Morbid Fact Du Jour for September 11, 2015

Today we continue the tragic story of the Iroquois Theater fire of December 30, 1903. As you may recall, the fire had just been started by a light above the stage and despite the frantic attempts to snuff it out, it had started to grow. Now we pick up the tragic action with…

Today’s Incinerating Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Eddy Foy was in his dressing room busily applying the final touches of makeup when the drama of the fire in the loft began to overshadow the production on stage. Dressed in his “Sister Anne” costume, he was due to appear in a few minutes opposite a comic elephant. When he heard the commotion, he opened his dressing room door, ran to the stage, and saw the fire. Acting on instinct, he burst onto center stage and raised his hands, imploring the audience to remain seated and calm. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Foy exclaimed. There is no danger. This theater is fireproof. Don’t get excited.” He signaled conductor Herbert Gillea to direct the remaining six musicians to “play, play, play and keep playing.” They struck up the waltz from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet, which had a temporary, soothing effect on the crowd. After more flaming sets came crashing down onto the stage, Foy signaled a stagehand to lower the asbestos curtain to protect the audience. But the curtain snagged half-way down, possibly on a cable wire used to hoist a ballerina, or on an electric light reflector, leaving a 20-foot gap between the curtain’s suspended bottom and the wooden stage floor.

The audience’s escape down the aisles turned from orderly to panic-stricken. Foy’s one last try to calm them went unheeded, and he fled to a rear stage exit. With hundreds of children in tow, the audience of mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and schoolteachers scrambled for the exits. Almost immediately the aisles leading from the auditorium gallery and upper balconies became clogged and impassable. When the lights went out the crowd bunched up in blind terror and died at the exits and hallway doors that either opened inward or were locked shut to keep out freeloaders. With the auditorium filling with heat, smoke, and poisonous gases that made breathing impossible, children and mothers screamed for one another in the darkness and families became separated in the crushing stampede. Many children fell and were stomped to death.

Backstage, theater employees and cast members opened a rear set of huge double doors which sucked a powerful wind tunnel inside, fanning the flames and sending huge sheets of fire underneath the open asbestos curtain and into galleries and balconies filled with people. A second gust of wind created a fireball that shot into the auditorium, incinerating patrons in their seats or in the aisles. All of the stage drops were now on fire, which spread to the entire auditorium destroyed the 75,000 feet of oiled manila rope suspended above the loft, and burned the supposedly noncombustible asbestos curtain.

To Be Continued…

Culled from: Great Chicago Fires: Historic Blazes That Shaped a City

Morbid Art Du Jour!

While searching for images to use with this fact, I stumbled across the artwork of Eric Edward Esper, who has documented some of Chicago’s greatest disasters in brilliantly vivid paintings. Check out his work! A kindred soul, methinks. I’d love to have one of his pieces – and my birthday IS coming up, people!

Here’s his brilliant painting of the start of the Iroquois Theater Fire: