Lest We Forget: Chicago's Awful Theater Horror

CHAPTER X.
HOW THE NEW YEAR WAS USHERED IN

The New Year came to Chicago with muffled 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 passage 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 space 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 circumstance compared with the day that followed. At the suggestion of the mayor Saturday, 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 Saturday, 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 hearses 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 space 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 hearses 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 hearses bearing the bodies of children and black hearses with the bodies of others took their way to the various churches. In some blocks three and four hearses 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 passed.

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 passed 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 hearses 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. Hearse after hearse 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.

CHAPTER XI.
A SABBATH OF WOE

A majority of the victims of the fire were laid to rest, however, during the Sabbath succeeding the awful calamity. The main thoroughfares of the benumbed city leading north and west toward the resting places of the dead were crowded with funeral processions, sometimes four and five hearses together showing as white as the snow on the ground, bearing as they did the bodies of children.

As one funeral procession after another passed through the streets the numbers of the sorrowing at the cemeteries increased. A few hundred feet from one freshly made grave there was another and a short distance away still another that told the mourners at one funeral that others were bereaved.

The work of burying the dead began early in the morning and lasted until late in the evening. Sometimes the homes of several of the dead were grouped in a few blocks and in one instance a glance down a single street would reveal the thickly crowded carriages for half a dozen funerals that had thrown an entire neighborhood into mourning. Where hearses could not be furnished they were improvised from other kinds of vehicles and mourners who could not get cabs rode in carriages. As the night closed down on hundreds of mourning homes, in every cemetery in the city the speaking mounds of fresh earth told of the end of families broken and altogether destroyed.

SEVEN TURNER VICTIMS

More than a thousand turners joined in the services for seven victims who were members of their societies. The Chicago Turnbezirk, the central body of the turners, had charge of the exercises. Representatives of the Aurora Turnverein, Schweitzer Turnverein, Forward Turnverein, Social Turnverein, and other turner organizations joined in the services.

The exercises were held at the Social Turner hall, Belmont avenue and Paulina street. The coffins of the victims were placed in front of the stage at the end of the hall. After the services the coffins were taken by uniformed turners through the hall to black wagons and the march to Graceland cemetery began. Three drum corps, with muffled drums, beat a funeral march.

Women turners, in their gymnasium suits, escorted the bodies of the women victims, and uniformed turners watched the coffins of the men.

Short services were held at the cemetery.

SAD SCENES AT WOLFF HOME

At the residence of Ludwig Wolff, 1329 Washington boulevard, the bodies of his daughter, Mrs. William M. Garn and her three children, Willie, 11, John, 7, and Harriet, 10 years old, lay. All day long until the time for the funeral services a stream of sympathizing friends poured in. A crowd of more than a thousand surrounded the house and the policemen stationed there were compelled to force a way for the caskets when they were borne to the hearses. The service was read by the Rev. William C. Dewitt of St. Andrew's church. Twelve boys acted as pallbearers for their former playfellows and followed the little white hearses to Graceland. The funeral was one of the largest ever seen on the west side of the city, more than one hundred carriages being in the funeral train.

PATHETIC SCENE AT CHURCH

Far different in all except the grief was the funeral from the little frame church at Congress street and Forty-second avenue. Inside lay the bodies of Mrs. Mary W. Holst and her three children, Allan, 13, Gertrude, 10, and Amy, 8 years. They were in the ill fated second balcony of the theater and met death trying to reach the fire escape. Of the family only the father and a 6 months old son survive. Mrs. Holst was the sister of former Chief of Police Badenoch. Interment was at Forest Home.

The building was still gay with its Christmas decorations and a large motto, "Peace on earth, good will to men," which the Holst children had assisted in making.

BURY CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN

Another quadruple funeral was that of the daughters and the grandchildren of Jacob and Elizabeth Beder of 697 Ogden avenue. The two women, Mrs. Edyth Vallely, 835 Sawyer avenue, and Mrs. Amy Josephine McKenna of 758 South Kedzie avenue, went to the theater accompanied by their two children, Bernice Vallely, aged 11, and Bernard McKenna, aged 3. The bodies were found after the fire by the husbands of the dead women at the morgues. The services were in charge of Rev. D. F. Fox of the California Avenue Congregational church. Interment was at Forest Home.

FIVE DEAD IN ONE HOUSE

Memorial services were held in the afternoon for Mrs. Eva Pond, wife of Fred S. Pond, their children, Raymond, 14, Helen, 7, and Miss Grace Tuttle, sister of Mrs. Pond, at the family residence, 1272 Lyman avenue. The services were conducted by the Rev. Mr. Bowles of All Saints' Episcopal church.

Miss Tuttle had been for eighteen years a teacher in the Chicago public schools. She attended the performance at the Iroquois with her sister and her sister's children, and none of them emerged alive. Mrs. Pond was the wife of Fred S. Pond, for thirty years cashier of the Deering Harvester Company, who is the only survivor of a once happy family circle. The four bodies were taken to Beloit, Wis., for burial.

ENTIRE FAMILY IS BURIED

None but friends attended the Beyer funeral service during the afternoon at Sheldon's undertaking rooms, for the entire family, mother, father, and child, were numbered among the Iroquois dead. Otto H. Beyer, his wife Minnie, and their 4 year old daughter Grace, were the victims. The bodies were taken to Elkader, Iowa, for burial. This was perhaps the saddest of all the sad services conducted during the day, as no relatives were present to mourn the dead.

MRS. FOX AND THREE CHILDREN

Mrs. Emilie Hoyt Fox, daughter of William M. Hoyt, the wholesale grocer; George Sidney Fox, her 15-year-old son; Hoyt Fox, 14 years old, and Emilie Fox, 9 years old, were all buried side by side in Graceland cemetery. The funeral services were held in Graceland chapel and were conducted by Rev. Henry G. Moore of Christ Episcopal church, Winnetka.

MRS. A. E. HULL AND CHILDREN

Simple and short were the funeral services at Boydston's chapel, Forty-second place and Cottage Grove avenue, over the remains of four members of the Hull family. Mrs. Hull, the mother, was the wife of Arthur E. Hull, 244 Oakwood boulevard, and attended the theater with her little daughter, Helen, and two nephews, adopted sons, Donald and Dwight. The services were directed by Rev. J. H. McDonald of the Oakland Methodist Episcopal church and consisted simply of a prayer and the reading of a poem found in the desk of Mrs. Hull, and which had evidently been clipped from some newspaper. At the conclusion of the services the caskets were carried to the Thirty-ninth street station of the Michigan Central railroad, over which they were taken to Troy, N. Y., for burial.

HERBERT AND AGNES LANGE

"We were four of the happiest mortals in all Chicago until that awful thing blasted our lives forever," sobbed Mrs. Louis Lange of 1632 Barry avenue at the close of the funeral of her only two children, Herbert Lange, 17 years old, and his sister Agnes, 14. The service was held at the Johannes Evangelical Lutheran church at Garfield avenue and Mohawk street.

SWEETHEARTS BURIED AT THE SAME TIME

While the last rites were being held for Albert Alfson in Chicago, the body of his sweetheart, Miss Margaret Love, was being buried in the cemetery at Woodstock. Two hundred persons, 125 from Woodstock, attended Alfson's funeral at 24 Keith street.

FIVE BURIED IN ONE GRAVE

The largest funeral at Oakwoods was that of Dr. M. B. Rimes, 6331 Wentworth avenue, his wife and three children, Lloyd, Martin, and Maurice. The five from one family were buried together in one large grave.

BOYS AS PALLBEARERS

At the home of Ludwig Wolff, 1329 Washington boulevard the body of his daughter, Mrs. William M. Garn, and her three children, Willie, John and Harriet, lay. All day long until the time for the funeral services, a stream of sympathizing friends poured in, bearing many floral tributes to the dead. The impressive service of the Episcopal church was read by the Rev. William C. Dewitt of St. Andrew's church, of which Mrs. Garn was a member. Twelve boys acted as pallbearers to their late playfellows, and followed the little white hearses to Graceland cemetery. The funeral was one of the largest ever seen on the West Side, more than one hundred carriages being in the train.

WINNETKA SADDENED

A funeral was held which saddened the hearts of all Winnetka. The little north shore suburb lost eight of its residents in the fire, and the funeral of four of the Fox family was held yesterday. The services were conducted by the Rev. Henry G. Moore of Christ Episcopal church, Winnetka.

MOTHER AND DAUGHTERS BURIED TOGETHER

Three hearses carried away the bodies of Mrs. Louise Ruby and her daughters, Mrs. Ida Weimers and Mrs. Mary Feiser. The services were held at the late home of Mrs. Ruby, 838 Wilson avenue. Father F. N. Perry of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes celebrated mass for the two daughters, who were members of his parish. The Rev. John G. Kircher of Bethlehem Evangelical church read the service for the mother.

HOLD TRIPLE FUNERAL

Triple funeral services were held at the residence of Henry M. Shabad, 4041 Indiana avenue, for his two children, Myrtle, aged 14 years, and Theodore, aged 12 years, and little Rose Elkan, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. N. Elkan. The three children attended the matinee together and all were killed. Rabbi Jacobson of the Thirty-fifth street synagogue conducted the service and at the conclusion referred to the Iroquois fire as one of the "greatest calamities of the age." The interment took place at Waldheim.

WOMEN FAINT IN CHURCH

Attended by many grief stricken schoolmates and friends, the funeral of Robert and Archie Hippach, sons of Louis A. and Ida S. Hippach, was held at the Church of the Atonement, Kenmore and Ardmore avenues. They lived at 2928 Kenmore avenue. At the church several women fainted and had to be taken from the church.

LIFE-LONG FRIENDS MEET IN DEATH

Miss Viola Delee of 7822 Union avenue, and Miss Florence Corrigan of 218 Dearborn avenue, victims of the Iroquois theater fire, whose remains were buried, were life-long friends. They were schoolmates at St. Xavier's College, where both graduated two years ago. On the afternoon of the fire Miss Delee had arranged to meet her friend downtown and attend the matinee. It is thought they secured seats on the main floor about eight rows from the front. Their bodies were found lying some distance apart.

The body of Miss Delee showed marks that must have caused her excruciating pain. Her face was badly burned and disfigured. Miss Corrigan was burned almost beyond recognition. She was not identified until after the identity of Viola's body had been established through a card which she carried in the pocket of her dress.

The funerals of two friends who had perished together in the fire met in Forest Home cemetery when Mrs. Floy Irene Olson of 835 Walnut street and Bessie M. Stafford were buried in graves not thirty feet apart. The two women had been life-long friends and were co-workers in the Warren Avenue Congregational church. Rev. Frank G. Smith conducted the services over each of the bodies.

EDWARD AND MARGARET DEE

Rev. Father Quinn of St. James' Roman Catholic church, conducted the obsequies for Edward Mansfield and Margaret Louise Dee, the children of William Dee, at the residence, 3133 Wabash avenue. The funeral procession was the largest ever seen on the south side for children, seventy-five carriages following the white hearse that bore the two white caskets.

MISS E. D. MANN AND NIECE

Miss Emma D. Mann, supervisor of music in the Chicago public schools, and her niece, Olive Squires, 14 years old, were buried at Rosehill after impressive ceremonies at the Centenary Methodist Episcopal church. Miss Mann had been connected with the schools of the city for many years.

ELLA AND EDYTH FRECKLETON

The funeral services over the remains of Ella and Edyth Freckleton, daughters of William J. Freckleton, 5632 Peoria street, were conducted by Rev. R. Keene Ryan at Boulevard hall, Fifty-fifth and Halsted streets. More than 2,000 persons were in the hall and 500 others stood in the street for hours waiting for the funeral cortege to pass on its way to Oakwoods, where interment was made.

MISS FRANCES LEHMAN

Hundreds of pupils of the Nash school, Forty-ninth avenue and Ohio street, members of the Ridgeland fire department and a delegation of employes of the Cicero and Proviso Electric Street railway attended the funeral services over the remains of Miss Frances Lehman, at the residence of her parents, 525 North Austin avenue, in the morning. Rev. Clayton Youker, pastor of the Euclid Avenue Methodist Episcopal church, officiating. Many beautiful floral tributes were sent by the teachers and the pupils of the Nash school.

And so during this Sabbath of woe, tragedies of life and death such as these, but far too numerous to be all recorded, were being enacted in all parts of the stricken city. Although nature had bestowed upon the countless mourners a day bright and clear, their spirits were dark with sorrow and for years to come their memories will revert to that time as the saddest of their lives; and those whose dear ones were not among the dead, if their natures were blessed with any sympathy whatever, were oppressed, as never before, with the heavy burden which others must bear.