Fire in the Big House. Mitchel P. Roth
at the desk located near the first tier, answering phone calls and the like. Unlike the other five tiers, the first floor was not enclosed, but the guard on the range was responsible for that floor and held the key to the cage as well as the first-tier range key, just in case incoming prisoners came in too late to be assigned a new cell. So, in effect, one guard would have two keys and the other would have five keys for the other five double ranges.36
Little was later queried why the keys were not returned to the safekeeping of the administrative offices after each count and why it was necessary for guards to hold onto the keys while on duty, since they were not really necessary for the count. Moreover, this strategy brought up serious security concerns in the event one of the guards was overpowered. Little explained that it was convenient to have them since the G&H guards were stationed “quite a distance” from the guardroom, and almost every evening packages were delivered, including new shoes and other items that could not be slid under the cell door like mail. Little also noted that the cellblock housed the machine shop company and all of the construction companies, and almost every day there were a few prisoners on special detail, so the keys were needed to let them back into their cells.37
Between 5:30 and 6, Ray W. Humphries, the editor of the popular civic publication Columbus This Week, returned to Columbus from Grove City. While taking a shortcut home that took him by the corner of West Spring and Dennison Avenue, he “noticed under the viaduct west of the penitentiary” members of the fire department and a lot of commotion. His journalistic instincts were strong, and he proceeded closer to the prison. “Some chap yelled at me from the filling station on the corner” and told him, “There is a Fire in the Penitentiary.”38
Humphries continued driving north on Dublin Avenue when he realized he had his Graflex camera with him. He got out of his car and looked for a good spot to take pictures from. He quickly spotted clouds of smoke coming from the cellblock. He then ran over to the Paragon Oil Co., where he took five pictures. He remembered an old newspaper adage: “When you get through taking pictures that are ‘unusual,’ you usually look at your watch.” He did; the time was 5:47. He went back to the corner of Spring and Dennison to get closer to the action but was forced back each time by a police cordon. He lamented that he “didn’t have a badge like a news photographer would.”39
Other locals took note as well. The operator of a nearby filling station near the southwest corner of the penitentiary remembered seeing flames and hearing cries as he rushed to the prison gate. “It seemed like a thousand men were yelling and beating on the bars.” He made out a lone voice screaming, “For God’s Sake let me out. I’m burning—I’m burning.” This proved too much for the attendant, and he reversed course away from the fire. When he came back about fifteen minutes later, “most of the cries had stopped” by then. One reporter would describe how the prisoners screamed in terror as a “snakelike coil of heavy black smoke crawled into the cells through ventilators.”40
The fire seemed to draw spectators like moths to a flame. Indeed, “The blazes leaping into the sky acted as a beacon for the curious from all over the city…. Rooftops were crowded in the vicinity, and thousands clambered upon every available point of vantage to see something.” Radio broadcasts also contributed to the growing crowds, especially since the late newspapers had not been delivered yet. “Even the radio, broadcasting its appeal [for help], struck alarm into the homes of thousands,” who would drive, walk, and run to Spring Street. Police were faced with the task of controlling the area so that rescue workers, doctors, guards, soldiers, and others could make their way into the burning Ohio Penitentiary.41
Radio transmissions might have brought legions of curious citizens, but the broadcasts’ ability to summon emergency personnel was inestimable. “Radio played one of the principal roles when Old Man Terror staged his recent thrilling two week melodrama…. Almost as the curtain rose on that spectacle of fire and disorder, radio was on the stage, and it stayed there until the show, from spot news standpoint, was over.”42
The blaze flashed along oil-soaked forms and dry timbers from I&K, undergoing reconstruction, southward into the ill-fated cellblocks, igniting the ancient wooden roof, which was overdue to be replaced. Clouds of smoke billowed out, filling not just the cellblocks but the prison quadrangle as well. Assistant Fire Chief Osborn would later suggest that the guards “seemed a little slow getting cells open,” but followed up by diplomatically commenting that he could “understand” their lack of progress “in the face of terrific heat, dense smoke and so many cells.”43 As the heat grew more intense, some prisoners still locked in the G&H tiers ran water in their sinks and dashed water on their faces and each other; others soaked blankets and hung them in front of their cells to keep smoke out; still others dipped their heads into their water-filled toilet bowls (some of the dead were found in this position). Several reportedly slit their own throats rather than burn alive, while others pleaded with guards to shoot them, forgetting that guards, even if they wanted to oblige the desperate men, were prohibited from carrying guns inside the cellblocks.
The convicts responded to the fire in a variety of ways. One of the more curious responses was a submissiveness that took over certain prisoners, not unlike death row inmates who had already made their peace with walking down the long “green mile” to the death chamber. Chester Himes, who would later gain fame as the author of a series of detective novels set in Harlem featuring the black detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, was a witness to this behavior, which he called “that queer docility common to prisoners.”44 He would draw on his experience as a survivor of the prison fire in his short story “To What Red Hell?,” in which a prisoner finds himself utterly incapable of functioning during the Ohio inferno. Prison conditioning has so diminished the protagonist that when he hears a voice tell him, “Get a blanket, and give a hand here,” he can only say, “‘No can do,’ in a low choky whisper…. He really wanted to go up in that smoking inferno where heroes were being made…. But he couldn’t, just couldn’t, that’s all.”45
But other convicts utilized their ingenuity and survival skills, honed during long hours of idleness and contemplation, and managed to live to tell their tales. Many improvised as the smoke poured into their cellblock. Inmate Wolfe advised his cellies to wet their handkerchiefs at the water fountain inside their cell and place them over their faces. Several convicts picked up chairs and started banging on doors for attention. Meanwhile, “bedlam was raring in the building” as the rest of the inmates began pounding on their doors to be let out.46
Charles Oliver of Toledo was trapped in his cell on the fourth tier. “Almost before we realized it the flames were sweeping along the cellblock and it began to get hot.” Together with his three cellmates, “We yelled and yelled for them to open the cell but they wouldn’t. When it seemed that we would be roasted alive we started the water running in the faucets of our cell and as the floor became flooded we lay down in the water,” putting their faces in it and splashing each other. “We were scared. I’ll admit it, scared to death … seemed we would be roasted alive. It got hotter and hotter. I hope I never go to hell if it’s this hot.” They had fully “expected to die, lying there in the water with flames all around us,” until miraculously some convicts came and knocked the cell locks off with sledgehammers. Oliver and his two companions got safely out of the cell, but not before they had a good bit of hair “singed off” their heads. It was a small price to pay for rescue. Once freed, rather than make a mad rush to freedom, Oliver and his partners joined others, dashing through a wall of flames to help free the inmates on the next range of cells.47 The scorching heat forced the rescuers to beat a hasty retreat after knocking the locks off just three cell doors.
Columbus residents, inmates, and guards survived with indelible images etched into their memories. One recalled a “negro clutching at the iron grilling of a window” on the fourth tier, pulling frantically at bars that