Fire in the Big House. Mitchel P. Roth
for. Once this task was completed, the convicts were allowed back out.
Fire survivor “James R. Winning,”31 the anonymous convict turned novelist, claimed in his 1933 roman à clef Behind These Walls that he had been talked into helping with the identification process. His contribution was taking shipping tags from the deputy warden and helping mark the dead in the cells and prison yard. In order to be sure, he needed access to the prisoners’ shirts, which had the numbers written on them. Many were without shirts, however. For those victims who could not be identified he was told to leave behind a blank card. Other victims were so charred they had to be rolled over to pull the shirttail from underneath them. By this time many of the bodies were growing stiff from rigor mortis. Their arms were often sticking straight out, “with the forearm and shoulder forming a pivot so it is impossible, almost, to roll them over.” When he was able to recognize a body, a helper held a flashlight while he wrote down the convict’s number on the tag. “As fast as we tag a group they are carried away.”32
A number of physicians with stethoscopes made sure “life was extinct” before bodies were prepared for burial. Once they were satisfied with the identification, the bodies were turned over to morticians and undertakers, who were busy “working with their fluids and instruments.” Captain C. B. Weir, representing Edward E. Fisher Undertakers, was selected by the state to take charge of the bodies. Weir noted that three hundred suits had been ordered from different stores to clothe the dead for burial. In addition, he mentioned to one reporter that “300 conservative caskets and 300 rough boxes in which caskets will be placed when bodies are buried” had been ordered. Ohio state authorities not only made sure that bodies were properly prepared for burial, but also paid for bodies to be sheathed in black shrouds, white collars, and wing ties,33 placed in plain coffins, and provided transport to their hometowns. Relatives who could not make the trip were permitted to telegraph instructions to the warden.34 After the dead were identified and placed inside their caskets, “some were covered by flowers placed there by friends or relatives.”35 These flowers would stay in place until the floral arrangements donated by the Columbus Flower Growers and Dealers Association arrived.36 One observer described “evenly placed caskets, their lids now closed, gray and pearl and black, a spray of roses and lilies on each one.”37
Undertakers were kept busy throughout the day and by noon on Tuesday, April 22, had finished more than two hundred embalmings. They planned to finish the rest by nightfall. Arrangements had already been made to transfer eight bodies to the Whitaker mortuary for funeral services. Likewise, protocol was in place to make sure all of the Cincinnati victims were returned to their homes for burial. Embalmers from all over central Ohio also worked quickly. The bodies were checked by coroner Murphy.
In the days ahead, sobbing wives, relatives, and friends began the grueling task of identifying hundreds of cadavers. The protocol for claiming the bodies began with a visit to the warden’s office at the Ohio Penitentiary, where next of kin were given passes that would get them into the temporary morgue in the Horticulture Building. Pass in hand, relatives were transported to the fairgrounds, where they waited outside the building until the body had been located, before being taken inside to view it. One reporter described the relatives of the dead men “assembled in droves at the temporary morgue … where victims were laid out in caskets of gray, white and pink.”38 Weeping relatives moved along the long line of caskets. Several women passed out when they spotted their loved ones. The army trucks that had brought the bodies to the fairgrounds would also take them to railroad stations for the final journey to their hometowns. If families could afford the expense, hearses were available as well.39
At 5:30 Tuesday evening an army officer from the Horticulture Building apprised waiting survivors there would be no more identifications that night. At this point 149 bodies, nearly half of the 317 dead, had been identified, and 37 had already been released for shipment. The army officer informed the milling crowd that transportation and lodging would be provided by the Salvation Army to anyone who wanted to wait until the next day. Several who waited moved in for a last look at the “evenly placed caskets, their lids now closed, gray and pearl and black, a spray of roses or lilies on each one.” For the 168 families who decided to wait the night out there would be “another black night of suspense lighted only by the hope that a beloved face would be white, and whole and familiar.”40
There was very little that could be done to make the Horticulture Building welcoming to bereaved family members, but building manager C. K. Rowland “did what he could to make the grim room less dreary” by moving plants that would have decorated the grounds at fair time into the makeshift mortuary. By one account, “they were the only ‘bouquets’ for those who had gone west, and somehow they made the grisly scene a bit more bearable.”41 The weather seemed to have reverted to winter, with light frost expected in exposed areas as the sky cleared. Indeed, it was so cold that the opening baseball series between the Columbus Senators and the Milwaukee Brewers had to be rescheduled to June. Tuesday night the mercury had plunged to thirty degrees, and the following morning was expected to be fifteen to twenty degrees below normal. It was imperative, therefore, to offer some type of seating inside the building. But the fifty chairs set up for mourners provided minimal comfort.
The fairgrounds housed many of the overnighters in its colosseum. Around “a roaring fire” one family sat with “immobile faces, benumbed by catastrophe. A daughter and granddaughter watched anxiously a tired old face which alternately dropped in slumber and raised in vague grief.” Two Newberry boys,42 of the four the old woman had raised, were listed among the dead. One had not been identified yet, but once he was, his mother could say “they played together, lived together and now they have died together.” That’s all she wanted at this point. She managed to smile as she took a tin cup of coffee that was handed to her.
Although the state capital, Columbus, was used to visitors, it is doubtful that anyone could remember so many cars from so many different Ohio cities in town at the same time. “Car after car bearing licenses issued from remote corners of the state and which gave the evidence of being driven at a terrific clip over the state’s highways pulled into the fairgrounds disgorging drawn faced occupants.”43 It wasn’t long before the fairgrounds were teeming with so many cars that it became necessary to close the gates to all but selected visitors, in an attempt to create a bulwark between the bereaved and morbidly curious rubberneckers. Anyone found lurking around just out of curiosity was “routed in short order.” Among those volunteering to keep curious bystanders at bay were a number of “actives and pledges” of Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity at Ohio State University, who helped guard the doors to the Horticulture Building.44
Orders were sent out Tuesday night by Colonel J. S. Shetler, from the 37th Division of the Ohio National Guard that relatives of the victims would not be allowed to enter the Horticulture Building until Wednesday morning, April 23. Shetler’s 150 guardsmen would remain on duty until Wednesday night to keep the curious throngs from the building. Relatives who were able to provide burial and shipping permits were spared the ordeal of the initial protocol requiring first going to the prison to make arrangements for the bodies. Instead, they could now go directly to the fairgrounds, where state officials assisted in identification and bodies were neatly grouped in sections arranged in alphabetical order. By the end of Tuesday fingerprints had been taken of fifty-five yet to be identified men in hopes of establishing their identities.
Word came Wednesday that the 318th convict had died, thirty-year-old Edward Willis, doing five to seven for larceny. Cause of death was reported as pneumonia. Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. the “parade of sorrow started,” as relatives from distant reaches of the state who had been notified by telegram that their loved ones had perished gathered at the Horticulture Building to identify husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers, “some seared beyond almost recognition.” They found 318 “different colored coffins in rows the length of the building,” some covered with flowers placed by friends or relatives. One reporter described long lines of women making their way down