour after the fire started, the broad east wall fell with a
terrible crash. The few who had reached the first flight of stairs from the
street were taken out and carried into the First Precinct Station-House. The
crowd that had escaped from the theater remained in the adjacent streets. Men
without hats or coats, with clothing torn and faces bruised; women bonnet less
and disheveled, weeping convulsively—every face was a picture of woe and
fright.

The crowd was quickly and largely augmented by the anxious throng of
sight-seers, and to keep them within the proper limits required the efforts of
nearly the entire reserved police force of the city. The Police Commissioners
and Superintendent Campbell, and Inspector
Waddy
; the
Chief of the Fire Department, Thomas F. Nevins, and Fire Marshal
Keady
, had been telegraphed for and came promptly to the
scene of the conflagration, and did everything in their power to provide for
the sufferers, for many had been brought out bruised and burned. The firemen
had not fairly begun their labors before it became evident that it was
impossible to save the theater or any part of it; the entire attention of the
force was therefore directed to the surrounding buildings, which meanwhile were
seriously threatened. Several small buildings on the opposite side of Flood’s
alley were partially destroyed, and at one time the First Precinct
Station-House was in imminent danger. The fire was, however, confined to the
theater by the united exertions of the entire fire department. The interior
decorations of the theater were of such light and inflammable material that the
fire was quite beyond their control, so far as the theater was concerned, and
the roof being equally light and inflammable, it required constant exertion to
keep the fire from spreading.

At about three o’clock in the morning the fire had been nearly extinguished,
and the major part of the throng of sight-seers had gone to their homes,
ignorant of the fatal consequences of the conflagration.

The flames had subsided sufficiently to permit the firemen to make an
investigation near the main entrance of the theater. Chief Nevins passed over
the trembling floor of the hallway toward the inner doorway. Inside the doors
the flooring had fallen in, leaving a deep pit of fire and flame, from which a
dense smoke and steam ascended. Here a sickening spectacle met his horrified
gaze. Close up to the flaming furnace, and clinging to the splintered verge of
the demolished flooring, was the body of a woman. Her hands clasped the
frame-work of the door in a desperate grasp. She had fought hard for life.
Evidently she would have escaped had not the flooring given way beneath her.
All the clothing was burnt off, and the features were so blackened that she was
unrecognizable, and the body was removed to the Morgue.

At 4 o’clock in the morning the flames were put out, and the heap of debris
was black and cold. From the vestibule platform the firemen saw a most horrible
spectacle. The mound that had at first appeared to be simply a heap of ashes
proved to be almost wholly composed of human bodies. Heads, arms, legs, shoulders,
shoes, and here and there entire human remains protruded through the surface of
the mound. Policemen and firemen hesitated for a moment before leaping down
upon the sickening heap. An inclined plane of plain deal boards was hastily
constructed to reach from the tender vestibule platform to the pit, and upon
this a ladder was rested. Upon the ladder the men went to and fro. Upon the
plane, coffins were hauled up and down. At first the firemen lifted the bodies
from the debris, after having carefully dug around them and loosened them, and
ten minutes was consumed in exhuming each body. But as it became apparent that
there were scores and scores of human remains, and that a day, and perhaps a
night, would end before the last corpse was taken out, less tender means were
used in the operation, and the work assumed a more earnest and energetic
character. Instead of five men, ten men set at work among the ruins, while on
the vestibule platform a dozen sturdy firemen manned the short ropes by which
the coffins, laden with human remains, were drawn up and dragged to the
sidewalk. All the bodies were bent into horrid shapes, assumed in the struggles
of death by suffocation and by burning. Nine out of ten of the corpses had an
arm upraised and bent to shield the face. Something was missing from every one.
This one lacked a head or a foot, this a nose, an ear, or a hand, another its
fingers or the crown of the skull. Very many broken limbs and protruding bones
were found, and there were gashes in the upturned faces or fractures in the
smooth-burned skulls, so that each corpse as it was dragged into the light was
a new revelation of ghastliness. A few lusty pulls disengaged each body. Two or
three men seized its stiffened limbs and pressed them into a coffin, a pair of sharp-pointed
tongs clutched the coffin, and the firemen overhead dragged it even with the
street, where a cloth was thrown over the coffin, and it was dragged to the
dead-wagons, which kept coming and going all day long.

Opera glasses, chains, studs, purses, and even watches were found under and
on the bodies, and were thrown to one side upon a spread-out newspaper.
Opposite the main entrance at the rear of the theater other firemen and police
officers delved in the ashes and brought forth corpse after corpse to be boxed
and carried away to the Morgue, with the same rapidity as at the other door. At
four o’clock, when a hundred and forty-seven bodies had been exhumed on the
Washington street side, fifty-three had been carried from the alley-way in the
rear. Moving among the firemen, either as spectators or supervisors of the
ghastly work, were Chief Engineer Nevins, Police Commissioner Hurd, Fire
Commissioner McLaughlin, Assistant Engineer Farley, and ex-Police
Superintendent Folk.

Surrounding the ruins, in Washington, Johnson and Adams streets, were
throngs of people who stood close together on the sidewalks and left only room
enough for one vehicle at a time to traverse the roadways. The dead-wagons
continually passing and re-passing, kept this passage way clear, and were
themselves the objects of the most interest. During the entire day there were
continual quarrels between the police officers and the over curious people.
Pickpockets—nearly all boys—were numerous, and were brought into the First
Precinct station two at a time. In the station were coats, and hats, canes,
shawls, bundles, valises filled with costumes, and numerous other articles
taken from the ruins of the theater.

When the first wagon, laden with the dead from the fire, halted in front of
the Morgue, the gathering pressed forward and crushed its way between the wagon
and the doorway. The police officers appealed to the people to be calm, and at
length the bodies were taken into the building.

Daylight had not set in when the arrival of the dead bodies was announced.
It was thought at first that the first was the remains of a young woman, but a
vest displaying a watch and chain was revealed. About nine o’clock the second
body, that of a young man whose hands were clasped, and who wore a plain silver
ring and a
gutta
percha
ring, was received. Nicholas
Kieley’s
remains were
next, and the Rev. Father
Kieley
, who wept as though
his heart was broken, recognized his brother.

Upon the body of the fourth corpse was a gold open-faced watch, to which was
attached a thin gold chain. On the back of the watch was the words, “A mother’s
gift.” The fifth body was that of a stalwart man, whose hands were fixed over
his face. Then there was a black man whose features were beyond recognition.
Following was a body whose head had been nearly consumed, and next one whose
arms had been burned away. On this man was a bright gold collar button. Then
there were the remains of a young woman. The limbs were drawn up, the body was
twisted, and the features could not be recognized.

The remains of a boy about fourteen years of age were next carried in. A man
with a checked shirt was put at his side. The bodies of three young boys and
three girls were next received. On one of the bodies was a hunting-case silver
watch, with a gold chain and a piece of the Hell Gate telegraphic wire as a
charm. The timepiece was in good order and marked the correct time.

Before 3 o’clock seventy-eight bodies were strewn about in the Morgue, and a
long line of men and women were constantly passing in and out of the building.
Nearly every person had permits from the Coroner’s office, and the women
visitors were in the majority.

A most shameful and vulgar feature of the inroad upon the Morgue was the
vast number of women who, through mere curiosity, insisted upon entering the
building. Women who were naturally nervous and hysterical forced their way in
and risked good clothing and head dress in their wild attempts to hover over
the bodies. They began to sob and gesticulate long before they reached the hallway
in which twenty-three blackened corpses were in line on the marble floor.