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Joseph Cawthorn's flawed description
In the Everett disaster book, it was reported that
Cawthorn helped several chorus girls escape from the
Iroquois then, still in costume and without a coat,
joined a few other cast members in a Dearborn street
store. He described his experience:
"I was in a position to see the origin of the fire
plainly, and I feel positive that it was an electric
calcium light that started the fire. The calcium
lights were being used to illuminate the stage in
the latter part of the second act, when the song,
"In the Pale Moonlight," was being sung. "I was
standing behind a wing on the left-hand side, which
would be the right-hand side to the audience, when
my attention was attracted above by a peculiar
sputtering of what seemed to me to be one of the
calciums. It appears to me that one of the calciums
had flared up, and the sparks ignited the lint on
the curtain. Instantly I turned my attention toward
the stage and saw that many of the actors and
actresses had not yet discovered the blaze.
"Just then, the fireman who is kept behind the scenes
rushed up with some kind of a patent fire
extinguisher. Instead of the stream from the
apparatus striking the flames, it went almost in the
opposite direction. While the stage fireman was
working to use the chemicals, the flames suddenly
swooped down and out. Eddie Foy shouted something
about the asbestos curtain, and the fireman
attempted to use it, and the stagehands ran to his
assistance, but the curtain refused to work.
"In
my opinion, the stage fireman might have averted the
whole terrible affair if he had not become so
excited. The chorus girls and everybody to my mind,
were less excited than he.
The stagehands and players began to hurry from the
theater. There were at least 500 people behind the
scenes when the fire started. I assisted many of the
chorus girls to get out, and some of them were only
partly attired. Two of the young women, in
particular, were naked from their waists up. They
had absolutely no time to even snatch a bit of
clothing to throw over their shoulders."
There are so many discrepancies in Cawthorn's
account that I suspect a nearsighted entertainer
found an opportunity to get his name in a book so
lengthened a one-minute experience into a ten-minute
story. It is understandable that neither the coroner
nor grand juries asked Cawthorn to testify. Perhaps
the coroner's office figured out that Cawthorn was a
bag of wind who scooted out the door in the first
exit wave and spent the next half hour in a Dearborn
street storefront. Unfortunately, the author of Lest
We Forget / Chicago's Awful Theatre Horror did
not filter the story, so it has been out there for
over a century, making
Iroquois
fireman Sallers out
to be a Keystone cop. Sallers can be faulted for
failing to fearlessly demand fire-fighting equipment
for the Iroquois, but there was nothing to criticize
about his performance at the fire. I must confess
that the more I've read about Cawthorne, the more
unlikable he seems.
Cawthorn has Sallers still trying to apply
Kilfyre when the fireball entered the
auditorium. By that time, Sallers had thrown
away the useless Kilfyre tube and was on the
stage floor trying to free the fire curtain from
the light reflector, by which time Cawthorn was
standing outside on a corner.
"What Cawthorn describes as "a stream" from the
Kilfyre extinguisher, implying it was liquid,
could only be stated by someone who couldn't see
well. Kilfyre was a dry powder, like Ajax
cleanser, and emerged from the can in puffs,
like baby powder. No streams.
What Cawthorn perceived as excited behavior was
Sallers using a flinging gesture in an effort to
make the powder fly high enough up into the air
to reach a flame that was far above his head.
When he realized the Kilfyre could not put out
the fire, he climbed down the ladder from the
flybridge, sent someone to turn in an alarm, and
ran to the other side of the stage where the
fire curtain was hung up on the light reflector
and joined others who were trying to close the
reflector.
Sallers shouted for the asbestos curtain to be
lowered long before Eddie Foy did so from the
stage, as did flyman Charles Sweeny and stage
worker John McCluskey (on his way out the
door).
"The dancers were aware of the fire almost from
the first ember.
The lamp that started the fire was a carbon
arc, not calcium. (That's picking a nit because
I've found others who referred to all the
theater lights as "calciums.")
Back in NYC after the fire, on Jan 5, 1904, Cawthorn
blamed the disaster on the audience. If they hadn't
panicked when their hair caught afire and their
children were burning, all would have been well.
Silly women wanting to protect their children. He
revealed another tidbit not reported previously,
that he escaped from the theater wearing only a
bathrobe and that his clothing was undamaged.
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