Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1904-01-12
IAGRAM SHOWING BALCONY ENTRANCES.

robbed dead and dying in the midst of
the fire.
Ten baskets of money and jewelry
were picked up from the main floor when
the fire was extinguished.
Hundreds of bodies were taken from
the building. their clothing gone, their
faces charred beyond recognition.
The theater had thirty exits. All were
opened before the fire reached full head
way, but some had to be forced open.
Darkness shrouded the theater with its
hundreds of dead when the fire was un-
der control that the building could be
entered.
Neither balcony fell The seats are
ruined, the stage a wreck, and the full
loss, it is thought, may be Sl50,000 to
100000.
AS the first rush was made for the
foyer entrance TO the balccuies men,
women and children were ehrown bodily
down the steps.
The crowds fought so in their efforts
to escape that they tore away the iron
ratings of the balconies, leaping upon
the people below.
Not since the FIRE of 1871, when $50
were killed, has Chicago been mantled by
such a universal tragedy; never has it
received blow so instantaneouSly shock
ing.
The GOODNESS of Foy, of the orchestra
leader and of other players, who begged
the audience to hold itself in check. prob
ably saved many lives on the parquet
floor.
There were 1000 persons or there
Il =. -. II Al
1,740 had seats. The rest were massed
in the rear of the seats on the main floor
and the first balcony.
The newest theater in Chicago, the
playhouse declared to be freproof from
dressing rooms to capstone, burned till
its stage was steel skeleton and its
wrecked interior a charnel house.
OF the unidentified nearly all were So
badly burned that recognition was impos-
sible. Only by trinkets and burned scraps
of wearing apparel could the bodies of
hundreds be made known TO their fami-
lies.
From $3.50 o'clock. when the alarm
was sent in, to Z: 80 O'Clock, when the
doors of the theater were closed the
charred, torn and biistered bodies were
carried from tae building at the rate of
four a minute.
Perhaps the worst Of the norror-if
horror can have a superlatiye-is that
a great portion of the dead are children.
1t was holiday matinee. 1t was vaca-
ton for the school children and the col
lege boys. Not in the 365 days of the
year could there have been such an au-
dience.
Scores and scores died in the balconies
far from the exits Women and chill
dren, fearful of the rush and deciding
to trust to their seats in the hope the
fire would not reach them, met death
when it was too late to flee. They died
in the aisles and amid the wreck of the
seats.
The stage loft collapsed and tons of
fire poured over the stage. The lights
went out in the theater with this de
struction of the switchboard and all stage
connections. One column of fame rose
and swished along the ceiling of the the
ater Then this awful illumination also
was swallowed up. None may paint from
personal understanding that which took
place in that pit of flame lit darkness
None lives to tell it.
Before the first fifty bodies had been
carried from the burning theater score
or more of ghouls had commenced search
ing the piles of dead for loot. They filed
their pockets. Rings, bracelets and
watches were taken from the dead. Ear