AMBULANCE LOADED WITH FIRE VICTIMS.
ARCH AT TOP OF STAIRWAYPACKED WITH DEAD.
CARRYING OUT SOME DEAD,SOME STILL LIVING.
FIREMEN CARRYING OUTTHE DEAD CHILDREN.
HEROIC RESCUE OF THE LIVINGBY CHICAGO FIREMEN.
SCENE IN DEATH ALLEY—REAR OF THE THEATRE.
CARRYING OUT BODIESFROM SECOND BALCONY.
MISS NELLIE REED,Leader of the Flying Ballet,killed by the fire.
FIREMEN HELPING THE CHORUS GIRLSOUT OF THE THEATER.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE STAGEOF THE THEATER IN RUINS.
FRONT OF THEATER, PILING DEAD IN THE STREET.
IN THE THEATER, DOORS LOCKED, PANIC, FIRE, AND DEATH.
INSIDE THE IROQUOIS THEATER WHILE THE FIRE RAGED.
LOOKING FOR HER CHILDREN AMONG THE DEAD.
A LINE OF VICTIMS OF THE FIRE AWAITING IDENTIFICATION.
DIAGRAM SHOWING HOW PEOPLE GOT OUT OF THE GALLERY.
When she reaches a big city again she can once more creep to bed after her work at midnight and find in unbroken hours of sleep balm for all she has passed through. She may secure a decent room at a second or third class European hotel for $6 a week and buy her meals where she chooses. If some callow youth buys them for her in consideration of the pleasure of basking in her smiles, she is that much ahead. She can live within her means in the city and save money—if she wants to. But she seldom does, and no one can blame her, for she feels that nothing save the pleasures secured by extravagance can compensate her for what she has lost—comfort, repose, dignity, social recognition, and, most of all, home.
These same conditions are experienced to a varying degree by all players save those within the sacred circle drawn by the finger of phenomenal success. That small handful with private cars, lackies and all the comforts of a portable home, is so insignificant in number that it requires no consideration here.
THE "MR. BLUEBEARD" COMPANY.
In the best and most prosperous organizations, such as "Mr. Bluebeard" was, life is not all sunshine and roses. To be true, its members escaped the manifold terrors of playing in the barns to be found in many large one-night stands and dressing in their stalls, dignified by the term dressing-rooms. The women were not compelled to dress and undress behind inclosures made of flimsy scenery with a sheet thrown over for additional protection. Nor did they have to live in the barn-like hotels many such towns boast. But they had their own troubles, such as they were. The chorus girls did not escape having to be thrown into involuntary contact with all classes and conditions of mankind, nor did they avoid the sharp social distinction drawn by the principals in all organizations.
Only a few weeks before the Iroquois horror they passed through a serious fire scare in the theater where they were playing in Cleveland, an experience that for the moment promised to rival the one that finally overtook them. Flames inthe scenery endangered their lives, but the fire was extinguished. Therefore the incident "amounted to nothing" and little or nothing was heard about it.
When the dread hour arrived at the Iroquois, the majority lost their all. It was not to be expected they would leave their jewelry and money about hotels of which they knew little. Quite naturally, they took both to their dressing-rooms. Many were on the stage when the cry of fire came, and were fortunate to escape with their lives, without thought of clothing, money or jewelry, all of which were swept away. With employment, valuables, everything gone save their hotel baggage, they were in a sorry plight, indeed. But with the optimism that only the actor knows they rejoiced in their escape from the fate that overtook little Nellie Reed and from the terrible scars and burns suffered by many of their number.
A score of their number were under arrest, held as witnesses, men and women alike. The management came to their relief to the extent of furnishing bonds that secured their temporary release. Klaw and Erlanger also furnished transportation back to New York for such as were at liberty to go. Then another obstacle arose. Few had the means to settle their hotel bills, and the proprietors of the places would not release their baggage. At this juncture relief came from outside sources. Mrs. Ogden Armour provided for the chorus girls, contributing $500 to settle their bills. That night over a hundred of the players were headed back to the great metropolis they call home, to seek new engagements, and if unsuccessful, to do the best they could. And the majority started with certain failure staring them in the face.
It was on Sunday, January 3, 1904, four days after the fire, that the members of the "Mr. Bluebeard" company turned their faces homeward, for to all players New York is "home."Just before the train started a plain white box was put on board the baggage car. It contained all that was mortal of Nellie Reed, the sprightly little girl who had delighted scores of thousands by her mid-air flights from the stage at each performance.
It was her last railroad "jump." Poor little thing, still in her early teens, she closed her earthly career with the close of the show, and went back "home" with it! If the future has for her any further flights they will be of celestial character, and not through the agency of an invisible wire such as guided her above the heads of Iroquois theater audiences and which was at first thought to have interfered with the fall of the curtain and to have been directly responsible for the appalling holocaust.
It was a sad departure. Nearly 150 persons comprised the "Mr. Bluebeard" party, and nearly as many more took the trip from "The Billionaire" company, also owned by the same management. Only a day or two before the fire that closed the "Bluebeard" show death had laid its hand heavily upon "The Billionaire," playing at the Illinois theater only a few blocks distant. "The Billionaire" himself died—big, rollicking Jerome Sykes, who made famous the part "Foxy Quiller" and the opera of that name and who a few years ago made such a hit as the fat boy in "An American Beauty" that he outshone Lillian Russell, its star. Sykes contracted a cold at a Christmas celebration for the members of the two companies and when he died the production died with him.
So with the Iroquois catastrophe there were two big, obviously successful, companies wiped out of the theatrical world at one blow and without notice. The members of each had half a week's salary due; that was their all. It was promptly paid and with that and their tickets all set forth in the happypossession of their baggage, many through the charity of Mrs. Armour.
All—not quite! There were two members of "The Billionaire" who did not make the last "jump," two who were in the audience at the Iroquois and perished in the maelstrom of flame and smoke. The curtain had been rung down for them forever. They, at least, would know no more of pitiful quests for engagements, of wearying rehearsal and momentary, superficial conquest. They had played their last stand.
"This is the saddest day of my life," declared one of the chorus members in the presence of the writer. "Here I am, 1,000 miles from home, no prospects of another engagement this season, and only $5 in the world."
"I have less than you," said a frail appearing girl, with tears in her eyes. "I lost my savings, $22, in the fire, and I have only $3 to go home with."
"It is the life of the stage," said a matronly wardrobe woman. "The poor girls are penniless, and if the injured were left hind it would be as charity patients. The responsibility of the managers of the show ceases when the production is closed. I know many of these girls are without sufficient money to pay for a week's lodging, and it is a sad outlook for some of them this winter."
And the wardrobe woman told the truth—it was merely a striking example, a pitiful vicissitude of "the life of the stage."
OTHER HOLOCAUSTS.
Since the time that civilized man first met with fellow man to enjoy the work of the primitive playwright, humanity has paid a toll of human life for its amusements. Oftener than history tells the tiny flicker of a tongue of flame has thrown a gay, laughing audience into a wild, struggling mob, and instead of the curtain which would have been rung down on the comedy on the stage, a pall of black smoke covered the struggles of the living and dying.
Of all the theater disasters of history, none ever occurred in America equaling the loss of life in the Iroquois fire. Only two in the history of the civilized world surpass it. There have been fires accompanied by greater loss of life, but not among theater audiences.
But the grand total of persons killed in theater holocausts is large and the saddest comment on this list is that most of the victims were from holiday audiences of women and children. Lehman's playhouse in St. Petersburg, Russia, was destroyed in Christmas week, 1836, and 700 persons lost their lives. The Ring theater, Vienna, Austria, was destroyed Dec. 8, 1881, and 875 persons lost their lives. These are the only theater holocausts whose deadliness surpasses that of the Iroquois.
To all have been the same accompaniments of panic, futile struggle and suffocation. In the last century with the introduction of the modern style of playhouse, these fatal fires haveincreased. The annals of the stage are replete with dark pages that cause the tragedy of the mimic drama depicted behind the footlights to pale and shrivel into comparative nothingness.
Perhaps it is a fatal legacy from the time when civilized society gathered in its marble coliseums and amphitheaters to witness the mortal combats of human soldiers or the death struggles of Christians waging a vain battle against famished wild beasts. Whatever it may be, death has always stalked as the dread companion of the god of the muse and drama.
An English statistician published six years ago a list of fires at places of public entertainment in all countries in the preceding century. He showed that there had been 1,100 conflagrations, with 10,000 fatalities, and he apologized for the incompleteness of his figures. Another authority says that in the twelve years from 1876 to 1888 not less than 1,700 were killed in theater disasters in Brooklyn, Nice, Vienna, Paris, Exeter and Oporto, and that in every case nearly all the victims were dead within ten minutes from the time the smoke and flame from the stage reached the auditorium. As in the Iroquois fire, it was mainly in the balconies and galleries that death held its revels.
Fire wrought havoc at Rome in the Amphitheater in the year 14 B. C., and the Circus Maximus was similarly destroyed three times in the first century of the Christian era. Three other theaters were razed by flames in the same period, and Pompeii's was burned again almost two centuries later, but the exact loss of life is not recorded in either instance. The Greek playhouses, built of stone in open spaces, were never endangered by fire.
No theaters were built on the modern plan until in the sixteenth century in France, and not until the seventeenth did any catastrophe worthy of record occur. When Shakespearelived plays were generally produced in temporary structures, sometimes merely raised platforms in open squares, and it was after his time that scenic effects began to be amplified and the use of illuminants increased. Thus it was that dangers, both to players and auditors, were vastly increased.
In the Teatro Atarazanas, in Seville, Spain, many people were killed and injured at a fire in 1615. The first conflagration of this kind in England worth noting happened in 1672, when the Theater Royal, or Drury Lane, standing on the site of the playhouse in which "Mr. Bluebeard" was produced before it was brought to Chicago, was burned to the ground. Sixty other buildings were destroyed, but no loss of life is recorded.
Two hundred and ten people lost their lives and the whole Castle of Amalienborg, in Copenhagen, was laid in ashes in 1689 from a rocket that ignited the scenery in the opera house. Eighteen persons perished at the theater in the Kaizersgracht, Amsterdam, in 1772, and six years later the Teatro Colisseo, at Saragossa, Spain, went up in flames and seventy-seven lives were lost. The governor of the province was among the victims. Twenty players were suffocated in the burning of the Palais Royal in Paris in 1781.
In the nineteenth century there were twelve theater fires marked by great loss of life, and the first of these occurred in the United States. At Richmond, on the day after Christmas in 1811, a benefit performance of "Agnes and Raymond, or the Bleeding Nun," was being given, and the theater was filled with a wealthy and fashionable audience. The governor of Virginia, George W. Smith, ex-United States Senator Venable, and other prominent persons were in the audience and were numbered among the seventy victims. The last act was on when the careless hoisting of a stage chandelier with lightedcandles set fire to the scenery. Most of those killed met death in the jam at the doors.
The Lehman Theater and circus in St. Petersburg was the scene of a fire in 1836, in which 800 people perished. A stage lamp hung high ignited the roof, a panic ensued, and there was such a mad rush that most of the people slew each other trying to get out. Those not trampled to death were incinerated by the fire that rapidly enveloped the temporary wooden building.
A lighted lamp, upset in a wing, caused a stampede in the Royal Theater, Quebec, June 12, 1846, and 100 people were either burned or crushed into lifelessness. The exits were poor and the playhouse was built of combustible material. Less than a year later the Grand Ducal Theater at Carlsruhe, Baden, Germany, was destroyed by a fire, due to the careless lighting of the gas in the grand ducal box. Most of the 150 victims were suffocated. Between fifty and one hundred people met a fiery death in the Teatro degli Aquidotti at Leghorn, Italy, June 7, 1857. Fireworks were being used on the stage and a rocket set fire to the scenery.
One of the most serious fires from the standpoint of loss of life was that in the Jesuit church of Santiago, South America, in 1863. Fire broke out in the building during service. A panic started and the efforts of the priests to calm the immense crowd and lead them quietly from the edifice were vain. The few doors became jammed with a struggling mass of men, women and children. The next day 2,000 bodies were taken from the church, most of them suffocated or trampled to death.
The Brooklyn theater fire was long memorable in this country. Songs, funeral marches and poems without number were written commemorating the sad event. Vastly different fromthe Iroquois horror, most of the victims of the Brooklyn theater were burned beyond recognition. At Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn there now stands a marble shaft to the unidentified victims of the holocaust.
Kate Claxton was playing "The Two Orphans" at Conway's Theater in Brooklyn on the night of Dec. 5, 1876. In the last scene of the last act Miss Claxton, as Louise, the poor blind girl, had just lain down on her pallet of straw, when she saw above her in the flies a tiny flame. An actor of the name of Murdoch, on the stage with her, saw it about the same time, and was so excited that he began to stammer his lines. Miss Claxton tried to reassure him and partly succeeded.
Then the audience realized that the theater was on fire, and a movement began. The star, with Mr. Murdoch and Mrs. Farren, joined hands, walked to the footlights and begged the audience to go out in an orderly manner. "You see, we are between you and the fire," said Miss Claxton. The people were proceeding quietly, when a man's voice shouted, "It is time to be out of this," and every one seemed seized with a frenzy. The main entrance doors opened inwardly, and there was such a jam that these could not be manipulated.
The crowds from the galleries rushed down the stairways and fell or jumped headlong into the struggling mass below. Of the 1,000 people in the theater 297 perished. They were either burned, suffocated or trampled to death. The actor Murdoch was one of the victims.
That same year, 1876, a panic resulted in the Chinese theater of San Francisco from a cry of fire. A lighted cigar which someone playfully dropped into a spectator's coat pocket caused a smell of burning wool. The audience became panic stricken and rushed madly for the exits. At the time therewere about 900 Americans in the auditorium, and of this number one-quarter were seriously injured. The fire itself was of no consequence.
The destruction of the Ring theater at Vienna, Dec. 8, 1881, remains the greatest horror of the kind in the history of civilization. It was preceded on March 23 of the same year, by the burning of the Municipal theater in Nice, Italy, caused by an explosion of gas, and in which between 150 and 200 people perished miserably, but the magnitude of the Vienna holocaust made the world forget Nice for the time. The feast of the Immaculate Conception was being celebrated by the Viennese, and Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffman," an opera bouffe, was the play. The audience numbered 2,500.
Fire was suddenly observed in the scenery, and a wild panic started. An iron curtain, designed for just such emergencies, was forgotten, and the flames, which might thus have been confined to the stage, spread furiously through the entire building. The scene was changed from light-hearted revelry, with gladsome music, to one of lurid horror.
The exits from the galleries were long and tortuous and quickly became choked. As in the Iroquois theater fire, those who had occupied the gallery seats were the ones who lost their lives. But few escaped from the galleries. The great majority of the spectators were burned beyond recognition by their nearest relatives. One hundred and fifty were so charred that they were buried in a common grave, and the city's mourning was shared by all the world.
The next fire of this nature to attract the world's attention and sympathy was the destruction of the Circus Ferroni at Berditscheff, Russian Poland. Four hundred and thirty people were killed and eighty mortally injured. Many children were crushed and suffocated in the jam, and horses and othertrained animals perished by the score. This was on Jan. 13, 1883, and the origin of the conflagration was traced to a stableman who smoked a cigarette while lying in a heap of straw.
TWO GREAT PARISIAN HORRORS.
The burning of the Opera Comique in Paris, May 25, 1887, was a spectacular horror. Here again an iron curtain that would have protected the audience was not lowered. The first act of "Mignon" was on, when the scenery was observed to be ablaze. The upper galleries were transformed into infernos, in which men knocked other men and women down and trampled them in their eagerness to save themselves, while the flames reached out and enveloped them all.
Many of the actors and actresses escaped only in their costumes, and some rushed nude into the streets. The scenes in the thoroughfares where men and women in tights and ball dresses and men in gorgeous theatrical robes mingled with the naked, and the dead and dying were strewn about, made a picture fantastically terrible. The official list of dead was seventy-five, but many others died from the fire's effects.
The theater at Exeter, England, burned Sept. 5, 1887, was ignited from gas lights, and so much smoke filled the edifice in a short time that near 200 were suffocated in their seats. They were found sitting there afterward, just as though they were still watching the play. This was the eleventh, and the Oporto fire the twelfth of the big conflagrations of the country. One hundred and seventy dead were taken from the ruins of the Portuguese playhouse after the flames which destroyed it on the evening of March 31, 1888, had been subdued. Many sailors and marine soldiers in the galleries used knivesto kill persons standing in their way, and scores of the victims were found with their throats cut.
Ten years after the Opera Comique fire occurred the greatest of all Parisian horrors, the destruction by flames of the charity bazar, May 4, 1897. Members of the nobility, and even royalty, were among the victims. All of fashionable Paris were under the roof of a temporary wooden edifice known to visitors to the exposition of 1889 as "Old Paris." The annual bazar in the interest of charity had always been one of the most imposing of the spring functions. The wealthy and distinguished, titled and modish were there in larger numbers than on any previous occasion.
The fire broke out with a suddenness that so dazed everyone that the small chance of escape from the flimsy structure was made even less. Duchesses, marquises, countesses, baronesses and grand dames joined in the mad rush for the exits. The men present are said to have acted in a particularly cowardly manner, knocking down and trampling upon women and children. The death list of more than 100 included the Duchesses d'Alencon and De St. Didier, the Marquise de Maison, and three barons, three baronesses, one count, eleven countesses, one general, five sisters of charity and one mother superior. The Duchess d'Alencon was the favorite sister of the Empress of Austria and had been a fiance of the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. The Duchess d'Uzes was badly burned. The shock of the news and the death of his niece, the Duchess d'Alencon, accounted for the death on May 7 of the Duc d'Aumale.
The Gaiety Theater in Milwaukee on November 5, 1869, furnished more than thirty victims to the fire fiend, but only two of these were burned to death. The Central Theater in Philadelphia was destroyed April 28, 1892, and six personsperished. A panic occurred at the Front Street playhouse in Baltimore December 27, 1895, among an audience composed entirely of Polish Jews. There was no fire, but a woman who had seen a bright light on the stage thought there was, and her cries caused a stampede that resulted in twenty-four deaths.
Statisticians show that theaters as a rule do not attain an old age, but that their average life in all countries is but twenty-two and three-fourths years. In the United States the average is but eleven to thirteen years, and here almost a third are destroyed before they have been built five years. More playhouses feed the flames just prior to and after than during performances, because of the added precautions of employes.
Two deadly conflagrations occurred in New York in 1900. The first the Windsor hotel fire, which resulted in the death of 80 persons. Fire broke out in the old hotel on Fifth avenue about midnight. With lightning rapidity the flames shot up the light and air shafts, filling the rooms with smoke and making them as light as day. The guests suddenly aroused from sleep became panic stricken. The fire department was unable to throw up ladders and give aid as fast as frightened faces appeared at the windows. The result was that many jumped to death. They were picked up dead and dying in the streets. Others ran from their rooms into the fire-swept hallways and were burned to death.
A short time later fire broke out one afternoon on the docks across the river from New York at Hoboken. The fire was on a pier piled high with combustible material. It burned like powder, spreading to the ocean liners tied to the pier and the efforts of the fire department were not effective in checking it. The cables which held the blazing vessels to the piers burned through and they drifted into the river, carrying fire and death among the shipping. Longshoremen unloading andloading the vessels jumped in panic into the river. Others found themselves cut off from both land and water by the flames on all sides and were burned like rats in a trap. It was estimated that 300 lives were lost. Many bodies were never recovered and others were found miles down the river.
Property losses are seldom proportionate to the financial losses from fire. In the Iroquois theater fire the property loss was almost inconsequential, while at the burning of Moscow by the Russians, Sept. 4, 1812, the property loss amounted to more than $150,000,000, while no lives were lost.
Constantinople, with its squalid and crowded streets, has always been a fruitful spot for fires. They are of annual occurrence and as the Turkish fire department is a travesty, are usually of considerable magnitude. The great fire of that city was in 1729, when 12,000 houses were destroyed and 7,000 persons burned to death. Aug. 12, 1782, a three days' fire started in which 10,000 houses, 50 corn mills and 100 mosques were burned and 100 lives lost. In February of the same year, 600 houses were burned, and in June 7,000 more. Fires are the best safeguards for Constantinople's health.
Great Britain has had comparatively few fires. In 1598 one at Tiverton destroyed 400 houses and 33 lives. In 1854 50 persons were killed at Gateshead. The great fire of London raged from Sept. 2 to 6, 1666. It began in a wooden building in Pudding Lane and consumed the buildings on 436 acres, blotting out 400 streets, 13,200 houses, St. Paul's and 86 other churches, 58 halls and all public buildings, three of the city gates and four stone bridges. The property loss was $53,652,500, while only six persons were killed.
Nearly every large city of the United States has had its great fire. That of Boston was on Nov. 9 and 10, 1872. Firestarted at Summer and Kingston streets and 65 acres were burned over. The property loss was about $75,000,000 and there was no loss of life.
The great fire in New York began in Merchant street, Dec. 16, 1835. No lives were lost, but the property loss was $15,000,000 and 52 acres were devastated, 530 buildings being destroyed. Ten years later a much smaller fire in the same district caused the death of 35 persons.
July 9, 1850, thirty lives were lost in Philadelphia, and February 8, 1865, twenty persons were killed by another fire. Large fires in that city have almost invariably been accompanied by loss of life.
As the result of a Fourth of July celebration in 1866, nearly half of Portland, Md., was swept away by fire. The property loss was $10,000,000, but there was no loss of life. In September and October of 1871 forest fires raged in Wisconsin and Michigan. An immense territory was swept over and more than 1,000 persons lost their lives.
The greatest fire of modern times was the one which started in Chicago, October 8, 1871. A strip through the heart of the city, four miles long and a mile and a half wide, was burned over. The total loss was $196,000,000 and 250 persons lost their lives. By the fire 17,450 buildings were destroyed and 98,860 persons were made homeless. Within four years the entire burned district had been rebuilt.
Fires in Chicago attended with loss of life have been of increasing frequency in the past few years. Fire in the Henning & Speed building on Dearborn street, in 1900, caused four girls to lose their lives. Since it and before the Iroquois disaster have come: The St. Luke Sanitarium horror, 10 lives lost, 43 injured; the Doremus laundry explosion, 8 lives lost;the American Glucose Sugar refinery blaze, 8 killed; Northwestern railroad boiler explosion, 8 killed, Stock Yards boiler explosion, 18 killed, and about a year ago the Lincoln hotel fire, 14 visiting stockmen suffocated.
In view of this terrible array of suffering and death, it would seem that no precaution could be too great to avert future calamities. But although human life is beyond price, it is probable that the world at large will move on very much in the same old way—an arousing and an upheaval of public sentiment for a time after the burned and maimed have been laid away, and then a gradual return of carelessness. It would seem impossible, however, that the United States could forget for many generations the Iroquois disaster, and that it must result in a final reform of all arrangements looking to the safety of theater goers.
STORIES AND NARRATIVES OF THE HOLOCAUST.
From two women who sat within a few feet of the stage when the fire broke out in the theater, and who remained calm enough to observe the actual beginning of the holocaust, there came one of the most thrilling and significant stories of that afternoon of panic.
Mrs. Emma Schweitzler and Mrs. Eva Katherine Clapp Gibson, of Chicago, were the two women who told this story. They occupied seats in the fifth row of the orchestra circle. Mrs. Schweitzler was the last woman to walk out unassisted from the first floor. Mrs. Gibson was carried out badly burned.
"The curtain that was run down," said Mrs. Schweitzler, "was the regular drop curtain painted with the 'autumn scene,' It was the same curtain that was lowered before the show started and the same one used during the interval following the first act. No other curtain was lowered.
"As soon as the drop curtain came down it caught fire. A hole appeared at the left hand side. Then the blaze spread rapidly, and instantly a great blast of hot air came from the stage through the hole in the curtain and into the audience. Big pieces of the curtain were loosened by the terrific rush of air and were blown into the people's faces. Scores of women and children must have been burned to death by these fragments of burning grease and paint. I was in the theater until the curtain had entirely burned. It went up in the flames as if it had been paper, and did more damage than good."
"So far as could be observed from the audience, the asbestos curtain was not lowered at all," said Mrs. Schweitzler. "I was particularly interested in that 'autumn-scene' curtain because I paint oil pictures myself.
"Before the show started I sat for a long time examining the painting. From our seats in the fifth row we could see every detail. The 'autumn scene' was done in heavy red and in order to get some of the effects the artist had to use great daubs of paint, smearing it on pretty thick in some places. I am certain that the backing was common canvas and if this was so it must have been covered with wax before the paint was put on. This same curtain came down after the first act, so I had plenty of time to know it.
"When the fire started my first feeling was that the stage people were acting recklessly. For several minutes the fire was no bigger than a handkerchief. A bucket of water would have saved the lives of every one. But there seemed to be no water on the stage.
"One of the stage hands first took his hand and then used a piece of plank to smother the flames. It kept spreading. After Eddie Foy had made his speech the 'autumn scene' curtain came down. 'Pull down the curtain,' was all the cry I heard. They did not say 'Pull down the asbestos curtain,' nor was there any mention of any fireproof curtain. The 'autumn scene,' with its highly inflammable paint, came down, and it was like pouring fire into the people's faces. It was a great piece of bungling—far worse than if no curtain had been lowered at all.
"It has been said that noise and panic-like screaming followed the burning of the curtain. This is absolutely not true. The whole place was almost gruesomely silent.
"Mrs. Gibson and I were half way in from the aisle andhad to wait for many to go out before we started. At the aisle some one stepped on Mrs. Gibson's dress and she fell to the floor. Men, women and children trampled over her, and having done all I could I started out. In the lobby I begged some men to return for Mrs. Gibson, but they said it was no use. The curtain by that time was burned up."
Mrs. Gibson, wife of Dr. Charles B. Gibson, confirmed Mrs. Schweitzler's assertions that no asbestos curtain was visible from the audience. "From the place where I fell," said Mrs. Gibson, "I crawled on hands and knees to the entrance. When I got to the rear the curtain was all burned away."
ESCAPE OF MOTHER AND TWO SMALL CHILDREN
Mrs. William Mueller, Jr., 3330 Calumet avenue, who at the time was confined to her bed from injuries sustained by trying to get out of the Iroquois as the panic began and from bruises sustained by being trampled upon, tells the story that she with her two children, Florence, 5 years old, and Belle, 3 years old, occupied three seats in the second row from the back on the ground floor on the right side of the theater. The children became restless as the second act began and Mrs. Mueller took them to a retiring room.
After the children had been in the retiring room for some minutes, they wanted to go back and see the performance. Mrs. Mueller started back into the lobby to go to her seats, when she saw, in a glass, the reflection of the flames. She hurried back into the retiring room and asked for the children's wraps, saying she thought something was wrong and did not want to stay in the theater any longer. The maid in the room asked her what was the matter and Mrs. Mueller told her.
"Oh, that's all right. I won't give you the things now," the maid replied. "I'll go and see what is the matter."
Mrs. Mueller demanded the children's wraps, but they were refused. Just then Mrs. Mueller thinks she must have heard the first cry of alarm and she ran to the front doors with the children. She tried one door and found it locked. Then she tried another, and that was locked. She pushed against it and then threw herself against it, trying to force it open. She does not remember seeing any employee near the outer door.
Mrs. Mueller then heard people in the audience shrieking and then she fainted. It is thought that the oldest little girl, Florence, also fainted.
As the people pushed out of the theater they trampled upon Mrs. Mueller and the child. Mrs. Mueller was horribly bruised and was either kicked in the eyes or else some one stepped on her face. It was at first feared she would lose her eyesight.
The first person carried out when the rescue began was Mrs. Mueller; she was right in front of the doors. Near her was Florence. Just before the men entered, and after every one else seemed to be out, little Belle came walking out. A man ran to her, picked her up and took her to a barber shop, where she continued to cry for her mother. The little girl, Florence, was also carried out and was taken to the same barber shop, where the two children were later found by Mr. Mueller. Mrs. Mueller was taken to the Samaritan hospital, where she was found that night.
EXPRESSION OF THE DEAD.
John Maynard Harlan visited the morgue in search of the body of Mrs. F. Morton Fox and her three children, who wereintimate friends of Mrs. Harlan. In speaking of his experience he said:
"I was profoundly impressed by the expressions on the faces of many of the dead. Perhaps it was only a fancy, but it seemed to me that the faces of those having the higher order of intelligence showed less horror and more resignation. Some of these seemed to have passed away almost with a smile of faith, so serene were their countenances. But the faces of the less intelligent were uniformly struck with suffering to a terrible degree.
"When I found Mrs. Fox's little boy the smile of courage on his face was one of the most noble sights that I ever saw. It seemed to me that I could see the brave little fellow trying to reassure his mother and facing death with a heroism not expected of his years."
ONLY SURVIVOR OF LARGE THEATER PARTY.
Mrs. W. F. Hanson, of Chicago, was the only member of a theater party of nine to escape. She wept as she talked of her companions and shuddered as she recalled the manner of their death.
"I cannot tell how I got out of the theater," she said. "I remember starting for one of the aisles when the panic was at its height. I was separated from my friends. We had a row of seats in the second balcony. Suddenly someone seized me and I was tossed and dragged along the aisle and I lost consciousness. When I came to my senses I was in a store across the street. Every one of my companions perished. We composed a holiday theater party and we were all related by marriage."
ALL HIS FAMILY GONE.
Arthur E. Hull, of Chicago, who lost his entire family in the Iroquois fire, tells the following pathetic story:
"It is too terrible to contemplate. I can never go to my home again. To look at the playthings left by the children just where they put them, to see how my dear dead wife arranged all the details of her home so carefully, the very walls ring with the names of my dear dead ones. I can never go there again.
"Mrs. Hull had called the children from their play to go and see the show. They were laughing and shouting about the house in childish glee, when she, all radiant with smiles, came to tell them of the surprise she had planned for them.
"They left their toys just where they were. She fixed the things about the house a bit, and then took them with her.
"Mary, our maid, went with them. She, too, was joyous at the prospect, and a happier party never started anywhere. Everything was smiles and sunshine.
"They had planned for a day of joy, and it turned out a day of sorrow. Sorrow more deep than can be fathomed by human mind. Sorrow so acute that it is indescribable."
The party consisted of Mrs. Hull, her little daughter, Helen Muriel, her two adopted sons, Donald DeGraff and Dwight Moody, together with Mary Forbes.
The two boys had been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Hull but three weeks before, and had lately come from Topeka, Kan., where their father, Fred J. Hull, had died.
The party was gotten up for them particularly, and it was the first and last time they were ever to witness a stage production. This was only one of a score of recorded cases where the unselfish desire to give pleasure to the young caused their death.
A FAMILY PARTY BURNED.
Dr. Charles S. Owen, a physician and one of the most prominent men in Wheaton, died at the Chicago homeopathic hospital from injuries sustained at the Iroquois fire. On Christmas day Dr. Owen held a family reunion, and eight relatives came from Ohio to spend the holiday week. Wednesday a theater party was arranged and twelve seats were secured at the Iroquois in the front row of the first balcony. Out of the entire party of twelve Dr. Owen was the only one to escape.
CARRIES DAUGHTER'S BODY HOME IN HIS ARMS.
It appears that Miss Blackburn had attended the matinee with her father, James Blackburn. They had seats in the first balcony. In the panic father and daughter became separated. The father escaped to the Randolph street lobby and then started back for his daughter. He found her body on the staircase horribly burned. Catching up the lifeless form and wrapping it in his overcoat, Mr. Blackburn rushed to the street and procured a cab, in which he was driven with his burden directly to the Northwestern station. He caught the first train for Glen View and had the body of his child at home in half an hour.
SAD ERROR IN IDENTIFICATION.
Mrs. Lulu Bennett, Chicago, whose daughter, Gertrude Eloise Swayze, 16 years old, was a victim of the holocaust, thought she would avoid the gruesome task of making a tour of the morgues, so she asked a friend to search for her daughter's body. After visiting a number of morgues he finally found the body of a girl at Rolston's, in Adams street, which he identified as Miss Swayze. The body was conveyed to the mother's residence, but when she looked at the body she turnedaway with a moan and said: "That is not my Gertrude; take it away, take it away. There has been some terrible mistake made."
Mrs. Bennett made a personal tour of the morgues afterward and found her daughter's body.
THE HANGER OF THE ASBESTOS CURTAIN.
The asbestos curtain at the Iroquois theater was not hung in a manner satisfactory to Lyman Savage, the stage carpenter who put it up, according to a statement he made to his son, C. B. Savage, head electrician at Power's theater, a short time before his death which occurred indirectly as a result of the fire.
Mr. Savage, who lived at 1750 Wrightwood avenue and who was a stage carpenter in Chicago for twenty-five years, worked at the Iroquois theater until two weeks before the fire, when he was compelled to leave because of kidney trouble. His son ascribes his death to excitement over the Iroquois fire. That disaster was uppermost in his mind.
Mr. Savage said: "I asked my father if he hung the asbestos curtain at the Iroquois theater and he said he did. I then asked him if he hung the curtain according to his own ideas, and he replied in substance: 'No, that curtain was not hung my way, but Cummings' (the stage carpenter's) way. If you want to see a curtain hung my way you should see the curtain in a theater I worked on in Michigan last fall.'
"My father did not specify what point about the hanging of the curtain he did not approve, and I do not know what feature of the work he was not satisfied with.
"I asked my father if the curtain was hung on Manila ropes, and he said that it was not, but that it was hung on wire cables. I know that to be a fact, for I saw the cables myself.
"I do not desire to shield any negligent person, but Stage Carpenter Cummings was not responsible for the lowering of the curtain only in so far as he was responsible for having some one there to lower it.
"I was on the stage when the fire broke out, having gone to the theater to see Archie Bernard, the chief electrician. The statement has been made that the lights were not thrown on in the auditorium after the fire was discovered. Just before the fire broke out Bernard was stooping down preparing to change the lights, and he had just said to me: 'I will show you how I change my lights.'
"When the fire was discovered I saw him reach down to throw a switch. Whether he threw the switch that lights the auditorium I do not know, but I do know that the fire from the draperies fell all around the switchboard and burned out the fuses. Consequently if the lights had been turned on the fact that the fuses were burned out would cause them to go out.
"The first I knew of the fire was when I heard some one behind and above me clapping his hands. I looked up and saw McMullen trying to put out the blaze with his hands. If he could have reached far enough he would have extinguished the fire. He did the best he could.
"I carried four women out of the theater and burned my hands. I stayed on the stage as long as it was possible for me to do so."
KEEPSAKES OF THE DEAD.
Many Chicago people spent a part of the Sabbath following the fire in the dingy little storeroom at 58 Dearborn street, where the effects and the valuables of the Iroquois theater victims are kept.
The storeroom was crowded all day. The line formed at Randolph street and pushed its way to the north. A mother stepped to one of the show cases. She had lost a boy and she had come to find his effects. She was looking through the glass when she called one of the policemen to her side.
"That's it. That's my little boy's," and she pointed at a prayer book.
The policeman took it from the case.
"Yes, that's it," she murmured.
From the street came the tolling of the half hour.
"Just a week ago he started for Sunday school with it. It was a Christmas present and he took it to church for the first time."
A young man, well dressed and prosperous looking, came in and walked along the wall, gazing at the dresses and the furs. Suddenly he seized a fur boa and kissed it.
"It was her's," he cried. "May I take it with me?"
The officer told him to visit the coroner and get a certificate.
Two young men entered the place and began making flippant remarks. The officers overheard their conversation and escorted them to the threshold of the door. Two heavy boots assisted in making their exit into the street a rapid one.
THE SCENE AT THOMPSON'S RESTAURANT.
John R. Thompson's restaurant at 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the fatal day was an eating-house, decked here and there with late lunchers; at 3:20 it was a hospital, with the dead and dying stretched on the marble eating tables; at 4 o'clock it was a morgue, heaped with the dead; at 7:30 it was again a restaurant, but with chairs turned on top of the tables that had been the slabs of death, with the aisles cleared of the human debris, and the scrub woman at work mopping out the relics of humanflesh, charred and as dust, and sweeping in pans the pieces of skulls that had lain about the mosaic floors, yet damp with the flowing length of woman's hair.
The terror, the horror, the tragedies, the martyrdom, the piercing screams of the dying, the agonized groans, the excitement of the surging mob, the hurrying back and forth of the police with their burdens of death and life that only lasted a moment, the pushing of physicians, the casting of dead about on the floors like cord wood, one on top of the other, to make room on the marble slabs of tables for the oncoming living, the cries of children, the sobbing of persons recognizing their loved one dead, or worse than dead—this unutterable horror can never be imagined, and was never known before in Chicago, not excepting the horrors of the great fire, or the martyrdom of war.
LIKE A FIELD OF BATTLE.
The scene presented was most horrible. It was like a battlefield where the dead are being brought to the church or the residence that has at a moment's notice been turned into a hospital. In they came, the dead and the injured, at first at the rate of one every three minutes; then faster, several at a time, until the restaurant was heaped with maimed bodies lying on the tables or the floor, with surgeons bending over them, and on the cashier's counter, with the girl there sobbing with her face hidden in her hands, afraid to look at the ghastly spectacle.
There were scores of physicians, three to each table, and they worked with vigor and earnestness and skill, but with the tears coursing down the cheeks of many a one. At first the bodies were carried into Thompson's, then they went across the street; many of them were put in ambulances and taken tothe emergency room for women in Marshall Field's store, and still many others of the injured—those yet able to walk—were half dragged, half carried to the offices of physicians in the Masonic temple.
WOMEN EAGER TO HELP.
Women fought and shoved and pushed their way through the crowd to get to the door of the improvised hospital, that became a morgue only too rapidly.
"I am a nurse. Let me help," said some.
"I am a mother. My boy may be dead inside. For God's sake, let me save a life," said another, a woman in middle age.
Others came in from the crowds, neither mothers nor nurses, women with the spirit of heroism who longed to serve humanity when humanity was at so low an ebb.
"She's dead," was more often than not the verdict after much work. "Next!" and the cold and stiffened form of the victim was dragged, head first, from the marble eating table, thrown quickly under the tables, and another form, perhaps that of a tiny child, took its place.
STEADY STREAM OF BODIES.
So fast came the bodies for a time that there was one steady stream of persons carried in—the still living—while without the morgue stood the ambulances waiting for their burdens. The sidewalk, muddy and crowded, was strewn with the dead, lying on blankets or else thrown down in the mud, waiting to be taken to the various morgues of the city.
There was a figure of a man—a large man with broad shoulders and dressed in black—whose entire face was burned away, only the back of the head remaining to show he had everhad a head; yet below the shoulders he was untouched by the fire.
There lay women with their arms gone, or their legs, while one had one side burned off, with only the cross shoulder-bone remaining. She had worn a pink silk waist and black skirt; the fragments of the garments still clung to her like a shroud that had lain in the grave.
There was a little boy, with a shock of red-brown hair, whose tiny mouth was open in terror and whose baby hands were burned off so that his tiny wrists showed like red stumps.
CLOTHING TORN TO SHREDS.
There was one young girl, her garments so torn from her splendid figure that her arms and white bosom rose uncovered from the tattered and torn—not burned—shreds of her clothing, and the shreds of a turquoise-blue silk petticoat draped her limbs. She had died from suffocation—fought and struggled and died. On her finger sparkled a diamond ring, and about her slender throat was a string of pearl beads.
There was another body of a girl that several persons said they knew, yet no one could speak her name. She was beautiful in her terrible death, with a wealth of blonde hair, and staring blue eyes. She was dressed in a blue-black velvet shirt waist, with gold buttons, a mixed white and tan and gray walking skirt, with a pink silk petticoat beneath. She had died of suffocation, and, as she lay on the marble table dead, a tiny blue chatelaine watch, ticking merrily the hour, was pinned upon her breast.
The crowding, the howling, the screaming in Thompson's was so highly pitched, that no one could hear the orders of the physicians. Bedlam reigned—no order, no leader, everyone doing what he could to help. At length came the loud voice ofa man, and those who could hear, stopped and listened, while those at the front of the restaurant said: "Some man has gone crazy with grief."
It was State Senator Clark, who, seeing the need of an order, jumped to a table and gave one.
"Everyone get out," he cried, "and make room for the doctors. Let there be three doctors to a table and one nurse while they last."
Skillfully, cleverly, worked the looters of the dead. Rings were torn from stiffened fingers, watches, bracelets, chains, purses taken from bosoms, then out in the surging crowd of excited humanity went the thieves, lost to recognition by those who saw them loot in the terribleness of the scene.
PRAYERS FOR THE DYING.
Through the mangled mass of humanity moved a priest with a crucifix in his white hands—Father McCarthy of Holy Name Cathedral, saying the prayers for the dying—not for the dead, but to give the last words of a hope beyond. Many persons died with the words of Father McCarthy sounding like music in their ears.
"I was with the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War," said Dr. H. L. Montgomery as he worked over the dying. "I rescued 150 people during the great Chicago fire. I have seen the wreckage of explosions. But I never saw anything so grimly horrible as this."
"Will Davis is in the theater now and acting like crazy," interrupted the voice of a boy. "Can't no one speak to him?"
And out dashed all the employes of the burning theater to find Mr. Davis as he paced the destroyed gallery floor and looked at the ruin below and at the dead as they were hauled out of the debris.
Little Ruth Thompson, the seven-year-old daughter of John R. Thompson, was in the fire and almost to the front exit when the mob hurled her back. The tiny child fought and was yet forced back. She climbed onto the stage, burning as it was, and worked her way to the rear door and out into the alley, then through into the scene of death and pain in her father's restaurant.
"Papa, I got out. Where's grandpa?" she cried.
There was one old man, with white beard and hair, who wept over the body of his aged wife. He was Patrick P. O'Donnell of the firm of O'Donnell & Duer.
Death, pain, tragedy—and at 7:30 o'clock the place was a restaurant again.
CHILD SAVED FROM DEATH IN FIRE BY BALLET GIRL.
Left under the burning stage during the mad rush by the members of the "Mr. Bluebeard" company at the Iroquois theater fire a four-year-old girl, who appeared in the performance as one of the Japanese children, was heroically rescued by Elois Lillian, one of the ballet girls, who was the last to escape from the theater.
"I was the last to escape from under the stage," said Miss Lillian, "and as I rushed headlong through the smoke I saw the little girl screaming with fright and almost suffocated. The rest had escaped, leaving the child behind. I took the little one under my arm in a death-like grip and succeeded in getting into the aisle behind the boxes; and ran through the smoking-room and out the front door. I don't know how I managed to hold on to the struggling child, or how I came to get out the front way.
"I was dressed in tights, and as soon as I reached the street ran into Thompson's, and there soon had her revived. The mother, frantic with grief, came in, and when she saw her daughter and heard my story she fell upon her knees, thanking me for saving her little girl's life."
PRIEST GIVES ABSOLUTION TO DYING FIRE VICTIMS.
When the Rev. F. O'Brien of the Holy Name Cathedral learned of the fire and heard that so many were dying he rushed into the Northwestern Medical University, into which many victims had been taken, to administer the last sacraments to members of the Catholic Church. Finding he was unable to attend the great number being brought in, he announced that he would give a general absolution to all the Catholics among the victims.
The scene of that last absolution beggars description. During the brief moment the priest, with uplifted hands, besought God to pardon all the frailties of his dying servants, the poor, mangled men and women seemed to realize that they were face to face with the inevitable. Though crazed with pain, they ceased to moan, and fastened their fast-dimming eyes on the priest.
When the absolution was given many of the victims, horribly burned, with the flesh of their head and face blackened, and in most cases so burned as to expose the bones, put out their hands imploringly toward the priest, for one handclasp, one word of sympathy before they passed away.
Even the stalwart policemen were affected by the touching spectacle. Another priest of the Holy Ghost order arrived shortly after, and both clergymen administered absolution,remaining until the injured were removed to various hospitals and the dead to the morgues.
LITTLE BOY THANKS GOD FOR CHANGING HIS LUCK.
Warren is the ten-year-old son of former Governor Joseph K. Toole of Montana, prominent for years in national politics. In the last four months the boy has been the victim of three accidents, each of which bore serious consequences for the little fellow.
Thursday night, when he knelt down at his bedside in the Auditorium hotel to say the evening prayer which his mother had taught him, he mumbled:
"I thank you, God, that you did not let me go to the theater Wednesday afternoon. You see, if you had not delayed my mamma when she went down town shopping that day, my little brother and I would have been in the fire. I thank you, God, for changing my luck."
Warren's mamma and papa heard the prayer. Before he had reached the "Amen" both had silently bowed their heads.
"Yes, Warren, your luck has changed," said the former Governor, as he bent over his son to say "Good night."
Less than four months ago Warren was playing with a gun. The firearm exploded and the boy was seriously injured. He had not fully recovered when he fell from the top of a cart and broke his arm. Then, a few weeks ago, a dog upon whom he lavished much of his youthful affection suddenly sprang at him and bit him between the eyes. He was badly scarred, but his parents were thankful that he did not lose his sight.
On Wednesday he importuned his nurse to take him to see "Mr. Bluebeard, Jr." The nurse referred him to his father,and the latter told him that he and his brother could go if his mother returned from her shopping trip in time to take them. The holiday crowds detained Mrs. Toole until quite late in the afternoon. Now little Warren is convinced that good fortune has at last deigned to smile upon him.
USE PLACER MINER METHODS.
Methods of the California placer miner were used by the Chicago police in recovering the valuables lost in the mad rush for safety by the Iroquois theater fire victims. Big wagon loads of dirt and ashes taken from the theater floor were taken down under police guard to a basement at Lake street and Fifth avenue. There a placer mining outfit, including sieves and gold pans, had been erected and City Custodian Dewitt C. Cregier thus searched for valuables in the rubbish.
DAUGHTER OF A. H. REVELL ESCAPES.
Margaret Revell, daughter of Alexander H. Revell, with her friend, Elizabeth Harris, accompanied by a maidservant, sat in the parquet of the theater, fortunately next to the aisle. At the first alarm they were swept to the door by the crowd, and were among those who got out early, escaping with only minor bruises. Mr. Revell was among the early searchers on the scene, and remained giving assistance after learning of the safety of his daughter.
PHILADELPHIA PARTNER IN THEATER HORRIFIED.
The news of the terrible Chicago calamity was a severe blow to S. A. Nixon of Philadelphia, part owner of the Iroquois theater. When the news was confirmed he broke down and wept bitterly.
Fred G. Nixon, son of Mr. Nixon, said: "We were at the dinner table Wednesday evening when the telephone bell rang and I answered. A newspaper man told me that the Iroquois theater in Chicago had been destroyed and many persons killed. I could not believe it and I asked: 'Are you sure it was the Iroquois?' 'Positive,' came the answer. My father had paid no attention to what I said, but the word 'Iroquois' attracted him, and as I returned to my seat he asked: 'What was that you said about the Iroquois?' 'Oh, nothing,' I replied, trying to be calm.
"But my face betrayed me. The news had paled me, and my father, suspecting something was wrong, insisted, and I told him. He refused to believe it and went to the telephone to satisfy himself. In five minutes he heard the worst. Then he collapsed and sobbed like a child. For eight hours we sat up waiting for full particulars, and at 3 o'clock Thursday morning, when father went to bed, he was almost a nervous wreck."
ALL KENOSHA IN MOURNING.
Next to Chicago the blow of death at the Iroquois fell heavier on Kenosha, Wis., than any of the other cities whose residents perished in the disaster. Two of the leading manufacturers of the city, Willis W. Cooper and Charles H. Cooper, and the children of Mr. and Mrs. S. H. Van Ingen were among the dead.
Kenosha was in deep mourning. Trade was practically suspended and the people gathered on the streets in little groups discussing the one topic. 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 hearses. All the bodies weretaken 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' Association, of the Kenosha Hospital Association, and the Masonic Temple Association. 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 classes in Kenosha, and when his body was taken to the morgue hundreds of men and women stood with uncovered heads while it passed.