The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1876-12-21


disengaged each body. Two or three
men seized its stiffcned limbs ard
pressed them into coffin, q pair OF
and the fremen overhead dragged it
even with tie 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.
At nine o'clock in the evening two
hundred and thirty bodies had been
removed from the ruins, and seventy
more were in plain sight.
sUFFocATINe BY HUNDREDS.
Samuel W. Hastings, who had charge
OF the upper gallery, testified before the
fire marshal: 1 think there were about
four hundred people there; left Officer
Lott and his son at the gallery door and
went .,own stairs with the tickets; I
went out for moment and then return
ed and then went into the parquet by
the footlights; the audience rose in ex-
citement and then I saw fire dropping
from the flies; the actors first told the
audience to keep their seats, and then to
pass out Quietly; I opened the door, 30
they could get out, and then went out to
the gallery, but could not get more than
eight or ten steps up the stairs on ac-
count of the smoke; occasionally per-
son came down the stairs, but pot over a
dozen or fifteen in all; could hear cries
for help up the stairs, but could not
hear what was said the lights were all
out, then, and those in the gallery we've
in darkness and enveloped in smoke; the
cries of the people in the gallery stopped
long before left the stairs; they were
undoubtedly suffocated; I think they
were piled on top of each other fifteen
feet high, and we've suffocated before
they could get out; the gallery stairs
were about eight feet wide from top to
bottom, and people could pass down
three abreast with ease; it does not take
more than five or eight minutes to
empty the gallery; there was no hose or
other apparatus in the gallery for extin-
guising fire; there were, I think, three
windows opening on Floods alley, bat
no stairs or other means of egress in
that direction; there were no fire escapes
on the building that know Of; if there
had been other stairs from the gallery
more people could have got ont, but I
think they would have been blocked,
especially if there were any jogs, as in
the stairs used; say again that the
reason the people did not get off the
gallery was because they tumbled on top
of each other, blocked up the passage
way and were suffocated; no wall, floor
or stairs fell while l was there.
IDENTIFYING THE DEAD.
As friends and relatives went through
the morgue looking for the last re-
mains of lost ones, they moved between
the rows of dead examining the charred
clothing and auy other things that might
be recognized but when they found
the objects of their search and satisfied
themselves of the correctness of the
Identification, their calmness ended.
Outbreaks of horror and grief, following
these recognitiors, were so frequent
that at scarcely ary time was there a
cessation of outcries lasting many
minutes. Pale men and women went
from body to body in regular order,
peering into what had been faces, lift
ing what remained of clothing, aud do
ing the duty with systematic thorough
ness. Others went here and there
irregularly, now spellbound by what
they saw, and now distracted by sorrow,
SO that they made no certain progress,
aud found theif dead ones only by
chance. Often knife, a button, ring
or a shred of clothing was the only
thing by which they could identify the
missing