Knoxville journal. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1874-1986, 1875-03-11

anu IOT time IL was Impossible Tor
those who had escaped the ruin to see
what or how great the disaster. The
house was filed at once with the cries of
the hurt In the gallery and the shrieking
of the terribly frightened crowd below.
Father Carroll sprang from the pulpit
and was lost in the crowd upon the floor,
which made one united rush for the
three doorways opening on Duane street.
As is usual in church congregation the
women far outnumbered the men, and,
though the doors will, when fastened
open, empty the church in five minutes,
the crush was SO strong it lasted fifteen or
twenty minutes, and was as great a
calamity as the fall of the wall itself
The crowd from the floor, reinforced
by two streams from the galleries, fought
for the doors. The three doors open in
ward. Two of them-the main door
and the east door-luckily were fastened
wide open before the crowd reached
them. The third door, which was beset
the more strongly because the disaster
on the east side of the church had sent
many frightened people hurrying over
to the west side, had one of It's two leaves
shut and left only very narrow exit.
The police outside, gathered in some
force by this time, endeayored to force
open the other leaf OF the door, but the
thrust of the crowd against it was SO
great that the attempt, two or three
times repeated, succeeded only when
the other doors had relieved the church
OF the extreme pressure. In the terrible
crush within women and men tainted
and fell anc were trampled upon. The
breath was fairly ground out OF others,
and they were lifted along insensibly in
the press.
Blinded and chokcd with dust, and
screaming with fright and pain, the 900
odd people who were able to move found
themselves in the street, mingling with a
crowd of horror-stTuck spectators as
frightened as anybody, families sepa-
rated, children lost, no one certain except
of individual safety, and no one knowing
how great or how little the disaster might
be. They were torn, bruised and
bleeding crowd whom the police had to
clear from the flags with the other crowd
that filled the street from sidewalk to
sidewalk and was pressing up to see
what had happened. Without, the church
showed no signs of the disaster. The
front wall was uninjured. When the
crowd was nearly out a company of fire.
men and policemen forced their way in
They found the aisles Uttered with
sleeves, cloaks, coats, hats and rags torn
off in the struggle, and found also few
men around the insensible bodies of a
woman and boy who had tainted in the
press, and others assisting those who
had been too much injured to walk. The
roof overhead broken through, and the
almost entire absence Of debris upon the
floor, sent them to the east gallery at
once. There they found a few heavy
timbers from the roof lying among the
remnants of the pews, and the whole
northern two-thirds of the gallery strewn
with broken and splintered boards,
bricks, slate and mortar, all wet by the
drenching rain. One woman lay under a
beam with her leg broken. and under an
other timber man was crushed fatally.
but still breathing. The church wall had
not given way, though it was driven out
of plumb and bulged inward, and only a
portion of the roof, close to the wall, the
break beginning in the middle of the
roof and spreading both ways, further to
the north than to the south.
From the first point reached by the
falling debris along the gallery and
down to the doors an irregular line of
bodies was found In some few the life
was exLincJ; OtnerS were so Dadly nurt
as to be unable to move, while not a few
were found in a state of syncope, the re-
suit of fright. The debris was light
enough to admit OF the easy extrication
of the twenty or more who lay unable to
move. The large force of police and
firemen made short work of carrying out
the dead and injured.
None of the dead were badly disfig-
0r al oil
fication. The list included: Rosanna
McGlinn, aged fifty years; Michael Nc
aged twenty-five; Catherine McGinnis,
or six. None Of them spoke or exhibited
any signs of life when found. The whole
number of injured was over fifty-only
few being seriously hurt.