Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1901 — PERISH IN THEATER STAMPEDE [ARTICLE]

PERISH IN THEATER STAMPEDE

Five Die and Fifty Are Hart During a Play in Chicago. Grief swayed the Chicago Ghetto Sunday because of the five-deaths and many serious injuries resulting from the panic and stampede caused by a false alartq of title given by an unidentified man in the West Twelfth Street Turner Hall, 253 West 12th street, where Jewish actors were presenting "The Greenhorn” in Yiddish at 5:30 o’clock Saturday. The 500 people in the hall, in the main women, and children, made a rush for the two exits. They crashed through the protecting balustrade, many of them falling to the floor ten feet below, and when the tragic exit had been lu-complished five almost lifeless bodies lay bleeding on the stairs und nearly fifty seriously injured women and children lay in heaps on the floor of the hall and at the entrance below. J Gustave E. Yoos is proprietor at the saloon beneath the hall and manager of she building, which, he says, belongs to the Schoenhofen Brewing Company. He sent in the alarm as soon as he realized that # there was a panic.: The police responded with patrol wagons and ambulances. Forty-four of the injured were removed to their homes and to the county hospital. Crowds stood about the streets in the nrighlsorhpod of the spene of the disaster Sunday and many angry men condemned the city administration for permitting the use of such a death trap as a theater. The doors of the hall opened inward and the exits are inadeqiiate for the hall, which will seat 1,000 persons. There are no fire escapes from the balcony, which is reached by two narrow stairways.