TAKING AWAY AND IDENTIFYING THE DEAD.
In drays and delivery wagons they carried the dead away from the Iroquois theater ruins. The sidewalk in front of the playhouse and Thompson's restaurant was completely filled with dead bodies, when it was realized that the patrol wagons and ambulances could not remove the bodies.
Then Chief O'Neill and Coroner Traeger sent out men to stop drays and press them into service. Transfer companies were called up on telephone and asked to send wagons. Retail stores in State street sent delivery wagons.
Into these drays and wagons were piled the bodies. They lay outstretched on the sidewalk, covered with blankets. Much care in the handling was impossible. As soon as a space on the walk was made by the removal of a body two were brought down to fill it.
One of the wagons of the Dixon Transfer Company was so heavily loaded with the dead that the two big horses drawing it were unable to start the truck. Policemen and spectators put their shoulders to the wheels.
When the drays were filled and started there was a struggle to get them through the crowds, densely packed, even within the fire lines which the police had established across Randolph street at State and Dearborn streets.
Policemen with clubs preceded many of the wagons. The crowds through which they forced their way were composed mostly of men who had sent wives and children to the theater and had reason to believe that one of the drays might carry members of their own families.
Eight and ten wagons at a time, half of them trucks and delivery wagons, were backed up to the curb waiting for their loads of dead.
Two policemen would seize a blanket at the corners and swing it, with its contents, up to two other men in the wagon. This would be continued until a wagonload of bodies had been handled. Then the police forced a way through the crowd and another wagon took the place.
Occasionally a body would be identified, and then efforts were made to remove it direct to the residence. Coroner Traeger discovered the wife of Patrick P. O'Donnell, president of the O'Donnell & Duer Brewing Company.