Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1887 — APPALLING DISASTER!! [ARTICLE]

APPALLING DISASTER!!

On the Toledo, Peoria k Warsaw at Piper City, 111. A Railway Horror Surpassing Anything in the History of the Country, An Excursion Train Crashes Through a Trestle with Nearly i,ooo People. On© Hundred and Eighteen Passengers Are Killed and Over Three Hundred Injured. The Kroken.Cars Take Fire and Are Extinguished After Great Fffort w ith Dust from the Roadbed. i - Pinioned and Helpless Men Piteously Plead for Assistance and One Maa Kills Himself. Fiendish Ghouls Rob the Helpless Wounded and Quivering Dead of Their Valuables. The Coaches Telescoped and Piled in a Promscoos Heap—Many of the Bodies Torn and Mutilated in a Horrible Manner, in Some Cases the Heads Being Torn from the Trunks—Full Particulars of a Most Appalling Accident.

--All excursion train consisting of thirteen coaches and two engines from Peoria to Niagara Falls went through a trestle on the Toledo, Peoria A Warsaw road, over the Vermillion river, near Piper City, Ford county, 111., killing over one hundred people and injuring as many more. The accident happened about 12:30 Thursday morning, Aug. 11. A dispatch from Chatswortfi says: “The tram left Bloomington, Wednesday night, for Niagara Falls on the Illinois Central, the intention being to go by that road as far as Chats worth, and from thence by way of the Toledo, Peoria &. Warsaw. The change was made at Cbatsworth, in Livingston county, and soon afterward, as the train neared Piper City, a small town in Ford county, the bridge crossing the Vermillion river gave way, plunging the engine and several cars down a steep embankment into the stream. The cars caught.fire from the lamps and a fearful panic ensued. On investigation it was found that over one hundred excursionists were killed and over twice the number injured. The train consisted of two engines and sixteen coaches. The culvert had. been, burned away about two miles east of Cbatsworth. presumably by a prairie fire, and about 1 o’clock Thursday morning the engines and coaches went over. The agent at Chatsworth reports to the general manager, E. P. Jeffreys, of the Illinois Central, that over one hundred are killed, and about twice the number injured.

The train was made up at Peoria, so that a majority of the victims are from that city or its immediate vicinity. Twelve cars started from Peoria, including four sleepers. Attached to the train was th'eTmvate car of the auneriniendent of the road, which was to be occupied by himself and son. The departure from Peoria was at 7 p. m.,and the intention was to take another coach filled with excursionists from Bloomington. Then the run was to be by way of Logansport, Ind., and Detroit. The program seems to have been fully carried out until the great throng of pleasureseekers met with a fearful check at the bridge over. Vermillion river. Ten care were piled on top of the two engines, being telescoped and piled across and on top of one, another. It is miraculous that any escaped, as the coaches and engines do not occupy over two car lengths of track, and all are on top of the roadbed. In one coach, not a person escaped. In another, but one —a lady. 3 , Seventy dead had beep taken out up to Thursday noon, and the wounded are now in Chats worth, in the town hall, school-house, depot, etc,. At Piper City there are a large number of wounded—over fifty. The dead are estimated at over 100. The care caught fire but it was put out by train men and passengers. A heavy rain set in about two hours after the wreck, before the wounded could be taken away, raining for two hours. THE HORRIBLE DETAILS. The train had been made up all along the line of the Toledo, Peoria! Western road, and the excursionists hailed from various points in central Illinois, the bulk of them, however, coming from Peoria. Some of the passengers came from Canton, from El Paso, Washington, and, in fabtp.aH stations along the line; some from as far west as Burlington and Keokuk, la, A special and cheap rath had been made for the excursion,' and all sorts of people took” advantage of it When' the train drew out of Peoria, it was loaded to its utmost capacity. Every berth in the six sleepers was taken and all the day care carried sixty people eateh—96o passengers in all! The train was so heavy that two engines were bitched to it, and it was an hour and a half behind time. - Chatsworth, the next station east of Forest, is six miles off, and the

run there wae made in seven minutes 1 so the terrible momentum of those fifjteen coaches.and two heavy engines, shooting thropgb space at the rate of a mile a miAnte, can he understood. No stop was made at Chats worth,'and* on and on the heavy train, with its living freight, sped through the darkness of the night. Three miles east of Chatsworth is a little slough, where the railrdad crosses a dry run about ten feet deep and fifteen wide. Over this was stretched an ordinary wooden tre9tle bridge, and as the excursion train came thundering down on it, what was the horror of the engineer on the front engine when he saw that this bridge was on fire! Right up before his eyes leaped the bright flames, and the next instant he, was among them. There was no chance to stop. Had there been warning, it j would have taken half a mile to stop j That on-rushing mass of wood, iron and i human lives, and the train was within j onh hundred yards of the red-tongucd ! passengers of death before thev flashed their fatal signals into the engineer’s face. But he passed over in safety, the first engine keeping the rails. As it went over, the bridge fell beneath it,and it could only have been the terrific speed of the train which saved the lives of the engineer and his fireman. But the next engine went down and instantly the deed of death was done. Car crashed into car; coaches piled one on top of another, and in the twinkling of an eye over one hundred people-found instant death and fifty more were so hurt they could not live. As for the wounded,they were everwhere. Only the sleeping coaches escaped, and as the startled and half-dressed passengers came tumbling out of them they found such a scene of death as is rarely witnessed, and such work to do that it seemed as if human hands were utterly incapable. It lacked but five minutes of midnight. Down in the ditch lay the second engine, engineer McClintock dead and fireman Applegate badly injured. On top

were piled the three baggage cars, one on top of another, like a child’s cardhouse after he had swept it with his hand. Then came the six day coaches. They were telescoped as cars never were before, and three of them were pressed into just space enough for one. The second car had mounted off Its trucks,crashed through the car ahead of it, crushing the wood-work like tinder, and lay there resting on the tops of the seats, while every passenger in the front car was laying dead and dying underneath. Out of that car but four people came out alive. On top of the second car lay the third, and although the latter did not cover its bearer as completely as the one beneath, its bottom was smeared with the blood of its victims. The other three cars were not so Radiy crushed, but they were broken and twisted in every conceivable way, -and- every crushed' timber and' beamrepresented a crush ed human frame and broken bone. Instantly the air was filled with the cries of the wounded and the shrieks of those about to die. The groans of men and the screams of women united to make an appalling sound, and above all could be heard the agonizing cries of little children, as, in some instances, they lay pinned alongside tueir dead parents.

And there was another terrible danger yet to be met. The bridge was still burking and the wrecked cars were laying on and around the fiercely burning embers. Everywhere” _in the wreck were wounded and unhurt men, women and children, whose lives could be saved if they could be got out, but whose death, and death in a most horrible form, was certain if the twisted wood of the broken cars caught fire. Andtoight the fire there was not-a drop of water and only some fifty ablebodied men who had still presence of mind and nerve enough to do their duty. The only light was the light of the burning bridge, and with so much of its aid-the fifty men went to work to subdue it. For four hours they fought like fiends, and for four hours the victory bung in the balance. Earth was the only weapon with which the fire could be fought, and so the attempt was made to smother it out. There was no pick or shovel to dig it up, no baskets or barrows to carry it in, and so desperate were they that they dug their fingere down into the earth, which a long drought had baked almost as hard as stone, and leaped the precious handfuls thus hardly won upon the encroaching lames, and with this earth, handful by handful, kept back the foe. While this was going on, other brave men crept underneath tb cars, beneath the fire and the wooden bars which held prisoner so many precious lives, and with pieces of board ,aud sometimes with their hands, beat back the flames when they flashed up alongside some unfortunate being who, pinned down by a heavy beam, looked on helplessly while it seemed as if nis death by fire was certain; and while the fight was thus going on, the ears of the workers were filled with the groans of dying men, the anguished entreaties, ofthose whose death seemed certain unless the terrible blaze could be eTtingmßhAd ) «.nd the cries of those too badly hurt to care in what manner the end were brought about, so only it would be quick. So they dug up th% earth with their hands, reckless of the blood streaming out of broken finger nails, and heaping it up in little mounds, while all the while

came heartrending cries, “For God’s sake,don’t let us burn to death!” But finally the victory was won, the fire was put out after four hours of endeavor, acd as its last sparks died away a light came up in the east to take their place, and dawn came upon a eeene of horror. While the fight had been going on men had been dying, and there were not so many wounded to take out of the wreck as there had been four hours before. Butin the meantime the country had been aroused; help had come from Chatsworth, Forestand Piper City, and as the dead were laid reverently longside of each other, out in the cornfield there were ready hands to take them into Chatsworth, while some of the wounded were carried to Piper City. One hundred and eighteen was the awful poll of the dead, while the wound- : ed numbered four times that number. | Chatsworth was turned into a morgue, j The town hall, the engine house, the | depot were all full of dead bodies, while [every house in the little village had its quota of wounded. There were more than one hundred corpses lying in the extemporized dead houses, and every man and woman was turned into an amateur but zealous nurse. Over in the lumber-yard the noise of hammers and saws rang out on the air, and in it busy carpenters were making rough coffins to carry to there homes the dead bodies of the excursionists who, twelve hours before, had left their homes full of pleasurable expectations of the enjoyment they were going to have during the vacation which had begun. When the news of the disaster was first flashed over the wires, prompt aid was at once sent. Dr. Steele, chief surgeon of the Teledo, Peoria k Western railroad, had come on at once on a special train, and with him were two other surgeons and their assistants. From Peoria also came Doctors Martin, Baker, Flagloere and Johnson, and from every city whence the unfortunate excursionists had come their physicians and friends hurried on to help them. From Peoria also came delegations of the Red Men and the Ancient Older of United Workmen, numbers of members of both societies being on the ill-fated train, and so after 8 o’clock in the morning there were plenty of people to do the work that needed such prompt attention. In .the town hall was the main hospital, and in it anxious relatives and sorrowing friends sat,fanning gently the sufferers’ faces, asking the attending surgeons, as they bound up the wounds, and insisting that theie must be hope. Down in the dead-houses fathers, husbands, brothers, sisters, wives and children tearfully inspected each face as it

was uncovered, and sighed as the features w T ere unknown, or cried out in anguish when the well-known face, sometimes fearfully mangled, was uncovered. The entire capacity of the little village was taxed, and kind-hearted women drove in from miles to give their gentle ministrations to the suflerers. No sooner had the wreck occurred tnan a scene of robbery commenced. Some band of unspeakable miscreants, heartless and with only criminal instincts was on hand, and like the guerrillas who throng a battle-field the night after the conflict and rob from the dead the money which they received as their meagre pay, stealing even the bronze medals, and robbing from the children of heroes the other emblems of their fathers’ bravery, so did these human hyenas plunder the dead from this terrible accident, and take even the shoes which covered their feet. Who these wretches are is not now known. Whether they area band of pickpockets who accompanied the train, or some robber gang who were lurking in the vicinity, cannot be said. The horrible suspicion, - <s—* . however, exists, and there are many who give it credit, that the accident was a deliberately planned case of train wrecking: that the bridge was set on fire by miscreants who hoped to seize the opportunity offered, and the fact that the bridge was so far consumed at the time that the train came along, and the .fact that the train was'an hour an a half late, are pointed out as evidence of a careful conspiracy. It seems hardly possible that man could be so lost to all the ordinary feelings which animat-e even the basest of human race; but still men who will rob dead men, who' will steal from the dying and will plunder 1 the wounded, held down by the broken beams of a wrecked car, wounded,whose death by fire seemed eminent, can do almost anything that is base, and that is what these fiends in human form did. Tney went into cars, when the fire was burning underneath, and when the poor wretches who were pinned there begged them for God’s sake to help them out, stripped them of wH their watches and jewelry, and searched their pockets for money. When the dead bodies were laid out in the corn field, these hyenas turned them over in seach (or valuables, and that the plundering was done by an organized gang was proven by the fact that out in the com field, sixteen purses, all empty, were found in one heap. It was ghastly plundering and had the plunderers been caught they would surely have been lynched. * There was one incident of the accident which stood out more horribly than all of these horrible scenes. In the second coach was a man, his wife ahd little child. His name could not be learned, but it is said that he got on at Peoria

When the accident occurred the entire family of three was caught and. held down by broken woodwork. Finally, when relief came, the man turned to the friendly aid and feebly said, “Take out ;my wife first; I’m afraid . the child is dead.” So they carried out the mother, and as a broken Beat was taken off her crushed breast the blood which welled from her lips told how badly she was hurt. They carried the child, a fairhaired, blue-eved child of three, and laid her in the cornfield, dead, alongside Of her dying mother. Then they went back sor v the father and brought him out. Both his legs were broken, but lie crawled through the corn to the side of his dying wife, and feeling her loved features in the darkness, pressed some brandy to her lips and asked her how? she felt. A groan was the only answer, and the next instant she died. TblKman felt the forms of his dead wife and child and cried out: “My God! there is noth- | ing more for me to live for now," and taking a pistol out of his pocket, pulled the trigger. The bullet went surely through his brain, and the dead bodies of that little family were laid side by side in Chatsworth to be identified. There have been many guesses as to the origin of the fire which weakened the bridge and caused the accident, but so far they are nothing but guesses. The most probable one is that a spark from the furnace of the engine of a train which passed two hours before caused the blaze. The season has been very dry he reabouts for a long time; almost no rain has fallen; and so the woodwork of the bridge was like tinder. A live coal dropped on it and would fire it at once, and the resulting accident soon follow. Another startling theory is the one of train wrecking. This is an awful one to contemplate, but it has itsadherents. They point to the fact that there were a lot of thieves about; to the additional fact that they seemed to be members of an organization working together, and the diabolical heartlessness with which they went about their work indicated devlishness which would stop at ing. The news of the disaster wasbr-ought to Chatsworth by one of the passengers about midnight, and the inhabitants around secured “buggies, lumber-wagons and every kind of vehicles to reach the fatal spot. As fast as the corpses were Taken from the wreck they were laid out on the side of the track. Before daylight the work of recovering the dead and moving them to Chatsworth was begun. As soon as the corpses were recovered they were placed in a large empty building, lately occupied as a store, also in the public school-house, and in the depot waiting-room. The residents of the town threw open their houses for the reception of the dead and wounded, but the former were taken to the iinprovised morgues. Friends and relatives ot the dead came to . Chalsworfb”wrtß7 the Remains, and the scenes in the different places where the bodies lay was most heart-rendering and. distressing. As the day passed bodies were being continually brought in from the scene of the wreck. The majority -of them were mangled in the most frightful manner, many of them having their faces entirely torn away, leaving their brains exposed, while their jaws, finsers and legs had been torn off.

Ths wrecked train was undoubtedly the largest excursion that; .ever pulled out of Peoria. Two engines were required to pull it, but only one of these was attached at the depot, the other being sent on ahead and being taken on after the train had cleared the Illinois river bridge, a switch-engine being placed at the rear of the train to assist it in starting from the depot. Before the train riarted, E. B. McClintock, one of engineers, expostulated with General Superintendnt Armstrong about the way the train was made up, insisting that it ought to be taken out in two sections, but his words were of mo avail. In relating his experiences of the disaster, D G. Risher, of Kanakee, said: “I was at B 1 Paso and missed the excursion train by less than five minutes. I then took a freight twenty-seven minuses later, and when we got to Forest the conductor had orders to leave all his lpads, secure all the physicians he could, and proceed to a wreck three miles east of Chatsworth. Upon arriving at the scene o£ the disaster we found the most heartrending and indescribable scene ever witnessed. Men women and children were begging to be taken from the wreck. What made the situation still more appalling was the fire on the bridge, with no water on hand with which to do anything. All on the train, and such passengers as were able to do so, procured dirt andtiied in every way possible to smother the fire. They were so far successful as to prevent its getting hold of the wrecked cars. Had it reached the wreck, hundreds of wounded and imprisoned passengers would have perished in the flames. We worked from the time of the arrival of the train till about 1:30 in trying to extricate the suffering, who were in such dread of fire, and at that time a friendly shower of rain relieved us from all fear of fire. Peoria devoted Sunday to the burying of her dead trom the Chatsworth wreck. A larger crowd witnessed the obaeqtlijar than usually are present on Decoration day. fy - I —- Conflictings statements are made in regard to the cause of the disaster. The

section foreman and his men testified at the coroner’s inquest that they were over their entire sectioH on the day preceding the disaster, while prominent citizens of the community state they saw the section gang carrying water into the foreman’s house between 3 and 4 o’clock. It is believed by many in the vicinity that the road 1 " was not examined Wednesday. It is now thought the incendiary theory has no foundation whatever. Grass was seen burning forty rods away iA the afternoon and it is probable a change in the wind drove the fire to the bridge. Two tramps, however, have been arrested on suspicion. The evidence against them is very slight, but the charge will be investigated by the grand jury. On Sunday the railway officials burn-' ed the debris of the wreck-. Persona who saw the wrecked cars fired profess to believe it possible that some bodies still remained beneath them and that they could plainly smell burning flesh and blood. Some persons who are known to have fieen on the train are still missing and it is possible that their bodies were consumed. Great indignation prevailes in Peoria over the matter.