Chicago's Awful Theater Horror Part 26

Four bodies were brought to the city on the evening train, and a crowd of over a thousand people gathered at the railway station, and walked in silence through the streets behind the hea.r.s.es. All the bodies were taken to the morgue, from which place they will be removed to the stricken homes.

FIVE OF ONE FAMILY DEAD.

The story of the wiping out of the children of H. S. Van Ingen, the former manager of the Pennsylvania Coal Company in Chicago, and a resident of Kenosha, is one of the saddest stories of the tragedy. Following the custom established years ago, Mr. and Mrs. Van Ingen and their five children, Grace, twenty-three years old; Jack, twenty; Edward L., nineteen; Margaret, fourteen; and Elizabeth, nine, had all come to Chicago for a matinee party. Schuyler, another son, the sole survivor of the children, was to join the family for a dinner and family reunion at the Wellington hotel after the matinee. The seven persons were seated in the front row of the balcony when the panic ensued, and Mr. Van Ingen, marshaling his little force, started for the exit at the aisle, but the mighty crush of people separated the parents from the children, and Mr.

Van Ingen, putting his arm around Mrs. Van Ingen, carried her one way, while the children were swept the other.

The last Mr. Van Ingen saw of the children was when Jack, the oldest boy, took his little sister, Elizabeth, in his arms and shouted to his father: "You save mother and I'll look after the rest." In another moment the party, including the children, was trampled down.

Mr. and Mrs. Van Ingen started to return to the theater for the children and both of them were fearfully burned in the attempt. The bodies of the two boys were located in the evening. Margaret and Elizabeth were found the next day. Grace, the oldest daughter, and one of the best known young women of Kenosha, was identified still later. Mr. and Mrs. Van Ingen, both terribly burned, were taken to the Illinois Hospital.

COOPER BROTHERS DEEPLY MOURNED.

Willis Cooper was one of the best known men in Kenosha. He was the secretary of the great Twentieth Century movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church which resulted in $20,000,000 being raised for missions.

He was last year the prohibition candidate for governor of Wisconsin, and was recently elected head of the lay delegation of the Wisconsin churches at the general conference of the Methodist Church. Mr. Cooper was a millionaire, and his gifts to church charities often exceeded $10,000 a year. In Kenosha he was the general manager of the Chicago Kenosha Hosiery Works, the largest stocking making plant in the world.

Charles F. Cooper, his brother, was the factory manager and general salesman of the company. He was the president of the Kenosha Manufacturers' a.s.sociation, of the Kenosha Hospital a.s.sociation, and the Masonic Temple a.s.sociation. He was the founder of profit-sharing in the Kenosha plant, and under his direction it became known as the plant "where the life of the worker is flooded with sunshine." He was most popular with the working cla.s.ses in Kenosha, and when his body was taken to the morgue hundreds of men and women stood with uncovered heads while it pa.s.sed.

There occurred between the acts at the Century theater, St. Louis, on New Year's night, an unusual incident, when C. H. Congdon, of Chicago, arose from his seat and related incidents of the Iroquois theater tragedy.

He had proceeded only for a few minutes when some one in the audience began singing "Nearer, My G.o.d, to Thee," which was immediately taken up by the whole audience, the orchestra joining in with the accompaniment.

CHAPTER XV.

SOCIETY WOMEN AND GIRLS' CLUBS.

Miss Charlotte Plamondon, daughter of the vice-president of the Chicago board of education, who waited until the fire had caught in the curtains over the front box, in which she sat, before attempting to get out, related her experience at the Chicago Beach Hotel:

"I can't tell you how I escaped the awful fate of others," she said. "I only know that when the flames began to crackle over my head and dart down from the curtains of our box I leaped over the railing of the box and fell in the arms of some man. I think he was connected with the theater, for he immediately set me down in a seat and told me to be quiet for a moment.

SCREAMS OF TERROR HEARD.

"Then I think I lost all reason. I have a vague recollection of having been pushed up along the side aisle that runs by the boxes. It was as quiet as death for a moment. The great audience rose like a single person, but no sound escaped it until those in front were wedged in the doorway.

Then a scream of terror went up that I shall never forget. It rings in my ears now. Women screamed and children cried. Men were shouting and rushing for the entrance, leaping over the prostrate forms of children and women and carrying others down with them.

"Back of me, I remember, there was a sheet of flame that seemed to be gathering volume and reaching out for us. Then I forgot again, and not until the crowd surged toward the wall and caught me between it and the marble pillar did I realize what the danger was. The pain revived me. I know I was almost crushed to death, but it didn't hurt. Nothing could hurt, with the screaming, the agonizing cries of the women and children ringing in your ears.

CHORUS GIRLS ESCAPE PARTLY CLAD.

"And then, somehow, I found myself out on the street and the dead and dying were around me. When I realized that I was out of the place and safe from the fire and crush, all my strength seemed to leave me. But the cold air braced me after a moment and I went around to the drug store, where the dead were being brought in and the poor actresses and chorus girls were coming in with scarcely anything on them.

"I never felt as I did when it dawned upon us that the theater was on fire. It seemed like a dream at first. The border curtain right near our box blew back, and I think it hit a light or something, for when it fell back into place I saw it was on fire.

"The chorus girls kept right on singing for a couple of minutes, it seemed. Then one of the stage men rushed out and shouted: 'Keep your seats.'

"Oh, the stage men behaved like heroes! As I think of it now, they conducted themselves with rare courage. I saw a couple of the girls fall down, and I knew that they were overcome."

FOY TRIES TO PREVENT PANIC.

"Just then Eddie Foy ran out on the stage, partly made up, and cried:

"'My G.o.d, people, keep your seats!'

"When Foy said this I regained my senses, and when the asbestos curtain did not come down I felt that the situation was critical. The flames had taken hold of the front row of seats behind the orchestra and were creeping up the curtains over our box, when I jumped to my feet and leaped over the railing.

"I saw the children lying in heaps under our feet. Their little lives were ended, and rough feet were bruising their flesh; and such innocent children! Men leaped over the rows of prostrate forms and fought like they were mad, trying to get out of the entrance."

ESCAPE OF ANOTHER SOCIETY WOMAN.

Mrs. A. Sorge, Jr., whose husband is a consulting engineer, with offices in the Monadnock Building, and who lives at the Chicago Beach Hotel, attended the theater in company with Dr. Jager, who is a guest of Mr. and Mrs. Sorge. They occupied a seat well down in the parquet.

"When the fire started," said Mrs. Sorge, "persons on the stage told us to keep our seats. Dr. Jager also told me to sit still, and we did until the flames began to come near us. Then we clasped hands and started for the door.

"I was not half so much afraid of the fire as I was of being crushed to death, and I tried in every way to keep out of the crush. Dr. Jager got separated from me by catching his foot in an upturned chair, but he soon found me. We later managed to get out on the street without suffering any injuries of a serious nature.

"The saddest thing I saw inside the burning building was a little girl looking for her baby sister. The two had got separated in the rush for the entrance, and it is quite likely that both were killed in that crush, for it was something awful."

MINNEAPOLIS WOMAN'S STORY OF THE FIRE.

Mrs. Baldwin, wife of Dr. F. R. Baldwin of Minneapolis, immediately after her return from the scene of the awful Chicago catastrophe, through which she had pa.s.sed, overwhelmed with the horror of the sights and sounds she had seen and heard, gave the following account:

"It was too unutterably shocking for one to realize at the time. The horror of the thing has grown upon me ever since. It fills my mind and imagination, so I can hardly think of anything else. I cannot help feeling almost ashamed to be here, safe and unharmed, while whole families were burned and crushed to death in that awful place. I cannot say how glad I am to be home and see my babies safe, when so many mothers are crying aloud in Chicago for their children to come back to them.

"At first n.o.body seemed to realize the awful danger. No water was used to put out the flames on the stage. It was only flimsy, gauzy scenery at first that was burning, and the people on the stage tried to tear it down and stamp it out as it fell. I heard no screams, and the people for many moments kept their seats. I did not hear the cry of 'fire.'

"But all at once a great ball of fire or sheet of flame--I don't know how to express it--shot out and the whole theater above us seemed to be full of fire. Then there was a smothered sound as of a sighing by all in the theater.

"By that time I began to realize that it was time to see what could be done about getting out. It so happened that I could not have chosen a better place from which to get out of the building. We were on the alley side, opposite the Randolph street side of the building, and only two seats from the wall.

"I did not know that there was an entrance here, but all at once the doors seemed to be opened close to us. We had but to take two or three steps and then were thrown forward out of the doors by the crowd behind us. My mother, who was with me, was unhurt, and I had but a few bruises.

"One of the first things I saw as I got up was a girl lying on one of the fire escape platforms with the flames shooting over her through the window. One man, who jumped from the platform, had not taken two steps before a woman who jumped a moment later from a height of about forty feet came right down upon him, killing him upon the spot.

"The sights all about the city have been many times described, but nothing can picture those terrible scenes. In a flat just below my mother's five out of a family of six perished, leaving but one demented girl.

"Of another family living near us, only the husband and father was left, his wife and four boys and his mother all having been killed in the fire.

As I pa.s.sed near the theater the next day I saw a man walking up and down in front of the building muttering to himself, and every now and then he would sit upon the curb and look up at the building, breaking out into peals of laughter. He had been through the fire."