"Well, the fire kept making headway towards the back of the stage. It spread rapidly right straight back. There seemed to have been a draft from the front of the theater. The show people started to go out fast, coming from the basement and from the stage and leaving the stage by the regular stage entrance. Somebody hallooed, 'She is gone. Everybody run for your lives.' I went towards the rear door then and made my way out as best I could.
"There had never been any fire drill on the stage so far as I know and I never heard any fire instructions. Many were out before I left and I guess all the stage people got out some way or another. It was every man for himself then."
AN EX-USHER'S WORDS.
Willard Sayles, 382 North avenue, Chicago: "I was formerly an usher at the Iroquois theater. During my period of employment the fire escape exits at the alley side of the house were always kept locked. There was one exception. The opening night Mr. Dusenberry, the head usher, had me open the inner set, the wooden doors that concealed the big outside iron ones. The people on the aisle were complaining that it was too warm. He gave orders to the director and myself to open the wooden inner doors to the auditorium. Later on Mr. Davis came up and told me to close them and not to open them unless I got instructions from him. That was the only time I got instructions from either one of them. We had not got instructions as to what doors we were to attend to in case of fire. The only time we got instructions was the Sunday before the house opened; Mr. Dusenberry called us all down there and told us to get familiar with the house. There was no fire drill or anything of that kind."
CHAPTER XXI.
IRON GATES, DEATH'S ALLY.
That two iron gates, securely padlocked, across stairways in the Randolph street entrance, held scores of women and children as prisoners of death at the Iroquois theater fire horror, was the startling evidence secured on Saturday, Jan. 9, ten days after the holocaust by Fire Department Attorney Monroe Fulkerson.
In a statement under oath George M. Dusenberry, superintendent of the auditorium of the playhouse, admitted that these gates had remained locked against the frantic crowds through all the terrible rush to escape. Against these, bodies were piled high in death of those who might have gained the open air had they not been penned in by the immovable bars.