The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-31


 ing in the two upper balconies and in
 the railways back of them.
 The theater is modelled after the Opera Comique in Paris, and from the rear of each balcony there are three doors leading out to passageways to- ward the front of the theater. Two of these doorways are at the end of the balcony and one is in the center. The
 audience in it's rush for the outer air
 seemed to have, for the greater part,
 chosen to flee to the left etrance and to attempt to make its way down the
 eastern stairway leading into the lobby
 of the theater.
 Outside of the people burned and suf- located by gas, it was in these two
 doorways on the first and second bal
 comics that the greatest loss of life oc-
 cured. When the firemen entered the
 building the dead were found stretched in a pile reaching from the head of the
 stairway, at least eight feet from the
 door, back to point about five feet iii
 the rear of the door.
 AwfuI Fight for Life. This mass of dead bodies in the center of the doorway reached to within two feet of the top of the passageway. All
 Of the corpses at this point were wo- men and children. The fight for life which must have taken place at these two points is something that is simply beyond human power adequately to de- scribe. Only faint idea of it's horror could be derived from the aspect of the
 bodies as they lay. Women on top of these masses os dead had been over taken by death as they were crawling on their hands and knees over the bod ies of those who had died before
 Others lay with arms stretched out in the direction toward which lay life and safety, holding in their hands frag- ments of garments not their own. They were evidently torn from their clothing of others whom they had endeavored to
 pull down and trample under foot as they fought for their own lives. As the
 police removed layer after layer of dead in these doorways, the sight be-
 came too much even for police and fire men hardened as they are to such scenes to endure. The bodies were in such an inextricable mass and so tight Iy were they jammed between the sides Of the door and the walls that it was 1 impossible to lift them one by one and
 carry them out. The only possible thing to do was to seize a limb or some DOT tion os the body and pull with main strength. Men worked at the task with
 tears running down their cheeks and l the sobs of the rescuers could be heard even in the hall below where this awful
 scene was being enacted. A number of men were compelled to abandon their i task and give it over to others whose
 nerves had not as vet been shaken, by the awful experience. As one by one the bodies were dragged out of the wal i ter soaked blackened mass of corpses
 the spectacle became more and more heartrending. There were women whose
 clothing was torn completely from their
 bodies above the waist, whose bosons had been trampled into pulp and whose
 faces were marred beyond all power of ] Identification. Bodies lay in the first
 and second balconies in great numbers. Tn some places they were piled up in the aisles three and four deep where l one had fallen and others ripped over the prostrate forms and all had died where they lay, evidently suffocated by 1 the gas Others were bent over backs Fos seats where they had been thrown 1 by the rush of people for the doors and
 killed with hardly a chance to rise from ! their seats. One man was found with
 his back bent nearly double, his spinal column having been fractured as he r 1,oa JeL found cut nearly in half by the back of the seat, she having been forced over
 1t sace ,downwards. l Fire Escapes Not Completed.
 The theater had been constructed but a short time and all it's equipment was
 not in place. This was unfortunately the case with a fire escape in the rear of the building. The small iron ball. comics to which the iron ladders were to be attached were up but the ladders had not yet been constructed. When i the panic was at its height a great number of women ran for these fire es- Ecapes, only to find as they emerged from the doorway upon the little iron platform that they were thirty to fifty 1CCS HUH tIS SIUuiluy d llEt ptHlllu dIlu no method of escape in front. Those who reached the platform first endeav- Iored to hold their footing and to keep back the crowd that pressed upon them from the rear. The effort was utterly useless and in a few moments the iron Hedges were janmed with crowds of i women who screamed, fought and tore at each other like maniacs. This lasted but brief interval and the rush from the interior of the building became so violent that many of them were crowd ed off and fell to the granite pavement below. Others leaped from the plat form, fracturing legs and arms and two were picked up at this point with fractured skulls, having been killed in- stantIy. George H. Elliott, secretary of the Ogden Gas company, was in a building directly across this alley and noticing smoke went down to ascertain it's cause When he reached the street the women were already dropping into the alley and Elliott inemdiately rush. ed for ladder in an effort to save as
 many as possible. No ladder was avail able and the only method of assistance they were able to devise was to hur- riedly lash some blanks together and throw them across to the affrighted women on the platforms with instruc- tions to place the end firmly on the iron frame work. Before this could be done a fearful loss of time ensued the