Marshall Everett - Lest We Forget - Chicago's Awful Theater Horror

"Then all of a sudden the whole front of the stage seemed to burst out in one mass of flame. Then everybody seemed to get up and start to get out of the place at once. From all over the house came shrieks and cries of 'fire,' I started at once, hugging the wall on the outside of the stairway as we went down.

"When we got down to the platform where the first balcony opens it seemed to me that people were stacked up like cordwood. There were men, women, and children in the lot. At the same time there were some people whom I thought must be actors, who came running out from somewhere in the interior of the house, and whose wigs and clothes were on fire. We tried to beat out the flames as we went along. By crowding out to the wall we managed to squeeze past the mass of people who were writhing on the floor, and practically blocking the entrance so far as the people still in the gallery were concerned.

"As we got by the mass on the floor I turned and caught hold of the arms of a woman who was lying near the bottom pinned down by the weight resting on her feet. I managed to pull her out, and I think she got down in safety. One of the men with me also pulled out another woman from the heap. I tried to rescue a man who was also caught by the feet, but, although I braced myself against the stairs, I was unable to move him.

"I came in from Apple River to see the sights in Chicago, and I have seen all I can stand."

Six little girls from Evanston, in a party occupying seats in the parquet, escaped by the side entrance. In the crush they lost most of their clothing. Four of the children stayed together, the other two being for the time lost in the street. The four were Hannah Gregg, 12 years old, 1038 Sheridan road; Florence and May Lang, 14 and 13 years old, Buena Park; Beatrice Moore, 12 years old, Buena Park.

One of the heroes of the Iroquois theater fire was Peter Quinn, chief special agent of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad system, who assisted in saving the lives of 100 or more of the performers. But for the prompt service of Quinn and two citizens who assisted him it is believed that most of the performers would have met the fate of the victims in the theater proper.

Mr. Quinn had attended a trial in the Criminal court and in the middle of the afternoon started for the downtown district, intending to proceed to his office. Reaching Randolph and Dearborn streets the railroad official had his attention attracted to a man who rushed from the theater bare-headed and without his coat. What followed Quinn describes as follows:

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