The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1904-01-01
ASBESTOS CURTAIN STUCK
WHEN HALF WAY DOWN.

/ uOI lI0 dSUCSlOS CuI lcllCo " NOl Il
ASBESTOS CURTAIN STUCK
WHEN HALF WAY DOWN
| AS soon as the fire was discovered
Eddie Foy, the chief comedian of the
| company shouted to lower the curtain
and this was Immediately done. II
| descended about half way and stuck
| The fire thus was given practically q
| flue through which a strong draft was
setting, aided by the doors which had
| been thrC wn open in the front Of TIE
| theater.
With a roar and bound, the flames
| shot through the opening over the
| heads of people on the first floor and
reaching clear up to those in the first
| balcony, caught them and burned
them to death where they sat.
Immediately following this rush OF
| flames there came an explosion which
lifted the entire roof of the theater
| from it's walls, SCATTERING the great
skylight into fragments. AS soon as
| the flames first appeared beyond the
| curtain a man in the rear of the hall
shouted Fire, fire!" and the entire
audience rose as one person and made
FOR the doors.
It is believed that the explosion was
caused by 3e flames coming in con-
tact with the gas reservoirs of the
theater, causing them to burst.
Will j. Davis, manager of the thea
ter, said after the catastrophe that if
the people had remained in their seats
and had not been excited by the cry
80 cin oil 1ffn would howe
been lost This is, however, contra
dicted by the statements Of the fire.
men, who found numbers of people
sitting in their seats, their faces di-
rected toward the stage as if the per
Torrance were still going on. 1t was
the opinion of the firemen that these
people had been suffocated at once by
the flow of gas which came from be-
hind the asbestos curtain.
ABOUT THIRTEEN HUNDRED
PEOPLE IN THE PLAYHOUSE.
AS near as can be estimated about
1900 people were in the theater. Three
hundred of these were on the first
floor, the balance being in the two up
per 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 are three doors
leading out to passageways toward
the front of the theater. Two of
these doorways are at the end OF the
balcony and one being in the center
The audience in its rush for the outer
air seems to have, for the greater
part. chosen to flee to the left en-
trance and to attempt to make it's way
down the eastern stairway leading in
to the lobby of the theater.
Outside of the people burned and
suffocated by gas, it was in these two
doorways on the first and second bal
comics that the greatest loss of life
occurred. 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 in rear of the door
This mass of dead bodies in the CEN
ter of the doorway reached to within
two feet of the top of the passageway.
All of the corpses at this point were
women and children.
The fight for life which must have
taken place at these two points, is
something that is simply beyond hui
man power to adequately describe.
Only a faint idea of it's horrors could
be derived from the aspect of the
bodies as they. lay.