Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-01-08
CHICAGO HOLOCAUST.
Coroner Probing For Truth Regard
 ing 565 Deaths.

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 CHICAGO, Jan. S.-The coroner's in.
 QueGt over the remains of the victims of the Iroquois theater disaster has be.
 gun in the city council chamber. The coroner's official list of dead for use at the inquest contains 565 names.
 Ella N. Churcher testified that at the matinee she, with her mother and neph- CIV, occupied seats i'll the fourth row from the front in the second balcony. She said that she saw shower of sparks come down the oft side of the stage, and then the curtain came down and Eddie Foy, stepping in front of it. urged the audience to remain seated. She kept her seat until the fire singed chiffon boa about her neck and then started to make her escape. All three of them reached the street safely Miss Churcher was positive that the curtain tus curtain, but the curtain which had been lowered after the first act. She remembered distinctly, she said, that this curtain had painted upon 1t an au- tumn landscape scene. This curtain and no other, she insisted, was the one that was lowered after the fire started.
 Frank Houseman, the next witness, declared that he bought two seats in an upper box for the matinee. the tick ct seller telling him that he had only these two and three others left. He testified that there was no light in the body of the theater as he passed through and none in the stairway which he was compelled 10 ascend in order to reach the box where his@seats were located. From where he sat he could see the start of the fire and wit messed the efforts of the stage hands to slap it out with their hands, He remarked to his friend, The outside of this place looks pretty good to me" And they left the box. He reached the first floor before the fire started and opened door which. he was told by an usher, was an exit. Outside of this door was another of iron which it was impossible to open
 Lester Sackett of Elgin, H.. in com pany with two ladies and a little girl, occupied seats in the third row of the first balcony He.made his way out of rear exit and down fire escape, taking the ladies and child with him. Tn going down the fire escape he had great trouble in closing an iron shutter which projected across the stairway at right angles and practically shut off all escape. He managed to close this, shutter after a desperate struggle.
 Eddie Foy. the comedian of the "Bluebeard" company, was then sworn. He said he went to the matinee with his six-year-old boy, whom he desired to place in the front row of seats di- rectly before tEe stage He sent him the stage manager, who brought him back and said there were no seats. He sent the boy downstairs and put him fin an alcove next to the switchboard directly below the place where he first saw the fire.
 During the second act. MT. Foy tes- tifed, he was in his dressing room and heard noise, to which hc had At first paid little attention. He said to him. self, "Are they lighting again down thereY thinking over quarrel which had occurred few days previous. The noise grew stronger and stronger, and, becoming anxious about the boy, he ran down the steps from his dressing room to the stage, picked up the boy right in front of the switchboard and then looked up and saw a fireman above him who was trying to put out the fire
 At that time the two lower borders up the side of the canvas near the edge of the proscenium arch were burning. He ran with the boy to a small door at the back of the stage, and when he arrived there a number of people were trying to escape. He threw the boy to man, telling him to take him out, and then ran back to the stage and out to the footlights. The audi ence was getting into a panic, as he thought, and in order to quiet the peo- pie he called to the stage hands, Drop the curtain!" and to the musicians, Keep up your music!' He urged the audience repeatedly to remain quiet and not get excited. When the curtain came down it stuck about three feet above his head. The rest of MT. Foy's testimony Is as follows:
 "I shouted for them to lower the cur tain, and then felt what would de scribe as sort of cyclone. It was whirl of smoke, and when I looked around the scenery had broken and was flying all around me. There was a heavy cold draft, evidently from the outside, and there was an explosion of some kind, as though you would light a match and the whole box go off. I did not know whether to go front or back, as 1t looked about an even thing for my life no matter which way I went. Then I thought of my boy and that perhaps the man did not take him out, so I went for the back door where the people were trying to get out, and then I went out myself and found my