"I occupied the fourth row from the front in the top gallery, seats 42, 43 and 44, with my mother and nephew. I was sitting in the middle. A shower of sparks was the first suggestion of fire. Then the curtain was lowered and Eddie Foy stepped out. I couldn't hear his words, but his motions were to sit down and keep our seats, and we did so until I saw the red curtain that went down after the first act give away in the upper left hand corner and pieces fell, making a large opening. It was on fire.
"Then we got up and had to go about ten feet, that took us to the wall, and three steps to go up to the exit leading to the marble stairway. As we turned the last look I caught was a tongue of fire leaping to the gallery and a cloud of smoke with it, and we got the heat from it, scorching and blistering both of my ears and both my nostrils and scorching my hair and chiffon boa on my neck. At that instant we stepped out on the marble stairway, right out of it, and we got down stairs safely, and then we passed out to the street."
SPORTING MEN TESTIFY.
Frank Houseman, 293 Warren avenue, Chicago:
"Dexter, the baseball player, and I dropped into the Iroquois that afternoon about 2:20 and found the house sold out with the exception of two boxes and standing room. We bought a couple of seats in an upper box and went in. The house was crowded and it was dark, for the performance was in progress. We found an usher and started up the stairway to the box. The stairway was pitch dark.
"'This is a dark stairway; this is funny they don't have a light or something here,' I said to my friend. I stumbled a couple of times going up the stairway. Finally we got to where we were seated. Well, during the intermission between the first and second acts we had a good view of the audience, being up high, and I remarked to my friend that there were a great many women and children present in event of any trouble.
"When the curtain rose for the second act, if I can remember, probably five or ten minutes after, I noticed a spark directly on the opposite side to the stage in behind. We were sitting up where we viewed the audience and it was very easy for us to distinguish the spark, and I saw a man—it looked as though he was on a pedestal of some kind; it must have been a bridge of some kind that he was standing on—working to put out the light, so I quietly said to my friend: 'Do you see those sparks over there?' He says: 'Yes; they will put that out all right.'
"Well, I instantly thought about the stairway that I had to come up getting into this box, and somehow or other I could not get it out of my mind. I said: 'Well, now, I don't know; we better get down near the door—it looks pretty good—the outside.' So we finally started, and as we started out of the box I suggested that he tell the gentleman and lady that were in the box with us that they had better come on, which I understand he did. He came down the stairs.
"It was a blast of flame or fire, a sort of ball or something that appeared to me like it was a lot of scenery that was burning down, scenery or flimsy work. It burnt a great deal on the order of paper. All I thought of was the opening of that door, because the people at that time were crowding close to me and screaming and hallooing, and I don't just remember just how I got that door open, but anyway it opened and carried the crowd out. I tried to do what I could around there for the people that were being trampled on, trying to pull them out from the middle of the alley and start them on their way if they were not too badly hurt, until they began jumping off the fire escapes above, and I noticed and looked up and saw that the people were not moving.
"The flames by that time had come out of the top exits that were open, and the fire escape held all the people it could and the flames were surrounding them, and they were jumping, and those that were not pushed off jumped off. I was trying to get the people on the lower fire escape, which—I can guess at it—was probably ten or fifteen feet from the ground. We got a couple of them to jump down because it was but a little ways up; they began jumping right from overhead and of course I had to look out that no one fell on me, or would jump on me, and I could not do very much of anything, only to pull out the people being trampled upon, and pull them to one side, until one man jumped on, I think, three bodies, and started to get up and go away, and was just about in a rising position when there was a lady fell on him, and he didn't move after that. It became so dangerous then that I had to get away.