CHAPTER XXIII.
Not More Than Half the Bodies of Victims Identified—Hundreds of Corpses of the Unknown and Nameless Cast Into the Sea—Others Buried in the Sand and Cremated—List of Identifications.
The actual number of lives lost at Galveston will never be known, but over 4,500 bodies of victims of the frightful catastrophe were identified; and these, together with the hundreds of identified and unidentified corpses which were buried at sea, in the sands along the beach, in the yards and grounds of private residences; those bodies which must have been carried out into the gulf when the waters receded from the island Sunday morning; those cremated; the hundreds found on the gulf coast, on the shores of Galveston Bay, and those taken from the water; and, finally, those discovered in all sorts of places inland (the bodies found outside Galveston Island being buried where picked up)—all these served to swell the Galveston death list to possibly 7,000, which was the figure named by Mayor Jones the fifth day after the flood. He had every opportunity for obtaining information on this point.
Until the cremation of bodies began the foremen of the various burial gangs made lists of the bodies disposed of by their men, but when it became necessary to burn the corpses, the danger of pestilence being so great that they had to be put out of the way at the earliest possible moment, the compilation of these lists was abandoned and a mere general estimate made. The work of clearing the business and residence streets proceeded but slowly, the men in the gangs assigned to this being enervated by the intense heat of the sun, sickened by the effluvia from the decomposing bodies of dead human beings and animals, and depressed by the gloomy character of their surroundings. Most of the men thus employed were citizens of Galveston, many of whom were in comfortable circumstances before the storm swept away their belongings. In the majority of cases these workers had lost not only their earthly possessions, but members of their immediate families as well, and were heartsore and crushed in spirit. In the main, they engaged in this work because they wanted to help the city out in its desperate straits, and for the further reason that if not busied in mind and body they might possibly go mad.
The first of the lists of the identified dead was made out and made public on Tuesday following the disaster, and the lists compiled the succeeding days were given out as soon as completed.
The lists printed below comprise the first and only complete roster of the dead which has appeared anywhere:
FIRST LIST OF IDENTIFIED VICTIMS—TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11.
Aguilo, Joseph B., chairman of the Democratic county executive committee.
Allen, Charlotte M., Seventeenth street and Avenue A.