Chicago's Awful Theater Horror Part 18

CHAPTER X.

HOW THE NEW YEAR WAS USHERED IN.

The New Year came to Chicago with m.u.f.fled drums, two days after the calamity that threw the great metropolis into mourning.

Scarcely a sound was heard as 1904 entered.

Jan. 1--day of funerals--was received in silence. Streets were almost deserted, even downtown. Men hurried silently along the sidewalks. There were not half a dozen tin horns in the downtown district where ordinarily the blare of trumpets, screech of steam whistles, volleys of shots and the merriment of late wayfarers make the entrance of a new year a period of deafening pandemonium.

Merrymakers were quiet when in the streets and subdued even in the restaurants. Noise, except in a few scattered districts, was unknown.

It was a remarkable, spontaneous testimony to the prevalent spirit throughout the city. Mayor Harrison had asked, in an official proclamation, that there be no noise, but few of those who desisted from the usual practices of greeting the New Year knew that they had been requested to be silent.

MOURNING IN EVERY STREET.

There were mourning families in every neighborhood; crepe in every street; grief stricken relatives throughout the city; unidentified dead in the morgues, and sufferers in the hospital. The citizens did not need to be requested to be quiet.

Jan. 1, 1904, meant the beginning of funerals and the burial of dead who were to have lived to take part in merrymaking.

A year before in downtown Chicago the din was an ear-splitting racket of horns, whistles, yells, songs, and exploding cannon.

A year before the downtown streets were filled with hundreds of laughing men and women, roystering parties filling the air with the uproar of tin horns and revolvers.

NOISE SEEMS A SACRILEGE.

That night there were a messenger boy in La Salle street blowing a tin horn and a man at Wabash avenue and Harrison street. The other pedestrians looked at them as if they considered the noise a sacrilege. It was with the same feeling that they heard the blowing of the factory whistles in the few cases where the engineers forgot.

A year before the outlying districts were awakened by the firing of cannon and the shouts of people in noisy celebrations. That dread night there was nothing to keep residents awake except grief.

MAYOR ASKS FOR SILENCE.

To insure this condition, as the only fitting one, Mayor Harrison had issued a proclamation in which he said:

"On each recurring New Year's eve annoyance has been caused the sick and infirm by the indulgence of thoughtless persons in noisy celebrations of the pa.s.sage of the old year. The city authorities have at all times discouraged this practice, but now, when Chicago lies in the shadow of the greatest disaster in her history for a generation, noisemaking, whether by bells, whistles, cannon, horns or any other means, is particularly objectionable.

"As mayor of Chicago I would, therefore, request all persons to refrain from this indulgence, and I would particularly ask all railway officials and all persons in control of factories, boats, and mills to direct their employes not to blow whistles between the hours of 12 and 1 o'clock tonight."

Persons not reached by this proclamation had seen the lines waiting entrance at the morgues. The few peddlers who had tin horns for sale found no buyers. This market, which in other years has been a profitable one, on Dec. 31, 1903, was dead. The venders slunk up to the building walls and, even in trying to sell, made little noise with their wares.

MERRIMENT IS SUBDUED.

In such restaurants as the Auditorium Annex, the Wellington, and Rector's there were gay crowds, but the merriment was subdued. "No music" was the general rule throughout the city. At Rector's the management took down flowers which were to have decorated the restaurant and sent them to the hospitals where the injured theater victims were.

At the Annex and the Wellington the lobbies had been filled with gayly decorated tables, and this s.p.a.ce as well as the cafes was entirely occupied. Congress street was filled with carriages and cabs for the guests at the Annex.

CITY OF MOURNING.

Even these gatherings, which were the least affected by the gloom over the city, were ghastly as compared with those of former years. There were exceptions to the general rule, but even in the places which felt the effect the least there was abundant testimony to the fact that Chicago was a city of woe.

The aspect of the downtown district was evidence that there was scarcely a neighborhood in the city which had not at least one sorrowing family.

Not only was this indicated by the lack of noise on the noisiest night of the year but by the absence of lights. Many electric signs and illuminations which usually lighted up the streets had been closed, and gay, wicked, noisy Chicago was clothed with gloom such as it had never before known.

Dark and solemn as was the opening day of the new year it was no circ.u.mstance compared with the day that followed. At the suggestion of the mayor Sat.u.r.day, Jan. 2, was set apart to bury the dead. The proclamation issued in that connection follows:

"Chicago, Dec. 31.--To the citizens of Chicago: Announcement is hereby made that the city hall will be closed on Sat.u.r.day, Jan. 2, 1904, on account of the calamity occurring at the Iroquois theater. All business houses throughout the city are respectfully requested to shut down on that day.

"Respectfully, "CARTER H. HARRISON, Mayor."

The request was generally followed, and on that mournful day the interment of the victims of the holocaust began, filling the streets with processions moving to the grave. From daybreak until evening funeral corteges moved through the streets. Church bells at noon tolled a requiem.

The machinery of business was hushed in the downtown district, and long lines of carriages, preceded by hea.r.s.es or plain black wagons, followed the theater victims to the grave.

In no public place, in no home was the grief of the bereft not felt. Many of the dead were taken directly from the undertaking rooms to the cemeteries and buried with simple ceremony. Before dark nearly 200 victims were borne to the grave. A score were taken to railroad stations, to be followed by the mourning back to their homes.

BUSINESS WORLD IN MOURNING.

The board of trade closed at 11 o'clock. The doors of the stock exchange were not opened. Few of the downtown mercantile houses and few of the offices were open after noon. There was little business.

It was a day of mourning, and the army of the sorrowful that for days had searched for its dead performed the last rites. At noon bells in all the church towers were rung to the rhythm of "The Dead March in Saul." Those who heard the solemn dirge stood still for the s.p.a.ce of five minutes with bared heads. The proclamation of the mayor generally was observed.

Everywhere there was gloom and no one could escape from the pall that enshrouded Chicago.

The demand for hea.r.s.es was so great that the undertakers were compelled to make up schedules in which the different hours of the day were allotted to the grief-stricken.

Flags were at half-mast, while white hea.r.s.es bearing the bodies of children and black hea.r.s.es with the bodies of others took their way to the various churches. In some blocks three and four hea.r.s.es were standing, and at the churches one cortege would wait until another moved away.

The pall seemed to pervade the air itself. Pedestrians halted on the sidewalk, and in the cold stood with bared heads while the funeral processions pa.s.sed.

Children saw their parents laid away; parents followed the coffins of their child. Students just reaching manhood or womanhood were laid at rest, while relatives and companions mourned. Kindly clergymen wept as they spoke words of comfort to those bereft of father, mother, brother, sister, or even of all.

Two double funerals pa.s.sed through the downtown districts just as the department stores were dismissing their thousands of employes. Sisters were being taken to their last resting place, and this cortege was followed by two white hea.r.s.es containing the bodies of another brother and sister. Both funeral processions went to the same depot, and all four victims were buried in the same cemetery.

The numerous funeral trains which left Chicago contained in nearly every instance more than one coffin. Hea.r.s.e after hea.r.s.e and carriage after carriage arrived in the blinding snow and stopped at the depots, opening an epoch of funerals that continued daily until the last victim was laid to rest.

Thus opened the year 1904 in Chicago, the stricken and desolate.