July 6, 2019 • 23 mins
This 2015 episode covers an event in 1944, when one of the most disastrous fires in U.S. history broke out during a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performance. Dozens of lives were lost and hundreds of people were injured as the largest big top in the country was consumed by flames.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. Today is the seventy five anniversary of the
Hartford Circus Fire, so today we are revisiting our March
eleven episode on that tragedy. And this fire has been
in the news lately, both because of the anniversary and
because of efforts to potentially use DNA evidence to try
to figure out the identities of some of the unidentified
(00:22):
victims of the tragedy. There are currently five unknown victims
buried at Northwood Cemetery, and court proceedings regarding the potential
exhimations of those bodies are ongoing. Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast Act
(00:48):
And I'm Polly Frying. And today we have another frequent
listener request, which is the Hertford Circus Fire. We've gotten
a lot of request for it before, and then every
time we talk about a fire, it seems like people
have for more fires. So we've gotten lots of requests
for this one. And there are actually lots of books
about the Hartford Circus Fire, and they don't agree with
(01:10):
each other in some pretty fundamental ways. They draw really
vastly different conclusions about everything from who started the fire,
if anyone deliberately started it, and the identity of the
most famous unidentified victim. There's just a lot of discrepancy
between them all. And I really didn't relish the idea
of reading through multiple books that were effectively quarreling with
(01:31):
each other about what happened. So I took a little
bit of a different tech when researching this article, and
that was that instead of reading lots of books, I
read historical newspapers that were published at the time of
this tragedy, and I followed the story as it happened.
So most of the information in today's episode comes from
the New York Times and the Boston Globe, which was
(01:51):
then the daily Boston Globe as it was reported and
on the day uh and I didn't have access to
the archive fives of the Hartford Current, which would be
the logical paper to read because it was the local
paper to where this tragedy happened. Um, but I did
read some of their more recent coverage of retrospectives and
updates and things like that. So we're going to talk
(02:12):
about the Hartford Circus fire. So the Ringling Brothers and
Barnamin Bailey Circus, which we are just going to kind
of shorten to Ringling Brothers or Ringling for the sake
of simplicity as needed, so we're not whipping out a
huge phrase every time we have to reference. It was
filled with about eight thousand people in Hartford, Connecticut on
July six nine, and the big top at the circus
(02:36):
was big, really big. I mean the name the name
was suitable for this one. It was six hundred feet
long and two ft wide, so that's about twenty by
sixty and it weighed twenty tons. While it had about
eight thousand people in it on this particular day, it
could hold up to twelve thousand. Because this was World
(02:56):
War Two, most of the men of Hartford were either
away fighting or they were working multiple shifts at nearby factories,
so overwhelmingly the people in the audience were children, mothers,
and grandparents. The show started at two in the afternoon,
added about two forty a big cat show in the
center ring had just wrapped up. The famous Flying Wallenda's
(03:18):
were starting their high wire act up above, and people
started to notice a flame working its way up the
side of the tent near the men's restroom by the
main entrance. The fire spread extremely quickly. By the time
a trio of ushers got there with buckets of water,
it was already too big for them to put out.
Almost simultaneously, people started yelling fire and the band switched
(03:40):
to playing Stars and Stripes, forever known in the business
as the disaster March and used to signal that there
is an emergency. People in the top rows of the
bleachers jumped down into the straw that was below them
and made for the exits, or went out under the
tent sidewalls. The people who were up in the top
of the bleachers were all fared better than the people
(04:01):
who were lowered down for that reason, because the people
who were closer to the floor got caught in the
resulting stampede. Parents and entertainers literally threw children over animal
cages that were blocking the exits. Some of them cut
their way out of the tent with pocket knives. The walenda's,
at risk of being trapped above the fire, slid down
(04:22):
ropes to the ground. The performers exit was blocked by
the crowd, so they headed for one of the exits
blocked by animal cages. Some climbed over, while others tried
to feed some of the crowd through the animal shoots
that would lead out of the tent. Famous clown Emmett Kelly,
who was in his sad tramp clown roll of Weary Willie,
was actually part of the Wilenda's act. While they did
(04:45):
their work up in the top of the tent, he
would run around below them with a little butterfly net.
When he heard people screaming, he thought that one of
them Wilenda's had fallen, and so he looked out and
saw that the tent was on fire. He ran back
to his dressing room to grab the buck it's that
he would use to clean himself up after the show
was over, and he filled them with water at a
horse trough. Then he ran back in to try to
(05:06):
put the fire out. He threw the water onto the
burning tent, but it was far too late. The fire
was much too big to be put out by a
couple of buckets, so instead he tried he started trying
to evacuate children from the tent. The blaze was very
close to the main entrance, so he started trying to
guide people to a side exit that was not on fire.
(05:28):
Some of the kids were actually scared of him. They
were scared anyway, but then they were scared because this
clown was talking to him. But he did get as
many of the kids around him as he could to safety,
and then he saw that the fire was getting close
to a set of gas engines that operated some of
the circus equipment, so he refilled his buckets and tried
to soak the canvas near the engines as much as possible,
(05:50):
hopefully making them less likely to catch fire. Then he
escaped from the tent himself. There are actually pictures of
him at Kelly still in his makeup, carrying buck it's
that were taking the day of the fire uh and
that led to this event being nicknamed the Day the
Clowns Cried. Another heroic act by one of the entertainers
came from big cat trainer make Covar. She was at
(06:14):
the center of the tent where her animal act had
just concluded. There was still a panther in the metal
cage that was part of the big Cat show, and
she knew that if she didn't get both herself and
the panther out and then secure all the cages of
the other big cats who were part of the show,
that they had the potential to break loose in all
of the chaos and cause more injuries and deaths, not
(06:38):
surprisingly if you have ever spent time around animals that
are panicked. Uh, This terrified panther balked at going down
the chute that led back to its cages outside. It
was just terrified. So Covar used a whip, which was
really part of her costume and not part of how
she handled animals, to try to hurt it into the shoot,
and once it was on its way, she realized that
(06:58):
she was trapped. The escaping crowd had packed against the
door leading out of the cage, so she escaped by
following the panther down the exit shoot, and then she
got the big cat's cage is secure so that they
could not escape into the crowd. The big top collapsed
behind her, and this had only been about ten minutes
(07:18):
since the fire started, and it burned so hot that
it literally melted the tent poles and the animal cage
that was at the middle of the center ring. As
the tent fell on fire, it trapped a lot of
people who were still inside trying to escape, although none
of the circus employees were killed, possibly because they knew
they could get out of just about any part of
(07:38):
the tent by going under the sidewalls. Many were badly
burned as they tried to get others to safety and
as they formed bucket brigades to try to extinguish the fire.
Since no animals were in the tent and the fire
didn't spread to the side show or the menagerie, no
animals were hurt or killed in the blaze. A hundred
and sixty eight people died, Half of them were chilled aldren,
(08:00):
and a third of them were ages nine and younger.
Only a handful of those lost were adult men. Four
entire families died, and the children of five other families
were orphaned. There were also six hundred and eighty two injuries.
And we're going to talk about sort of the aftermath
and how Hartford responded to this tragedy. After we take
(08:22):
a little break, uh and have a word from a sponsor,
so to return to the city of Hartford. Army and
Navy forces were deployed to the scene of the fire,
along with three hundred ambulances and fifteen hundred Red Cross volunteers.
(08:45):
Red Cross involvement with the victims of this disaster actually
went on for almost a year. State guardsmen were deployed
as well. A shipment of six blood plasma converters was
flown in from Boston, and the doctors who worked with
the burn patients credited this increased availability of plasma with
saving many lives. Morgue was set up at the Hartford
(09:08):
Armory and bodies were laid out in the hopes that
next of kim would be able to identify their families.
But the fire burned so hot that some of the
bodies inside were essentially cremated already, and it melted some
of the steel girders that held up the tent. There
was a series of investigations. State Policy Commissioner Edward J. Hickey,
(09:28):
acting as State Fire Marshal, issued a report that blamed
not only the Ringling Brothers staff responsible for the tent,
but also the city of Hartford for not having inspected
the circus or the tent beforehand. Part of the report read,
no arrangements were made or requested by any representative of
the circus for firemen or for firefighting equipment to be
(09:49):
in attendance upon the circus grounds during any performance. The
Hartford Fire Department did not detail any fireman or assign
any firefight firefighting apparatus to be an attent at the
circus grounds during any of the performances. That's where the
quote ends. The only inspection of the circus that the
city had conducted was on the part of the Building
Supervisor's office, which had judged that the erection of the tent,
(10:13):
the bleachers, and the exits was satisfied satisfactory, which was
the same as in previous years. So aside from that,
the big Top itself was highly flammable. It had been
waterproofed using paraffin that was dissolved in gasoline, and that
was actually a pretty common method of waterproofing materials at
the time. When testifying in the investigation, then Ringling President
(10:36):
Robert Ringling claimed that he hadn't been able to find
a material that was both waterproof and fireproof because the
nation was at war, so resources were in high demand
and low availability. He also claimed that the war had
left the circus shorthanded, which is why there were fewer
firefighters on staff. Another report filed by Frankie Healy named
(10:57):
seven employees of the circus responsible for the fire. James A. Hailey,
vice president, George W. Smith, general manager, Leonard S. Aylesworth,
Chief tentman, David W. Blanchefield, chief truckman, Edward W. Vierstig
chief electrician, William Kyley, chief seatman, and Samuel Clark seatman.
(11:17):
The two seatmen were supposed to remain under the bleachers
during the show, and if they had been there, chances
are one of them would have seen the fire when
it was much smaller and stomped it out, which would
have prevented the whole disaster. The Ringling Brothers Circus as
a corporation was also charged with involuntary manslaughter along with
all seven men, Although the charges against Clark were eventually dropped.
(11:39):
All seven of the men and the circus pleaded no contest.
Their defense counsel maintained that they were innocent, but we're
pleading no contest to avoid a lengthy trial. He also
claimed that they were all essential to the circus resuming
operations in order to try to get a lighter sentence.
It probably sounds callous that they were also justed in
(12:00):
returning to work, but one of the reasons that they
were so eager to resume circus operations is that stopping
the show was costing the circus about ten thousand dollars
a day, and possibly believing that doing so would get
them more leniency. The circus had agreed to take full
responsibility for the fire and to pay all of the
claims that were brought against it. Although the circus was ensured,
(12:23):
this insurance wasn't enough to pay off all of the claims,
which early estimates put out a million dollars, it turned
out to actually be a lot more. So they weren't
just saying we have to return to work as a
way to get out of it, like they genuinely needed
to return to work to make enough money to be
able to pay off these lawsuits. A superior court judge
permitted the circus to collect its property and leave town
(12:44):
on July fourteenth of ninety four, and it returned to
its winter quarters in Sarasota, Florida, to regroup and return
to work so it could pay off its remaining debts
to the victims. Arbitration took six years. The Arbitration Board
A had nearly four million dollars to five fifty one claimants.
The average award was around seven thousand dollars, although they
(13:07):
ranged from a thousand dollars to a hundred thousand. A
professional dancer named Catherine R. Martin was burned over fifty
of her body and was hospitalized for six months, and
she received the largest settlement. Patricia Murray, who was five
at the time of fire, lost both of her parents
and her three year old brother, and she was awarded
ninety thousand dollars. And as we talked about in our
(13:29):
episode on Katie Sandwina, this is often cited as the
first Chapter eleven bankruptcy case, but the official classification of
Chapter eleven didn't really come around until later. However, the
structure was quite similar. In what became known as the
Hartford Arbitration Agreement, the circus went into receivership, promising to
put all of its profits towards paying the claims and
(13:50):
not incur any unusual expenses until all of that was
paid off. And we didn't say in the Katie Sanduina
episode that it specifically was the Hartford Circus fire that
we were referencing, but it was, you were curious. Hartford
lawyer Edward Rogan was named as the receiver and he
took over financial operations for the circus while the circus
continued to operate during the proceedings of the arbitration. At
(14:15):
this time, this was a completely new strategy for a
business that was dealing with extreme financial dress happens a
lot more often nowadays. This really set the president for it.
The circus finally left receivership in July of nineteen fifty four,
when the court authorized payments to Rogan and Julius B. Shots,
who had served this as the circus's council. Shots received
(14:37):
a hundred thousand dollars and Rogan received sixty thousand dollars,
a fraction of his original two hundred and twenty five
thousand dollar request. A sort of a side note, while
overseeing the circus's financial affairs, Rogan also reported that, in
spite of the Hartford tragedy, the nineteen forty four season
was at that point the best season in the Ringling
(14:58):
Brothers circus history. Along with many other governments, in the
wake of this fire, the Connecticut General Assembly later passed
extremely strict fire safety measures for tent circuses. Ringling Brothers
and Barnamin Bailey didn't return to the state for years,
and they didn't return to Hartford for decades. When the
circus tried to arrange an appearance in East Hartford in
(15:20):
ninety four, the city refused. They flatly said no, and
so the circus did not return to Hartford until the
nineteen seventies. It's still not completely clear what caused the fire.
Initial results blamed a carelessly tossed cigarette. Later theory was
a short circuit in the wiring in the men's room,
and another theory is that it was deliberately set. The
(15:43):
city has at various points reopened the case to re
examine the evidence, and there have also been people that
have more re examined all the evidence as a personal hobby. UH.
In nineteen fifty in Ohio, man named Robert D. Siege
Uh we're guessing on that pronunciation because we could not
find one online that was definitive, claimed that he had
(16:04):
set the fire deliberately, saying that he was aroused about
at the circus at the time. He claimed that he
had been told to do this by a hallucination of
quote a red Indian. And while he had pleaded guilty
to other arson charges in Circleville in the Circleville, Ohio
area and served time for those offenses, he was never
actually charged in the Hartford Circus fire. And in the end,
(16:26):
investigators were generally doubtful that he had actually been involved.
There were a lot of inconsistencies and holes in his statements,
and some of his claims regarding other crimes were kind
of outlandish, and he did later recant his confession. If
you go poking around on the internet, or if you
have previously poked around on the internet, you will find claims,
some of them on pretty reputable websites, that he served
(16:50):
time in Ohio for the Hartford Circus fire. The time
he served in Ohio was actually for other crimes that
were committed in Ohio and not for the Hartford Circus fire.
And all of this seems to come from a misunderstanding
in a high school students paper, which perhaps the more
recent writers who have used it as a resource didn't
realize it's by a high school student. I'm not missing
(17:11):
high school students. This paper, overall I've read, is extremely good.
Um and the news coverage at the time of this
guy in his confession, a lot of it is worded
very confusingly because he is framed as the man who
confessed to the Hartford Circus fire, so it's sort of
the man who claim who who confessed to the Harvard
(17:34):
Circus fire serves time. He was serving time for something else, right, Uh.
And there is also around this case a sort of
famous unidentified victim. There several actually, and we're gonna delve
into their stories after we take a little break and
have a word from a sponsor. So today, there is
(18:01):
a memorial in Hartford, Connecticut, and the middle of it
is where the center pole of the big Top stood.
Around the perimeter there are several dogwood trees that note
where the perimeter of the tent would have been. There's
also a monument listing the names of the people who
died and several plaques that give a timeline of what
happened during the fire. There's also a memorial at Northwood
(18:22):
Cemetery for the victims of the fire who were not identifying.
Three unidentified children and three adults were buried there on
July tenth of nineteen forty four, and an unidentified baby
was cremated. And I didn't put it in here, but
the Northwood Cemetery is not actually in Hartford proper. It's
in like a neighboring community. Only one of these six
(18:43):
bodies that were buried at Northwood cemetery has ever been identified,
and this was an eight year old girl who died
in the fire and came to be known as little
Miss fifteen sixty five, after the number that she was
assigned at the morgue. She wasn't identified for years after
the fire. She had been trampled darrying the stampede as
people tried to escape. She died of her injuries about
(19:04):
three hours after being found, but since her face wasn't
very badly burned, they were hopeful that her family would
find her. Her features were really recognizable, and her picture
was published in the newspapers. Her story really caught the
hearts of a lot of people who were following the
tragedy as it unfolded, especially as the attention kept returning
(19:27):
to her case to try to identify who she was,
and police theorized that her family must have been new
to the area and that her parents must have been
killed in the fire, or perhaps some other family had
mistaken a different badly burned body as their own child,
leaving little Miss fifteen behind. The search for little Miss
(19:48):
fifteen sixty five family went on for months. Her picture
was in papers in Hartford, Boston, New York, and other
Northeastern cities. There were calls that came in from all
over New England from people who claim aimed that she
was their relative, but they didn't pan out that various
things didn't match up. I think they were using dental records,
and dental records didn't match. For decades, Hartford police brought
(20:10):
flowers to the grave at Christmas and on the anniversary
of the fire, and the coverage of that tradition would
start this cycle of letters and calls about little Miss
fifteen sixty five all over again. In so almost fifty
years after the fire, Hartford Fire Lieutenant Rick Davey identified
little Miss fifteen sixty five as Eleanor Cook. He interviewed
(20:33):
surviving family members of various filmies and the hope of
finding out who this little girl was. He also did
a lengthy reinvestigation of the fire itself. Eleanor's surviving brother, Donald,
who was nine at the time of the fire and
was there but escaped, confirmed her identification and the reason
that she hadn't been identified at the time of the
(20:55):
event was that her mother, Mildred Cook, had been so
badly burned in the fire that she was conscious for
weeks and she ended up hospitalized for six months. Her son, Edward,
was six and he had also died in the fire,
and once Mildred was well enough to leave, she was
too traumatized to look for her daughter's body. An amended
death certificate was issued for Eleanor on March eight, and
(21:19):
her remains were reinterred next to her deceased brother, where
the gravestone had previously marked an empty grave. However, there
are still people who actually question this identification, in part
because other members of the family had said little misfifteen
sixty five was not Eleanor at the time of the fire.
In fact, this had made Donald reluctant to ask about it.
(21:41):
He worried that he would upset his mother or his
aunt who had made the initial identification. In a weird
recent twist, upon his retirement, Hartford fire Captain William Pond
destroyed the photos of her that had hung in the
firehouse of Engine Company fourteen for more than twenty five years,
saying he was afraid that her soul would never find
(22:03):
rest otherwise. Uh. Following letters to the editor after this
are kind of divided about whether that was the right
thing to do or not. Yeah, I mean I I
would have questions of like, was this something that a
decision that he made solely on his own or were
other people involved. He seems to have been trying to
(22:27):
get other uh fire department leadership to to take it
down for a long time and and was shut down
every time he asked about it, and so he did
it himself as he was retiring, figuring he was untouchable
at that point. Bye, that that seems to be. That
is what I would read into it. Yes, huh so, Yeah,
(22:48):
it's sort of an odd coda to that whole story.
There are definitely, yeah, there are definitely some unanswered questions
that will probably remain forever about the fire and exactly
what happened. But it was definitely a tragedy. It definitely
led to some much more stringent rules, especially about ten
circuses in particular. Thank you so much for joining us
(23:16):
on this Saturday. If you have heard an email address
or a Facebook you are l or something similar over
the course of today's episode, since it is from the
archive that might be out of date now, you can
email us at History Podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History and you can subscribe to our show
on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I heart Radio app,
(23:39):
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuffy missed in
History Classes a production of I heart Radios How Stuff Works.
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Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hi, everybody. Today is the seventy five anniversary of the
Hartford Circus Fire, so today we are revisiting our March
eleven episode on that tragedy. And this fire has been
in the news lately, both because of the anniversary and
because of efforts to potentially use DNA evidence to try
to figure out the identities of some of the unidentified
(00:22):
victims of the tragedy. There are currently five unknown victims
buried at Northwood Cemetery, and court proceedings regarding the potential
exhimations of those bodies are ongoing. Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast Act
(00:48):
And I'm Polly Frying. And today we have another frequent
listener request, which is the Hertford Circus Fire. We've gotten
a lot of request for it before, and then every
time we talk about a fire, it seems like people
have for more fires. So we've gotten lots of requests
for this one. And there are actually lots of books
about the Hartford Circus Fire, and they don't agree with
(01:10):
each other in some pretty fundamental ways. They draw really
vastly different conclusions about everything from who started the fire,
if anyone deliberately started it, and the identity of the
most famous unidentified victim. There's just a lot of discrepancy
between them all. And I really didn't relish the idea
of reading through multiple books that were effectively quarreling with
(01:31):
each other about what happened. So I took a little
bit of a different tech when researching this article, and
that was that instead of reading lots of books, I
read historical newspapers that were published at the time of
this tragedy, and I followed the story as it happened.
So most of the information in today's episode comes from
the New York Times and the Boston Globe, which was
(01:51):
then the daily Boston Globe as it was reported and
on the day uh and I didn't have access to
the archive fives of the Hartford Current, which would be
the logical paper to read because it was the local
paper to where this tragedy happened. Um, but I did
read some of their more recent coverage of retrospectives and
updates and things like that. So we're going to talk
(02:12):
about the Hartford Circus fire. So the Ringling Brothers and
Barnamin Bailey Circus, which we are just going to kind
of shorten to Ringling Brothers or Ringling for the sake
of simplicity as needed, so we're not whipping out a
huge phrase every time we have to reference. It was
filled with about eight thousand people in Hartford, Connecticut on
July six nine, and the big top at the circus
(02:36):
was big, really big. I mean the name the name
was suitable for this one. It was six hundred feet
long and two ft wide, so that's about twenty by
sixty and it weighed twenty tons. While it had about
eight thousand people in it on this particular day, it
could hold up to twelve thousand. Because this was World
(02:56):
War Two, most of the men of Hartford were either
away fighting or they were working multiple shifts at nearby factories,
so overwhelmingly the people in the audience were children, mothers,
and grandparents. The show started at two in the afternoon,
added about two forty a big cat show in the
center ring had just wrapped up. The famous Flying Wallenda's
(03:18):
were starting their high wire act up above, and people
started to notice a flame working its way up the
side of the tent near the men's restroom by the
main entrance. The fire spread extremely quickly. By the time
a trio of ushers got there with buckets of water,
it was already too big for them to put out.
Almost simultaneously, people started yelling fire and the band switched
(03:40):
to playing Stars and Stripes, forever known in the business
as the disaster March and used to signal that there
is an emergency. People in the top rows of the
bleachers jumped down into the straw that was below them
and made for the exits, or went out under the
tent sidewalls. The people who were up in the top
of the bleachers were all fared better than the people
(04:01):
who were lowered down for that reason, because the people
who were closer to the floor got caught in the
resulting stampede. Parents and entertainers literally threw children over animal
cages that were blocking the exits. Some of them cut
their way out of the tent with pocket knives. The walenda's,
at risk of being trapped above the fire, slid down
(04:22):
ropes to the ground. The performers exit was blocked by
the crowd, so they headed for one of the exits
blocked by animal cages. Some climbed over, while others tried
to feed some of the crowd through the animal shoots
that would lead out of the tent. Famous clown Emmett Kelly,
who was in his sad tramp clown roll of Weary Willie,
was actually part of the Wilenda's act. While they did
(04:45):
their work up in the top of the tent, he
would run around below them with a little butterfly net.
When he heard people screaming, he thought that one of
them Wilenda's had fallen, and so he looked out and
saw that the tent was on fire. He ran back
to his dressing room to grab the buck it's that
he would use to clean himself up after the show
was over, and he filled them with water at a
horse trough. Then he ran back in to try to
(05:06):
put the fire out. He threw the water onto the
burning tent, but it was far too late. The fire
was much too big to be put out by a
couple of buckets, so instead he tried he started trying
to evacuate children from the tent. The blaze was very
close to the main entrance, so he started trying to
guide people to a side exit that was not on fire.
(05:28):
Some of the kids were actually scared of him. They
were scared anyway, but then they were scared because this
clown was talking to him. But he did get as
many of the kids around him as he could to safety,
and then he saw that the fire was getting close
to a set of gas engines that operated some of
the circus equipment, so he refilled his buckets and tried
to soak the canvas near the engines as much as possible,
(05:50):
hopefully making them less likely to catch fire. Then he
escaped from the tent himself. There are actually pictures of
him at Kelly still in his makeup, carrying buck it's
that were taking the day of the fire uh and
that led to this event being nicknamed the Day the
Clowns Cried. Another heroic act by one of the entertainers
came from big cat trainer make Covar. She was at
(06:14):
the center of the tent where her animal act had
just concluded. There was still a panther in the metal
cage that was part of the big Cat show, and
she knew that if she didn't get both herself and
the panther out and then secure all the cages of
the other big cats who were part of the show,
that they had the potential to break loose in all
of the chaos and cause more injuries and deaths, not
(06:38):
surprisingly if you have ever spent time around animals that
are panicked. Uh, This terrified panther balked at going down
the chute that led back to its cages outside. It
was just terrified. So Covar used a whip, which was
really part of her costume and not part of how
she handled animals, to try to hurt it into the shoot,
and once it was on its way, she realized that
(06:58):
she was trapped. The escaping crowd had packed against the
door leading out of the cage, so she escaped by
following the panther down the exit shoot, and then she
got the big cat's cage is secure so that they
could not escape into the crowd. The big top collapsed
behind her, and this had only been about ten minutes
(07:18):
since the fire started, and it burned so hot that
it literally melted the tent poles and the animal cage
that was at the middle of the center ring. As
the tent fell on fire, it trapped a lot of
people who were still inside trying to escape, although none
of the circus employees were killed, possibly because they knew
they could get out of just about any part of
(07:38):
the tent by going under the sidewalls. Many were badly
burned as they tried to get others to safety and
as they formed bucket brigades to try to extinguish the fire.
Since no animals were in the tent and the fire
didn't spread to the side show or the menagerie, no
animals were hurt or killed in the blaze. A hundred
and sixty eight people died, Half of them were chilled aldren,
(08:00):
and a third of them were ages nine and younger.
Only a handful of those lost were adult men. Four
entire families died, and the children of five other families
were orphaned. There were also six hundred and eighty two injuries.
And we're going to talk about sort of the aftermath
and how Hartford responded to this tragedy. After we take
(08:22):
a little break, uh and have a word from a sponsor,
so to return to the city of Hartford. Army and
Navy forces were deployed to the scene of the fire,
along with three hundred ambulances and fifteen hundred Red Cross volunteers.
(08:45):
Red Cross involvement with the victims of this disaster actually
went on for almost a year. State guardsmen were deployed
as well. A shipment of six blood plasma converters was
flown in from Boston, and the doctors who worked with
the burn patients credited this increased availability of plasma with
saving many lives. Morgue was set up at the Hartford
(09:08):
Armory and bodies were laid out in the hopes that
next of kim would be able to identify their families.
But the fire burned so hot that some of the
bodies inside were essentially cremated already, and it melted some
of the steel girders that held up the tent. There
was a series of investigations. State Policy Commissioner Edward J. Hickey,
(09:28):
acting as State Fire Marshal, issued a report that blamed
not only the Ringling Brothers staff responsible for the tent,
but also the city of Hartford for not having inspected
the circus or the tent beforehand. Part of the report read,
no arrangements were made or requested by any representative of
the circus for firemen or for firefighting equipment to be
(09:49):
in attendance upon the circus grounds during any performance. The
Hartford Fire Department did not detail any fireman or assign
any firefight firefighting apparatus to be an attent at the
circus grounds during any of the performances. That's where the
quote ends. The only inspection of the circus that the
city had conducted was on the part of the Building
Supervisor's office, which had judged that the erection of the tent,
(10:13):
the bleachers, and the exits was satisfied satisfactory, which was
the same as in previous years. So aside from that,
the big Top itself was highly flammable. It had been
waterproofed using paraffin that was dissolved in gasoline, and that
was actually a pretty common method of waterproofing materials at
the time. When testifying in the investigation, then Ringling President
(10:36):
Robert Ringling claimed that he hadn't been able to find
a material that was both waterproof and fireproof because the
nation was at war, so resources were in high demand
and low availability. He also claimed that the war had
left the circus shorthanded, which is why there were fewer
firefighters on staff. Another report filed by Frankie Healy named
(10:57):
seven employees of the circus responsible for the fire. James A. Hailey,
vice president, George W. Smith, general manager, Leonard S. Aylesworth,
Chief tentman, David W. Blanchefield, chief truckman, Edward W. Vierstig
chief electrician, William Kyley, chief seatman, and Samuel Clark seatman.
(11:17):
The two seatmen were supposed to remain under the bleachers
during the show, and if they had been there, chances
are one of them would have seen the fire when
it was much smaller and stomped it out, which would
have prevented the whole disaster. The Ringling Brothers Circus as
a corporation was also charged with involuntary manslaughter along with
all seven men, Although the charges against Clark were eventually dropped.
(11:39):
All seven of the men and the circus pleaded no contest.
Their defense counsel maintained that they were innocent, but we're
pleading no contest to avoid a lengthy trial. He also
claimed that they were all essential to the circus resuming
operations in order to try to get a lighter sentence.
It probably sounds callous that they were also justed in
(12:00):
returning to work, but one of the reasons that they
were so eager to resume circus operations is that stopping
the show was costing the circus about ten thousand dollars
a day, and possibly believing that doing so would get
them more leniency. The circus had agreed to take full
responsibility for the fire and to pay all of the
claims that were brought against it. Although the circus was ensured,
(12:23):
this insurance wasn't enough to pay off all of the claims,
which early estimates put out a million dollars, it turned
out to actually be a lot more. So they weren't
just saying we have to return to work as a
way to get out of it, like they genuinely needed
to return to work to make enough money to be
able to pay off these lawsuits. A superior court judge
permitted the circus to collect its property and leave town
(12:44):
on July fourteenth of ninety four, and it returned to
its winter quarters in Sarasota, Florida, to regroup and return
to work so it could pay off its remaining debts
to the victims. Arbitration took six years. The Arbitration Board
A had nearly four million dollars to five fifty one claimants.
The average award was around seven thousand dollars, although they
(13:07):
ranged from a thousand dollars to a hundred thousand. A
professional dancer named Catherine R. Martin was burned over fifty
of her body and was hospitalized for six months, and
she received the largest settlement. Patricia Murray, who was five
at the time of fire, lost both of her parents
and her three year old brother, and she was awarded
ninety thousand dollars. And as we talked about in our
(13:29):
episode on Katie Sandwina, this is often cited as the
first Chapter eleven bankruptcy case, but the official classification of
Chapter eleven didn't really come around until later. However, the
structure was quite similar. In what became known as the
Hartford Arbitration Agreement, the circus went into receivership, promising to
put all of its profits towards paying the claims and
(13:50):
not incur any unusual expenses until all of that was
paid off. And we didn't say in the Katie Sanduina
episode that it specifically was the Hartford Circus fire that
we were referencing, but it was, you were curious. Hartford
lawyer Edward Rogan was named as the receiver and he
took over financial operations for the circus while the circus
continued to operate during the proceedings of the arbitration. At
(14:15):
this time, this was a completely new strategy for a
business that was dealing with extreme financial dress happens a
lot more often nowadays. This really set the president for it.
The circus finally left receivership in July of nineteen fifty four,
when the court authorized payments to Rogan and Julius B. Shots,
who had served this as the circus's council. Shots received
(14:37):
a hundred thousand dollars and Rogan received sixty thousand dollars,
a fraction of his original two hundred and twenty five
thousand dollar request. A sort of a side note, while
overseeing the circus's financial affairs, Rogan also reported that, in
spite of the Hartford tragedy, the nineteen forty four season
was at that point the best season in the Ringling
(14:58):
Brothers circus history. Along with many other governments, in the
wake of this fire, the Connecticut General Assembly later passed
extremely strict fire safety measures for tent circuses. Ringling Brothers
and Barnamin Bailey didn't return to the state for years,
and they didn't return to Hartford for decades. When the
circus tried to arrange an appearance in East Hartford in
(15:20):
ninety four, the city refused. They flatly said no, and
so the circus did not return to Hartford until the
nineteen seventies. It's still not completely clear what caused the fire.
Initial results blamed a carelessly tossed cigarette. Later theory was
a short circuit in the wiring in the men's room,
and another theory is that it was deliberately set. The
(15:43):
city has at various points reopened the case to re
examine the evidence, and there have also been people that
have more re examined all the evidence as a personal hobby. UH.
In nineteen fifty in Ohio, man named Robert D. Siege
Uh we're guessing on that pronunciation because we could not
find one online that was definitive, claimed that he had
(16:04):
set the fire deliberately, saying that he was aroused about
at the circus at the time. He claimed that he
had been told to do this by a hallucination of
quote a red Indian. And while he had pleaded guilty
to other arson charges in Circleville in the Circleville, Ohio
area and served time for those offenses, he was never
actually charged in the Hartford Circus fire. And in the end,
(16:26):
investigators were generally doubtful that he had actually been involved.
There were a lot of inconsistencies and holes in his statements,
and some of his claims regarding other crimes were kind
of outlandish, and he did later recant his confession. If
you go poking around on the internet, or if you
have previously poked around on the internet, you will find claims,
some of them on pretty reputable websites, that he served
(16:50):
time in Ohio for the Hartford Circus fire. The time
he served in Ohio was actually for other crimes that
were committed in Ohio and not for the Hartford Circus fire.
And all of this seems to come from a misunderstanding
in a high school students paper, which perhaps the more
recent writers who have used it as a resource didn't
realize it's by a high school student. I'm not missing
(17:11):
high school students. This paper, overall I've read, is extremely good.
Um and the news coverage at the time of this
guy in his confession, a lot of it is worded
very confusingly because he is framed as the man who
confessed to the Hartford Circus fire, so it's sort of
the man who claim who who confessed to the Harvard
(17:34):
Circus fire serves time. He was serving time for something else, right, Uh.
And there is also around this case a sort of
famous unidentified victim. There several actually, and we're gonna delve
into their stories after we take a little break and
have a word from a sponsor. So today, there is
(18:01):
a memorial in Hartford, Connecticut, and the middle of it
is where the center pole of the big Top stood.
Around the perimeter there are several dogwood trees that note
where the perimeter of the tent would have been. There's
also a monument listing the names of the people who
died and several plaques that give a timeline of what
happened during the fire. There's also a memorial at Northwood
(18:22):
Cemetery for the victims of the fire who were not identifying.
Three unidentified children and three adults were buried there on
July tenth of nineteen forty four, and an unidentified baby
was cremated. And I didn't put it in here, but
the Northwood Cemetery is not actually in Hartford proper. It's
in like a neighboring community. Only one of these six
(18:43):
bodies that were buried at Northwood cemetery has ever been identified,
and this was an eight year old girl who died
in the fire and came to be known as little
Miss fifteen sixty five, after the number that she was
assigned at the morgue. She wasn't identified for years after
the fire. She had been trampled darrying the stampede as
people tried to escape. She died of her injuries about
(19:04):
three hours after being found, but since her face wasn't
very badly burned, they were hopeful that her family would
find her. Her features were really recognizable, and her picture
was published in the newspapers. Her story really caught the
hearts of a lot of people who were following the
tragedy as it unfolded, especially as the attention kept returning
(19:27):
to her case to try to identify who she was,
and police theorized that her family must have been new
to the area and that her parents must have been
killed in the fire, or perhaps some other family had
mistaken a different badly burned body as their own child,
leaving little Miss fifteen behind. The search for little Miss
(19:48):
fifteen sixty five family went on for months. Her picture
was in papers in Hartford, Boston, New York, and other
Northeastern cities. There were calls that came in from all
over New England from people who claim aimed that she
was their relative, but they didn't pan out that various
things didn't match up. I think they were using dental records,
and dental records didn't match. For decades, Hartford police brought
(20:10):
flowers to the grave at Christmas and on the anniversary
of the fire, and the coverage of that tradition would
start this cycle of letters and calls about little Miss
fifteen sixty five all over again. In so almost fifty
years after the fire, Hartford Fire Lieutenant Rick Davey identified
little Miss fifteen sixty five as Eleanor Cook. He interviewed
(20:33):
surviving family members of various filmies and the hope of
finding out who this little girl was. He also did
a lengthy reinvestigation of the fire itself. Eleanor's surviving brother, Donald,
who was nine at the time of the fire and
was there but escaped, confirmed her identification and the reason
that she hadn't been identified at the time of the
(20:55):
event was that her mother, Mildred Cook, had been so
badly burned in the fire that she was conscious for
weeks and she ended up hospitalized for six months. Her son, Edward,
was six and he had also died in the fire,
and once Mildred was well enough to leave, she was
too traumatized to look for her daughter's body. An amended
death certificate was issued for Eleanor on March eight, and
(21:19):
her remains were reinterred next to her deceased brother, where
the gravestone had previously marked an empty grave. However, there
are still people who actually question this identification, in part
because other members of the family had said little misfifteen
sixty five was not Eleanor at the time of the fire.
In fact, this had made Donald reluctant to ask about it.
(21:41):
He worried that he would upset his mother or his
aunt who had made the initial identification. In a weird
recent twist, upon his retirement, Hartford fire Captain William Pond
destroyed the photos of her that had hung in the
firehouse of Engine Company fourteen for more than twenty five years,
saying he was afraid that her soul would never find
(22:03):
rest otherwise. Uh. Following letters to the editor after this
are kind of divided about whether that was the right
thing to do or not. Yeah, I mean I I
would have questions of like, was this something that a
decision that he made solely on his own or were
other people involved. He seems to have been trying to
(22:27):
get other uh fire department leadership to to take it
down for a long time and and was shut down
every time he asked about it, and so he did
it himself as he was retiring, figuring he was untouchable
at that point. Bye, that that seems to be. That
is what I would read into it. Yes, huh so, Yeah,
(22:48):
it's sort of an odd coda to that whole story.
There are definitely, yeah, there are definitely some unanswered questions
that will probably remain forever about the fire and exactly
what happened. But it was definitely a tragedy. It definitely
led to some much more stringent rules, especially about ten
circuses in particular. Thank you so much for joining us
(23:16):
on this Saturday. If you have heard an email address
or a Facebook you are l or something similar over
the course of today's episode, since it is from the
archive that might be out of date now, you can
email us at History Podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History and you can subscribe to our show
on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I heart Radio app,
(23:39):
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuffy missed in
History Classes a production of I heart Radios How Stuff Works.
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