Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1904-01-06
AWFUL DISASTER
OCCURS IN CHICAGO
Fire Breaks Out During Matinee in Iroquois
Theater--Panic- Stricken the Audience
Attempts to Escape-Loss of
Life Placed at 57l.

| filed with fragments OF human bodies
were taken from the building.
Like Rats in a Trap.
Most grewsome were the sights in
the upper balcony of the burned thea
ter, when the police and firemen began
removing the bodies. There $50 per-
sons, caught like rats in trap, had
died in fearful agony. Along the rail
guarding the edge of the pit were
stacked the bodies of the hapless vic
Tins, their limbs drawn and faces set.
Indications in the highest balcony were
that in the last few seconds of the
struggle for life the agonized people
had crushed forward, intent upon
throwing themselves to the floor below.
Their arms were interlocked and the
muscles set SO hard that much force
was necessary to separate them. In
the end of the gallery nearest the stage
the fire had done it's most awful work.
| There were found bodies charred be-
yond the possibility of recognition.
some with shreds of clothing still
clinging to them. A number of the
victims bodies had burned to the seats,
SO that the f1remen were either forced
to rend the bodies in removing them
or use axes on the seats to which they
| we're fastened.
| Men fell on their knees and prayed.
Men and women cursed. A rush was
| made for the Randolph street exits In
their fear the crowds forgot the many
side exits, and rushed for the doors at
which they had entered the theater.
Little boys and girls were thrown to
one side by their stronger companions.
The 12-year-Old son of Mrs. F. A. Nor
! gan. Of 1876 Webster avenue, was lit
orally scalped by a man who grasped
the boy by the hair and threw him to
one side. With his hands the man tore
the boys hair out. The mother held to
her sons arm. Alive, but injured, both
were carried out
Removal OF the Bodies.
| Coroner Traeger and his two physi-
clans, Joseph Springer and Otto Lewke,
arrived at the fire early. The coroner
took personal charge of the removal of
men working under his ORDERS In their
-; first efforts to take out the dead, the
rescuing parties had much trouble.
Numbers of the dead were nearly nude,
having been stripped of their clothing
j in the rush for safety. The heat of the
ing it combined to make the bodies
Shiny and most difficult to handle.
There was less difficulty after thou
sand blankets had been brought from
the store of Marshal Field & Co., half
a block away. Firemen and spectators
worked together in removing the last
200 bodies, which were taken from the
building in less than an hour. AS fast
as the blanketed forms were taken to
the street doctors examined them. The
dead were ordered taken away, the liv-
ing hurried to the temporary hospitals
in adjacent buildings.
Bodies Piled ON Sidewalk.
When the dead became so numerous
that the ambulances could not carry
them away as fast as taken to the street
it was the first thought of the rescuers
to carry the bodies to the shelter of ad-
| jacent business places. Twenty dead
were carried into Thompson's restau-
rant, east of the theater There they
were piled beneath tables and covered
with tarpaulins and blankets from the
fire wagons. The crush of bodies final
| ly became so great that sheltering them
was impossible. Wrapped in blankets
they were piled along the sidewalk for
a hundred feet, four narrow lanes divid-
ing the piles and affording passages for
the firemen and police.
The Burned Theater
The 1rOquois theater was built at 2
| cost of $450,000. 1t was opened to the
public with it's first and only attraction
November Is. Managers Davis and
Powers said Wednesday that there was
! but $4,000 insurance on the building.
1t was supposed to be absolutely fire.
proof, and little insurance was consid-
cred necessary.
Greatest in COuntry's History.
The lroquois theater was vastly more
destructive to human life than any other
playhouse fire in the history of this
country. The fire next to it in point OF
lives lost occurred December 5, 1876. II
Conway's Brooklyn theater, Brooklyn
N. Y. Here 295 of the audience persisted
In fierce flames. The day after Christ.
mas In 1911, while the play, The Bleed.
ing Num-" was being performed in q
theater at Richmond, Va, a fire started
that burned 70 persons to death, among
them the governor of the state, George
w. Smith. Only two European theate1
catastrophes approach that of the Local
playhouse. On December 9, 1891, the
Ring theater in Vienna burned and 875
lives were lost In the destruction OF
Lehman's theater in St. Petersburg be-
tween 600 and 700 persons we're killed
In the great Chicago fire of 1871, the
largest confagration of modern times
In which 2,124 acres were devastated