Rhoads Opera House Fire. January 13, 1908. Fatal Slide Show

Rhoads Opera House Fire

Jan. 13, 1908

Fatal Slide Show

If, like me, you grew up in the late 1950s and early 1960s you're probably familiar with a near sacred rite that occurred immediately after any major milestone in any family's life...or, for that matter, any time a large number of family/friends/neighbors gathered at your home for a cook-out or similar social gathering.

The Slide Show.

You guys know the drill. Dad gathers everyone together, and herds them into the slide-showing room of choice...usually a darkened living room or family room...where the blinds are already closed and shades already down, throwing the room into shadow. The screen has already been set up, and a big old Argus or Bell And Howell slide projector is already sitting on a chair mid-room, plugged in and running, the fan motor roaring subtly, the projector bulb throwing a bright white square against the screen, at the same time painting a crosshatched light pattern against the ceiling through the fan's exhaust grill.

The latest vacation or birthday, or pick-an-occasion slides would be shown, and everyone would at least fake amazement as slightly out-of-focus images of toddlers playing in their birthday cakes and kids posing next to historic monuments popped up on the screen while the projector's fan roared and pumped that distinctive smell of hot metal and glass into the room.

Those family and neighbor slide presentations were quick social gatherings that didn't...and really couldn't...harm a soul.  The only possible ill effects they could have were boredom, Dad exposing children to new and exciting vocabulary when he realized he had a slide in upside down and/or backwards, and the occasional burned fingers incurred while changing out a burned out bulb.

So, if slide shows are basically harmless, there's absolutely no way that a rig that was the great grand-dad of these iconic home slide projectors could have been the indirect cause of one of the worst fires in U.S. history, right?

Right? Right?? Er...wrong.

Trust me gang...not only is it possible, it really did happen...a slide show kicked off the events that caused a fire that resulted in the deaths of 170 people. To make it a bit more interesting, the slide show didn't actually start the fire. But it did cause the fire to start.

Confused yet?  Read on...

We're going back 111 years or so, to January, 1908 for this one, and heading for the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country to visit the small town of Boyertown, Pennsylvania, located in a then far more rural Berks County, P-A about 16 miles due east of Reading, which was (and is) the County Seat, and about 40 or so miles northwest of Philadelphia. Back in 1908 Boyertown boasted a population of around 2200 or so, as well as the title of 'town', as in the town farmers were referencing when they said they were going into town for supplies. The town was booming 111 years ago, with several cigar factories and...ironically as it would turn out... one of the nations largest casket manufacturers calling it home.

Satellite view of present day Boyertown, with the area detailed below outlined in red.

Detail of the area surrounding the intersection of East Philadelphia Ave and Washington Street...the location of The Rhoads Opera House... in Boyertown. You can see how close Dr. Rhoads' house was to the scene, as well as Keystone and Friendship Fire Companies...both were only blocks, and under normal circumstances only a couple of minutes, away from the fire. That night ended up being anything but normal. The building to the immediate left of the 'New' Rhoads Building, labeled 'The Other Farm' didn't exist in 1908...the Alley occupied that area. The building next to that building, however, did exist back then, as The Mansion House Hotel. Several other important sites are also labeled for reference. Note the accident site, directly in front of Dr Rhoads house. One of the deaths attributed to the fire was actually a Keystone fire-fighter who died when their hose wagon struck a tree at that location.

Boyertown was a boisterous, thriving, growing town that was also a pretty decent place for early 20th Century families to live and raise kids, and as 1907 became 1908, a mainstay of small town life was in the works. The members of a local church were putting on a play.

A church-sponsored play usually means that one of the major religious holidays is around the corner, with Christmas and Easter being the big ones, but this was to be a stand-alone play....and, rarer still for a church sponsored play, it was intended to turn a profit.

The producer of the play was a Washington, DC resident by the name of Harriet Earhart Monroe, who was also a well known author, lecturer, and religious playwright. One of her plays, The Scottish Reformation, about Mary, The Queen Of Scots was written sometime before 1894, and had been performed throughout the Northeastern U.S., with several dozen performances prior to January, 1908, when playwright and play both rolled into Boyertown.

The way Harriet Monroe worked it was simple and efficient. She provided all of the sets and costumes for the play while the sponsoring organization provided the cast, stage crew, and performance venue. Tickets were sold for a dime apiece, with the profits split 85/15...yep, you read that right. Eighty-five percent to Harriet Monroe, fifteen percent to the sponsoring organization, which in this case was Boyertown's St, John's Lutheran Church.

Now, with a church being the sponsor, you'd think the performance venue might be the church fellowship hall, but you'd be wrong...St. Johns didn't have a fellowship Hall as such, and in fact, I believe fellowship halls as we know them are a much more recent development in church design. Even if the church did  have a fellowship hall, it would have likely been too small to host one of Ms Monroe's productions.

Boyertown did have a performance venue though. Around 1885 Boyertown physician and banker Thomas J.B. Rhoads bought a lot at the corner of Philadelphia Ave and Washington Street, where he had a big three story brick commercial structure built, primarily to serve as the new home of Farmer's National Bank, which he was founder and president of. The bank took up half of the first floor, with a hardware store occupying the other half at the time of the fire, while offices and meeting rooms took up the third floor. It's the second floor we're interested in here, though.

The building's second floor is what gave the building it's official name...'Rhoads Opera House'...though, truth be known, children's singing recitals are likely the closest thing to an 'opera' ever performed there. What it was though was a theater...in miniature, but a theater none the less.

The auditorium measured 70 ft by 42 ft, meaning that the entire set-up would have probably fit on the stage/backstage area of either the Brooklyn Theater or The Iroquois Theater without breaking a sweat.

Not only was the venue far smaller than either the Brooklyn or Iroquois theater, it was also far simpler. A pair of small insurance agencies had offices at the front of the second floor, flanking the stairway. That stairway only served the second floor, and opened directly out to Philadelphia ave.

 Up at the top of those steps, when you stepped off of the stairs, you were looking at the back of the last row of seats, not that there were that many rows.  One hundred and eight permanent, probably school auditorium-style seats were stuffed into the center of the room. Those permanent seats were flanked by open space until they needed more than 108 seats. When that happened, that open space allowed for room to set up another two hundred or so folding chairs...fourteen or so rows of seven folding chairs on each side, separated from the permanent seating by a pair of four foot wide aisles. I have a feeling that it wasn't at all unusual for those aisles to be  partially blocked by the folding chairs when they were set up.

 A small stage took up the rear of the second floor, with a another stairway off of the left rear corner (The 'Charley-Bravo corner' in modern fire service speak) of the building. There were three exterior fire escapes, two of which were accessible from the second floor, one on either side of the building.  One of them emptied onto Washington Street, which paralleled the building's south wall, and the second dumped into an ally that ran between the Roads Building and The Mansion House Hotel on building's north side. There was also a fire escape on the front of the building that emptied onto the roof of the building's front porch. That same porch roof was accessible from the second floor...but only if you had keys to one of the two offices that flanked the stairs at the front of the building.

A hand-drawn illustration of the floor plan of the Rhoads Building's second floor auditorium as it was set up on the night of the fire. Kerosene lanterns provided both house and stage lighting,  and everything...walls, seating, floor, ceiling...was wood. The stage was actually fairly tall, and accessed from the audience with short stairways on both ends. The rear stairway, indicated on the left rear corner of the building, exited onto Washington Street, and allowed almost all of the cast and crew to escape, though several returned to either search for relatives or retrieve personal possessions, only to become trapped. The seats in the middle of the auditorium were fixed, likely school auditorium style seats, while wooden folding chairs were used for the side seating...they became death traps during the fire by entangling feet and legs of people trying to escape. The stereopticon and the tanks used to power it's light were in the front corner of the auditorium, out in the open. One of the hoses connecting the tanks to the projector coming loose was what caused a startled actor to accidentally kick over a kerosene lantern, starting the fire. The main stairway...indicated with a black arrow...had no landing on the second floor...you stepped out of the door and straight down onto the first step. The exit was double doored and six feet wide...but the doors opened inward and only one of them was open when the fire started...and that was thanks too an usher who unbolted it and threw it open just before the panicking crowd reached it. Dozens would die in that doorway. The fire escapes were accessed via unmarked standard windows with high sills, making them difficult to find, access, and use. Even so, around fifty or sixty people made it out over them. The two anterooms were actually insurance agency offices. Had those front windows been accessible, they may have saved quite a few lives by allowing people to exit onto the front porch roof, then drop to the street. Unfortunately the doors were locked.

Right off the bat, we have a couple of major fire safety problems. First, though the building had brick exterior walls, the floors, frame, and interior walls were all wood. Then, the double doors to the Philadelphia Ave stairway opened inward, as very likely did the doorway to the rear stairwell.

The top of the stairs could well be a death trap in a panic because there was no landing outside the main entrance/exit. When you stepped out of the main exit, you immediately stepped down onto the first step. This could be a fall hazard in the best of circumstances. In a panic situation a nasty fall was all but a given, not to mention being a jam-up just waiting to happen as people tried to climb over anyone who had fallen ahead of them.

Then, if you made it to the bottom of the steps without either getting trampled and/or jammed up in the doorway or tumbling down the stairs, there was a ticket booth that narrowed the stairs from six feet to three feet, creating yet another major pinch-point that would seriously impede panicked occupants trying to exit the building in an emergency.

Those fire escapes? Access to them was via windows whose sills were three and a half feet from the floor rather than via dedicated fire exit doors or even fire escape windows with lower sills. Oh...the windows that did  provide access to them weren't marked. At all.

 The 12 foot ceilings, though high by today's standards, were actually low for an occupancy such as a theater, so any fire would fill the room with heat and smoke quickly, dropping visibility to zilch at about the same time it rendered the air unbreathable.

NOW!...lets talk technology!

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Boyertown's town government was investigating bringing electricity to the boro, but it hadn't happened yet (And wouldn't for nearly a year). Oh it had made a couple of inroads...the Boyertown Burial Casket Company's big factory on Walnut Street had it's own powerhouse, and had been electrified for a couple of years, and the trolley line from Reading was electrified, but electric lights had yet to be installed in the majority of Boyertown's businesses and homes. Boyertown did have a gas plant, and gas lighting had been installed in several homes and businesses, but the Rhoads building wasn't one of them....the opera house relied on kerosene lanterns for everything from house lighting to footlights, with all of the footlights drawing kerosene from a single narrow eight foot long tank holding about two gallons. Keep that tank in mind, because it's going to be a major player in what's to come.

A set of kerosene-fired footlights...note the tank with the lamps permanently attached. A similar unit was used at The Rhoads Opera House, though I believe that the one used at the Opera House may have been a bit larger.  A small fire on the Opera House stage had almost been brought under control when a decision was made to move the kerosene tank out of the way. Unfortunately the tank was dropped, spilling around two gallons of kerosene, which ignited, intensifying the fire beyond control.

Then there was the curtain. The stage curtain was the exact same one that had been purchased twenty three years and change earlier, probably either blue or maroon, and made of the finest heavy-duty muslin. Muslin, of course, is simply cotton cloth in a sturdy plain weave, and it's easy to ignite and tends to burn fast...especially if it's hanging vertically. The concept of fireproofing fabrics hadn't even been thought of when it was purchased and hung in 1885. In 1908 it was still in excellent shape, and in the minds of those tasked with managing and maintaining the Opera House, there was absolutely no need to replace it...in fact my bet is, the issue of replacing the curtain with something less flammable (And real expensive) was never even raised.

So that beautiful, functional, but highly flammable curtain, which had hung across the Opera House stage within far too few feet of kerosene footlights and stage lighting with no ill effects for over 23 years was still there that night.

So, to review, we had a room with wooden walls, floor, and ceiling that offered all kind of subtle and not so subtle impediments to a quick and safe evacuation while also featuring a ready made ignition source, complete with a supply of accelerant.  And it gets even worse.

The five foot high stage had two short sets of steps...one on either side...leading up from the main auditorium, which would normally allow the audience to use the building's rear stairway in an emergency, but during The Scottish Reformation the steps on the stage-left side of the stage (Right side of the stage as you face it) would be blocked by a big square of white velvet, hung across them at an angle to act as a screen for a slide show about the historical event that the play centered on.

OK, I can just about hear some of you going 'Wait a minute, Rob. If the place wasn't' wired for electricity, just how did they have a slide show...?'

Pay close attention, gang...the slide show ended up being the unwanted star of the show. See, They didn't need electricity. And, with that being said, lets take a real quick look at the early history of the slide projector.

 Believe it or not, the slide show has existed since the late 1600s. Yeah, you read that right,,,the late 17th century...and the projectors operated on the exact same principal as modern slide projectors.You had a light source behind the slide and a prism/lens combination in front of the slide, with the light source shining through the slide and projecting an inverted image onto a screen, which was usually just a white painted wall back in that era. So yes, the infamous 'The Damn Thing's In Backwards/ Upside Down!' rant was even part of these 17th century slide shows. Another interesting little factoid...with a candle or oil lamp (That's whale or vegetable oil, BTW. Kerosene came on the scene much later) providing the light source, the magic lanterns, as the projectors were called, featured a chimney.

Of course the early round glass slides that were used in the 'Magic Lanterns' were just pretty colors or small paintings etched into the glass rather that photographs, and the image projected by a candle/lantern was both distorted and weak, and would remain so until better lighting technology arrived.

Light sources improved as time went on, until arc lamps became available in the late 19th century, as well as lamps using brighter burning carbon based illuminating gasses. Actual photographic slides were introduced in the mid 19th century, and the latter part of that century brought us the  stereopticon...basically a projector with a pair of over and under lenses that allowed a pair of slides to be shown, with one fading or dissolving into the other...

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Two examples of gas-fired stereopticons, with the one above showing the oxygen and carbonized hydrogen tanks that supplied gas for the projector's lamp, along with the complex system of hoses and valves needed to properly mix and supply the two gasses. The oxygen and carbonated hydrogen were mixed and burned in the unit's two lamps to provide high intensity, highly focused light that was projected onto a screen to show the slides...just as the bulbs in modern slide projectors do. The Metropolitan stereopticon, pictured above, is said to be the type that was in use on the night of the fire.  The image below, while not the type used at the Opera House that night, is similar and shows both the gas-fired lamp in the bottom unit...the upper unit's lamp would have been identical... and a close-up view of the hose connections and valves on the stereopticon itself. The manifold for the gas hoses, seen in detail here at the back of the bottom unit, was located between the tanks on the Metropolitan, and I have a feeling that the hose that came loose popped off of it's connection on this manifold.  Looking at this, it becomes obvious that this was not a simple rig to operate. Several weeks of training were required before an operator became even vaguely proficient at operating one of these rigs safely. Harry Fisher had been trained for a couple of days and had operated the projector 4 times, all of them at rehearsals, before the night of the fire.  Looking at this hose set-up it's easy to see why he became flustered and confused when one of the hoses...probably the hydrogen hose...popped loose from the manifold. .

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And that's what was being used for the slide show at the Rhoads Opera House the evening of the play...a gas-illuminated stereopticon projector. The Scottish Reformation, as I noted earlier, is the story of Mary, the Queen of Scots, with the slide show, shown during the intermissions between scenes, helping to illustrate the story. The stereopticon required pressurized tanks of illuminating gas...oxygen and carbonized hydrogen...which added a couple of pressurized tanks of highly flammable gas to the hazards stuffed into that tiny theater.  The stereopticon, along with the tanks of gas needed to operate it, was set up in the left front corner of the second floor, diagonally opposite the screen.  Operating the projector required the services of someone who had been well trained and knew what he was doing, and for this reason Harriet Monroe had a permanent stereopticon operator on staff. When she started making inquiries about  performing the play in Boyertown, she assumed that he'd be operating the stereopticon there as well.

  This was an understandable assumption, The operator, a guy named Charles Sheridan, had worked for her for years, and had set up and operated the projector at the Rhoads Opera House before.  The Scottish Reformation would be the second play that she had brought to Boyertown. The first play, called The Story Of The Reformation had been performed four years previously.

The Story Of The Reformation had also been sponsored by St. John's, so Ms Monroe had done business with the church's pastor, the Reverend Adam M. Weber before. She got hold of him yet again, and he quickly agreed to sponsor The Scottish Reformation. It didn't take long at all for word to get out that she was bringing a second play to town, ramping anticipation up until it was clean off the scale. There was no shortage of people wanting either a part in the play, a job as a stage hand, or a ticket to the show. What there was  a shortage of, though, was time.

She probably set everything up in early or mid December, but they had to wait until after the Holidays to begin the actual process of getting the play on stage, so the production crew (Which wouldn't include Harriet Monroe) probably didn't arrive in Boyertown until two or so weeks before the play's opening night.

During this fourteen day period they had to inspect and prepare the venue, get all the props ready, hire stage hands, audition around fifty actors (Mostly from the church's youth) and then costume and rehearse them. Given all of the tasks that had to be accomplished in that time frame, that would have been an exceedingly hectic two weeks for the play's cast and crew if everything went as planned. And of course, it didn't.

 Two things would throw a couple of hitches in the process early in the ball game. The first had actually occurred very shortly after Harriet Monroe contacted Reverend Weber, in early December, when Charles Sheridan told her that he wouldn't be available for several months, for reasons that weren't made completely clear.

This could end up being a problem. Pressurized gasses were a new, almost experimental technology in 1908, and handling them required specialized training. Then there was the art of running a stereopticon itself...many experts stated that it took about three months to learn how to run one of the complicated projectors safely and efficiently. Unfortunately, they really didn't have time to properly train a new operator, and definitely didn't have time for a new operator to become intimately familiar with the stereopticon..

Harriet Monroe didn't let this 'minor' detail deter her, and quickly hired a 21 year old kid from New Jersey named Harry Fisher to run the stereopticon.  Problem was, he had very likely never even seen  a stereopticon before, much less actually operated one. Despite his total lack of experience, Harry only got about two days worth of training, basically just enough to project the images on the screen. My bet is 'Safety' was not one of the subjects covered at any length...or at all.. in that very brief lesson. 

Next came unexpected hitch #2, when Harriet Monroe lost her voice, which would make it impossible for her to narrate the slide shows that were an integral part of the play. She also went on a trip to drum up more business, hunting for new communities to show The Scottish Reformation. I can't help but wonder if this had a bit more to do with her not accompanying the company to Boyertown than did a bout of Laryngitis. But whatever the actual reason for her absence, she had a competent stand in, her sister, Della Mayers, who she asked to travel to Boyertown with the company and act as director, a task that also required her to handle all of the auditions and rehearsals.

Della Mayers dived right into the task when she arrived in Boyertown. It's a pretty good bet that one of the first things she did was take a look at The Opera House to get a feel for the space she had to work with. She probably got hold of Edgar Mauger, who leased the Opera House from Dr Rhoads, and went to the Rhoads Building to get a quick 'cook's tour' of the facilities.

 She spotted a couple of things she didn't like the instant she set foot on the second floor of the building. Though it wasn't actually stated anywhere, I have a feeling that, to her eyes, the place had all the makings of a fire trap.  She asked that all of the stairway doors be removed but Mauger wouldn't remove the double doors at the main stairway. He did remove the door to the rear stairway, a move that would likely save about 60 lives..

She couldn't do anything about the building's other problems, so she figuratively (And possibly literally) took a deep breath, and took to the task of molding the cast into a well oiled machine in two weeks time. Two weeks between posting flyers announcing auditions and opening night is a seriously daunting task, no matter what kind of production you're putting on, but Della Mayers and her cast managed it, and almost before they knew it, it was a couple of days before opening night and they were in the middle of a couple of dress rehearsals. Ms Mayers was pleased with almost everything she saw. The only thing she didn't like was Harry Fisher, and his skill...or lack there of...with the stereopticon.

When coupled with the building's fire-trap like qualities, he actually scared her, so much so that she knocked out a letter to her sister, telling her that she considered Fisher incompetent if not down right dangerous. Then she penned a second letter to Charles Sheridan, again laying out her concerns, hoping he'd drop whatever he was doing and high-tail it to Boyertown so he could take over running the Stereopticon. There was no record...that I found, anyway...of what, if any, replies Della Mayers got to those letters, but whatever they might have been, they didn't include instructions to pull Fisher from the operator's position.

What she didn't know was that, apparently after receiving her letter, her sis had also sent a letter to Charles Sheridan concerning Fisher...a simple little note stating that Fisher was more than competent, and there should be no problem with him as the projector's operator...but if anyone should ask, Harry Fisher had been operating Stereopticons for eight years.

Della Mayers very likely feared something similar to what actually did happen, but she could do nothing about her fears if the play was to be performed as written, with the slide shows and lectures between scenes. All she could do was make sure the the cast and crew of The Scottish Reformation were ready for the play's two night...Monday the 13th and Tuesday the 14th...run, and continually caution Fisher to be careful, praying he wouldn't make a fatal mistake of some kind while she was at it.  It was a prayer that would prove to be futile.

Monday, January 13th finally arrived. Newspaper articles had been singing the coming performance's praises since the play was announced, and you just know that The Reverend Weber reminded his flock to purchase tickets (Available at the church, or where ever else they were being sold) because they were going fast during the announcements before his January 12th sermon.

Three hundred and twelve tickets were sold to the Monday night performance, so as the 8 PM showtime approached on that cold (It was Pennsylvania in January...you know it was cold!) Monday evening, the three hundred and twelve people holding Monday tickets made their way to the Rhoads Opera House, climbed that narrow stairway, and bought a program...likely from another of the church's youth...as they emerged from the  main entrance between the two insurance offices.

Folding wooden chairs had been set up on both sides of the auditorium, giving them maybe three hundred and twenty-five seats, putting a near capacity crowd on the building's second floor. Then there were around fifty people in the cast. This meant that just fewer than four hundred people would be stuffed into that room (Because that's really all the 'Opera House' was...one big room) that evening, packing the venue so tightly that it was later estimated that each ticket-holder had about nine square feet of space apiece

The doors were opened at 7:30 PM and eleven year old Anna Weber and her ten year old sister Martha were among the first to arrive, with their dad and a couple of other siblings...they probably grabbed seats near the center front. Close behind were a pair of teenage cousins. Thirteen year old Franklin Leighty had made his way to his also 13 year old Cousin LuLu Fegley's house to escort her to the play in their first outing unchaperoned by parent, aunts, uncles, or other adults...or so they thought. Another older cousin, Laura  Leighty, who was a teacher at Boyerstown's Washington Street School, also attended. My bet is she'd been asked to keep an eye on LuLu and Franklin.

Quite a few kids attended the play with their parents so they could watch their older siblings perform in the play, and several entire families were in attendance, including the three members of the Taggert family, who made their way in from their farm just outside of town. Then there was nineteen year old Lottie Bauman, who was also planning to attend the play with her cousin, Amanda Shultz and a friend. Her cousin, though, was six months pregnant and feeling under the weather. She decided to cancel, leaving Lottie and her friend, Mamie Toms to attend without her. Amanda Shultz's illness would likely save her life

Other kids, like Frank Leighty and his cousin, were allowed to attend the show without adult accompaniment. Fourteen year old Rosa Diamond took a young friend who was handicapped to the play and the two girls were so excited that they arrived early, well before the 7:30 PM door opening. The two girls went to a near-by store and pigged out on candy until the doors opened, then climbed the stairs and took their seats. Both girls would die in the fire, and Rosa would be the subject of the closest thing to a scandal to emerge form the fire.

As the audience arrived, the second floor auditorium was a frenetic ant-hill of activity. The building's third floor meeting room was doubling as a dressing room, so there was constant traffic on that back stairway, while scrapings and murmuring drifted from behind the curtain as the stage-crew made last minute preparations. All of this was overlaid by the general rumble of conversation you get in any room filled with over three hundred people, accompanied by the sliding scrape of wooden folding chairs as late arrivals filled the chairs at the sides of the room.

Della Mayers was bustling around seeing to the last minute chores and adjustments that are a part of any play. Backstage, the youthful cast members were all but bursting with nervous enthusiasm even as the audience quivered with the kind of anticipation that can only come from parents waiting to watch their kids perform.

And finally the lights went down and the crowd became silent, and Harry Fisher cranked up the stereopticon and showed the first batch of slides as Della Mayers narrated, introducing the play while she was at it...and then the curtain opened and play began.

The play was performed in four acts, with a slide show during the intermission between each act, and I can just about bet that, with no concessions, the only members of the audience who didn't stay in their seats were the ones who had to take a rest-room break.

The fourth act was the most dramatic, and likely the most anticipated...it dramatized the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.  The young lady who was originally to have portrayed Mary, Queen of Scotts had taken ill over the weekend, so her understudy, a young schoolteacher at Boyertown's Washington Street School named Stella Tabor, had taken her place. Stella was pretty sure she had the role down perfectly, but she was still nervous, and it's highly likely that she slipped out to the audience for a moment for some encouragement from her widowed mom, who equally likely told her that she (A) looked absolutely beautiful, and (B) was going to do fine! Stella probably gave her mom a hug, then, smiling nervously but gamely, headed back stage.

She'd never get to find out how she would have done.

As she slipped backstage, Harry Fisher was setting up the slides for the intermission slide show Somehow, as he was setting up the slides, he managed to pop one of the hoses leading to one of the tanks of compressed gas loose from it's connection on the manifold that distributed the gasses to the projector,  Gas blasted out into the room with a rushing hiss that caused everyone in the auditorium to jump, then twist around in their seats, to see Fisher scrambling, trying to figure out just exactly what he'd done and twisting valves to try and stop dumping the gas into the room. He finally grabbed the hose and got his thumb over the end, stopping, or at least muffling the loud hiss, for a second or so...but the hose slipped from his grasp as he turned to try to figure out how to reconnect it, and the sibilant 'HISSSSS' began anew.

Weeks later he would testify that it was the hose from the oxygen tank that popped loose, and if that had indeed been the case, it wouldn't have been that bad. Pure oxygen in a small, confined space can be explosive, and will cause materials to burn almost explosively, but if it's released into a large room at fairly low concentration it mixes readily with air, so it would have harmlessly dispersed. But...and this is a biggie...I and many other people think it was the hydrogen tank's hose that popped loose, and that would have been a different story altogether. Carbonated Hydrogen, like pure hydrogen, is lighter than air, explosively flammable, and would have gathered at the ceiling in a layer at least a couple of inches thick.

Of course he could have shut the valve off at the tank, and stopped the leak, but he didn't. Instead he was becoming more flustered by the second, allowing the gas to continue escaping into the room .The hissing of the escaping gas was loud, loud enough to get everyone's attention, including the cast and crew hustling around behind the closed curtain as they moved set pieces around in preparation for the the play's final act. Heads swiveled, kids looked at each other wide-eyed, and almost inevitably someone...or maybe several someones...said 'What the heck was that?!?'

Several of the kids in the cast pulled the curtain aside and peered out, trying to find the source of the hissing, probably spotting a frantic Henry Fisher desperately trying to fix the problem...

Now, those kerosene foot lights weren't the only lights on stage...a couple of freestanding kerosene lanterns...the classic glass-globed lanterns that just about everyone's familiar with...were also on stage, very possibly on short stands of some kind and most importantly, were still lit. As the kids peered through the gap in the curtains, someone accidentally kicked one of the lanterns, or one of the stands, and the lantern slammed down onto the stage, shattering the glass globe and spilling a small puddle of kerosene from the metal tank, which spread across the wooden stage floor even as the burning wick lit it up with a muted 'WHOOF!!

An antique Dietz kerosene lantern of the type that probably got kicked over, starting the small fire on the Opera House stage. Contrary to what movies and TV would have you believe, throwing/dropping/breaking one of these doesn't result in a sudden fireball/wall of fire because the kerosene tank is metal rather than glass, so the kerosene would simply spill out through the slot that the wick is raised or lowered through, resulting in a small, easily controlled spill fire.

OK, in TV shows and movies set in this era, bad guys are forever using these things to start fires. Light the lantern, hold it by the wire handle, wind up, and toss, and you instantly have a wall of fire. Doesn't work that way in real life. If one of these lanterns breaks it will indeed start a fire, and kerosene lanterns have, in fact, started many a fire, but not as spectacularly as TV and the Big Screen would have you think. First, the great majority of utility type lanterns...such as the millions that were and are made by Dietz...had metal tanks rather than glass, so the kerosene wouldn't be released in bulk, rather it would spill out of the slot through which the wick was raised. And second, there just wasn't that much kerosene, so you'd have a puddle of burning kerosene a foot or so in diameter, which was easily handled if taken care of quickly. And if people didn't panic.

The semi-darkened room suddenly lit up in shadowy flickering orange as the puddle of kerosene lit off, and you could hear dozens of sudden exclamations and a few curses as everyone started shuffling and moving. A few people, near the back of the auditorium immediately left, hustling down the stairs to Philadelphia ave...they almost panicked when they yanked on one of the double doors, finding it locked, but panic was temporarily averted when they found the other door unlocked and pulled it open. Maybe ten or fifteen people hustled and tumbled down the stairway, a couple of them doing a macabre dance with one of the ushers as they got in each other's way...the usher quick-jogged to the exit and unlocked the door that had been locked.

A haze of smoke was beginning to gather in the room, and several of the crew members and a few of the dads tore at the burning curtain and used coats to smother and snuff the fire...they almost had it out. Almost...

The Reverend Weber, along with a couple of men in the front row, all had the same basic thought at the same time. The footlights! Specifically that shallow eight foot long tank of kerosene for the footlights, which was awfully close to the burning curtains and blazing  pool of kerosene from the broken lamp. True, the crew on-stage just about had the small fire licked, and the rumblings of near panic in the crowd were dying down as the make-shift fire crew beat the fire down to a few small flickers.

Someone...maybe the Reverend himself...called out "Lets get that tank out of the way!"

 He was quickly joined on stage by Charles Spatz, who was editor of the 'Berks County Democrat...the local weekly paper...as well as a member of the cast.  Spatz had brought a small square of carpet with him, to help beat out the flames, which he handed off to the crew fighting the fire when Reverend Weber asked him to get the nearest window open.  Spatz  quick-stepped to the window, unlatching it and heaving it upward as Rev. Weber and a couple of other guys dodged the guys stamping and beating at the dying flames as they ran to the ends of the tank and grabbed hold.

"OK, guys on three, one..."

The general idea, apparently, was to heave it out of the window that Charles Spatz had just opened,  but they'd never get that far, or even close to that far. They lifted it and started carrying it towards the window, but they hadn't figured on a couple of problems. That metal tank, with footlights attached, wasn't exactly light, and at eight feet long it wasn't exactly easy to move, and, worse by far, it contained around two gallons of kerosene. The footlights had been burning for about an hour and a half, so the tank wasn't full, meaning they would have been moving a little less than 13 pounds of a flammable fluid sitting in an unbaffled tank, which meant it was free to slosh around from one end of the tank to the other. Which meant that the instant they picked it up and started moving it in one direction, all of that kerosene instantly rolled in the other direction, transferring most of the weight to one end of the tank.

 I get the impression that Rev. Weber was holding the end of the tank that caught that sudden surge of kerosene. He staggered then stumbled as that mini-wave of kerosene slammed into the end of the tank like a hard-swung sledge hammer, throwing him backwards and breaking his grip. That end of the tank slammed down onto the stage hard, hitting with a metallic 'THUNK!!' that got everyone's attention even more easily that the hissing gas valve..

I don't know if the cover of the tank popped loose, or if one or more of the kerosene-fired foot lights popped loose or, as a couple of reports suggested, a soldered joint split open, but what ever happened, when the tank tilted towards one end and hit the floor, a second wave of kerosene gushed from the end of the tank, filling the room with it's pungent aroma as it washed across the stage. Anyone who's ever spilled any liquid knows that just a glass of water will cover a good portion of a large kitchen floor without even breaking a sweat. Almost two gallons of kerosene was like an incoming tide,...

The stage crew-turned firefighters watched in horror as a wave of kerosene rolled across the small, nearly extinguished fire, apparently frozen in place for the instant that seemed like an hour that nothing happened. That instant was shattered by an explosive 'whoomph! as that small glimmer of flame became a bright, flaring, moving wall, spreading across the stage in an eye-blink. Reverend Weber was caught in the rolling wave of fire and severely burned about the head, chest and arms as his shirt ignited...somehow he stripped it off as he staggered off of the stage,

Spatz made it to the window he'd just opened as the Reverend staggered down the stage steps, tossing his burning shirt onto the stage...this was about the same instant the muslin curtain lit up, flames rolling up it's entire height in only a second...and as the flames hit the ceiling something horrible happened.

A wave of fire rolled across the ceiling, from one end of the building to the other, in less than a second, filling the room halfway to the floor for an instant before receding back up to ceiling level as the thin layer of hydrogen hugging the ceiling lit off. Flames from the burning stage now rolled along the ceiling, helped along by the burning hydrogen...the gas probably burned away fairly quickly, but it had super heated both the ceiling and the air just beneath it.

The auditorium erupted into absolute bedlam as the already smoldering curtain lit off and became a vertical sheet of fire, everyone both backstage and in the audience leaping to their feet and surging towards an exit. The curtain held for a couple of seconds before it fell to the stage in a flaming heap at just about the same instant that the hydrogen flashed, the flames that filled the room for a second or so severely burning dozens of the people who were desperately struggling to get out.

 Most of the cast and crew, along with several people who had been in the front row of seats and who had run up the stage steps onto the stage when the hissing started, bolted down the back stairway  and out the door, all but tumbling out onto the sidewalk on the Washington Street side of the building.  As they looked up, they could see smoke pushing from around the second floor windows, which were already lit up in garish, flaring orange. Even as they watched, they heard the tinkling crash of breaking glass, saw falling glass shards twinkling in the glare from street-lights as a couple of the windows were smashed open. A couple of others were raised, to be instantly filled with writhing coils of smoke, rolling upward as the sounds of terror...screams and wails of agonized fear...drifted down to the street.

Almost all of the cast and crew made it out, but, sadly, several of them realized that relatives were still in the building or remembered clothing or other personal items they'd left behind and ran back up the stairs to get them, only to become trapped by the fast spreading fire. Seven cast members would die in the fire, along with Della Mayers, who was last seen trying to help people get to and out of the windows. Sadly she, too, was trapped as the second floor became fully involved.

 One of the ushers was sitting in the back row, watching the slide show, when the hissing started. He jumped, just as everyone else did, head swiveling as he looked for the source...then out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the kids in the cast accidentally kick a kerosene lantern, saw the first small fire start. He knew that one of the double doors was bolted, so he immediately jumped up, almost getting trampled by the dozen or so people from the audience who left early as he quick stepped to the exit. It would do no good.

The tank probably hit the stage just about the time he unbolted the door. He was pulling that door open,  probably planning to block it open and then open the other side of the double-doored exit. when he turned to see the room light up orange and heard the screams and crashing clatter of wooden folding chairs being thrown aside. He apparently managed to block that one door open, but never made it to the other door...which, ironically, wasn't bolted...to open it as well. A human tidal wave slammed him back into the closed door with an audible 'THUNK' that rang his entire body like a church bell.

 Panicked theater goers, some badly burned by the hydrogen-fueled fire ball and all of them coughing and hacking on the quickly lowering pall of smoke, surged through the open half of the doorway in a rolling wave of terror, several of them tripping as they hit that first step and tumbling down the stairs, taking other people down with them like a bowling ball scoring a strike.

Several married couples and parents with children, along with two sets of tween-girl best friends were separated by the surging crowd as they ran towards the main exit, holding hands and dragging each other along...then suddenly their grip on each other was broken, with one caught in the wave  of bodies surging through the door, the other swallowed up by the crowd still trying to escape, the surviving half of each duo probably trying to turn and fight their way back up to find the other, only to be carried down the steps by the crowd.

At least fifty or so people made it out of that door before it happened...someone fell in the doorway, tripping someone else, then a couple of other people tripped over them. Then terrified, panic stricken men, women and children tried to climb over those who had fallen, two and three people hitting the opening at the same time. It only took seconds before they became all but inextricably jammed in place, and still people tried to go over the jam-up until a pile of struggling, dying people six feet high was stuffed into the doorway.

More people were jammed against the closed half of the exit ...they desperately tried to open the door, but all they managed to do was trap themselves...the surging crowd was pressing hard against the inward opening door even as they desperately tried to pull it open, locking it closed as effectively as a dead-bolt.

Dozens would die within a foot of safety, either jammed in the open side of the exit or piled up against the closed side. Some of the people at the head end of the mob started dying before the smoke even got to them, crushed either at the bottom of the jam of bodies in the open side, or against the door on the closed side to the point they couldn't breathe, their chests compressed and crushed to the point that their lungs were unable to expand and draw in air.

Even as dozens died at the auditorium's main entrance, people nearer the windows groped for the latches, then heaved them upward, shoving their heads out and gulping the cold night air. A couple of people climbed awkwardly over the three-foot-high sills and jumped, Others, almost by sheer luck, realized that they had opened the fire escape windows on either side of the building...but there was still a problem...several of them, in fact.

First and foremost, the fire escape windows weren't marked in any way what so ever...no 'exit' signs, no lights, no nothing, so no one had any idea if they were sitting right next to a fire escape unless they had the foresight to look before they sat down, which was (And, sadly, still is) highly unlikely.  The people who threw a window open as they coughed and gagged on smoke, and looked out and down to see a fire escape landing at that window, did so out of sheer luck

One girl looked out to see the fire escape landing a couple of feet below her and, before she even thought about alerting anyone else that she had found it, gathered up her long dress, half climbed, half fell onto the landing, and scampered down...a fact that haunted her for decades. She spent the rest of her life wondering how many she could have saved if she had just shouted 'I've got the fire escape!!' and waited a couple of seconds for a few people to find her, and it, before she left.

Then there was the problem of getting out of the windows once you finally found them. The long dresses that were the fashion of the times made climbing over those high window sills all but impossible to do quickly...women had to pull their dresses and petticoats up, gather them in a bunch next to their bellies, and climb up and over, still holding the bunched up dress/petticoat combination so it wouldn't either snag on something in the room, or trip them as they went over the sill. This would be a pain to do in a well lit, well ventilated room with plenty of time on your hands.

NOW! Imagine that that it's getting hotter and hotter with every passing second and you're trying to perform that same maneuver while terrified and half blinded by smoke that feels like caustic acid when you breathe it. That same caustic acid mixes with your tears to burn your eyes as you choke and cough uncontrollably while everyone around you is loosing their heads and screaming and a dozen other people are trying to shove you aside, or just climb slam over you as they try to get out of that same window.

   OH...you're trying to get your kids out at the same time.

Many women pushed their kids out of the windows onto the fire escape landings before trying to get out themselves...this way they could at least be sure their children were safe. A few of them managed to get their kids and themselves out, a couple more of the moms got their kids onto the fire escape before getting trapped by the flames themselves, and, sadly, more than a few moms died while trying to shield their kids from the flames.

Guys had an easier time of it getting out of the windows...comparatively, anyway... than the women, but several of them still had to worry about getting their kids out.  One dad, groping blindly as smoke filled the room, and fire rolled across the ceiling towards the open windows, found an open window and shoved his young son out...by sheer luck it was one of the fire escape windows and the boy fell onto the landing, got up, and scampered down the iron steps. His dad would also manage to get out, running down the fire escape closely behind him.

All of those folding chairs made even getting to the fire escapes a challenge as trapped occupants shoved them aside, into the paths of other occupants. All of the wooden chairs had been moved, often violently, by their occupants as they jumped up and made a mad dash for either door or windows and many of the chairs had folded, at least partially, as they were thrown aside. Several of the people who died probably got tangled up in a partially folded chair, their feet slipping between seat and back, or getting snared in the legs, causing them to waste time trying to get untangled even as they sucked in a lungful of smoke and collapsed to the floor, first coughing and hacking, then going unconscious...

The Reverend Weber, even though he was badly burned, tried desperately to restore order and get people out of the building...all the while trying to corral his own kids and get them out. He tried to get all of them to go out through the back stairway door early in the incident...before the kerosene tank fiasco..., and two of his daughters did just that.  His daughter Martha, along with his son, got separated from their sisters...the boy made it to the main exit to be passed out over the pile-up...he scampered down the steps and out to safety, while eleven year old Anna managed to wriggle between legs and around people to squeeze through the crowd until a man lifted her to his shoulders and carried her down the main entrance stairway..  Ten year old Martha possibly tried to follow her older sis, but she, sadly, became trapped and never made it out.

 No one knows for sure whether The Reverend Weber finally gave up and bailed out of a window himself, or if he had to be dragged out, but I have a definite and unshakable opinion on that. He was a father trying to save his daughter. Reverend Weber had to be dragged out of a window, probably only seconds before the room flashed over. And whoever dragged him out probably had to all but sit on him to keep him from trying to go back in.   Hours later, after the fire was finally knocked down, Reverend Weber was seen sitting on the curb nearby, sobbing uncontrollably.

Somehow just over half of the occupants, counting cast and audience, got out. A dozen or so made it out of the main entrance before the kerosene from the dropped tank lit off, intensify the fire, another sixty or seventy made it down the back stairway, a near equal number made it out of the main exit before it became blocked, and another fifty or so made it down the fire escapes, Somewhere between thirty and forty...most on that front stairway...were rescued by citizens and firefighters. Thing is, when that kerosene lit off, no one had more that five minutes, at the most, to get out.

As soon as that kerosene lit up, it extended to any and all combustible materials near-by, quickly filling the room with heavy, dark, toxic smoke from the top down even as flames equally quickly reached the twelve foot ceiling, first lighting the slender layer of hydrogen off,  then rolling across the ceiling, surging towards the front of the building. It was moving across the ceiling as fast as a man could walk anyway...and then people started smashing windows out to escape.

Fire craves oxygen like a kid craves candy, and the flames surged towards this new influx of fresh air with a vengeance.  The fire escape windows on both sides of the building were near the front of the auditorium, so when frantic occupants threw them open, flames boiled across nearly the full length of the room, running across the already super-heated ceiling, in minutes.

And of course, the fire escape windows weren't the only windows open...

Those who'd made it out looked up to see heavy, dark, 'chunky' smoke boiling out of the open windows, eddying around the people still hanging out of the windows or trying to climb out onto the fire escapes. As they watched, flame jetted through the smoke, retreated for an instant, then rolled from the windows, lighting the street up like noon-time, the heat baking into their up-turned faces,  forcing them across the street, onto the sidewalk on the south...Washington Street...side of the building and out of the ally on the north side.. As they watched, a couple of other people came out of the third floor windows...

The two or three people on the third floor were probably there to assist the cast with wardrobe changes, which meant they were near that rear stairway, so when heavy smoke started jetting upward from between the floorboards and around the baseboard trim, quickly filling the floor with first a heavy haze, then a solid cloud of caustic, toxic smoke, they headed for the rear stairway.

Thing is, the door had been removed from the second floor stairwell entrance...this saved the lives of most of the cast but it also provided an unobstructed vertical flue between the second and third floors. By the time that those two or three people opened the door to the stairwell it was already packed full of heat and heavy smoke, which instantly boiled into the third floor with the pressure and velocity of smoke blowing from the stack of a big steam locomotive pulling a freight up a steep grade, joining the smoke rolling up through the floor and baseboards as it did so.

They quickly backed away from the stairwell, very probably leaving the door open when they did. All that heavy smoke was quickly followed by flames, which were roaring up the stairwell to the third floor like the oft-referenced flames from a blast furnace. Flames exploded out of the doorway, rolling across the ceiling and trapping anyone left on the third floor. The front stairway didn't extend to the third floor, but even if it had, they probably couldn't have made it through the heavy smoke that quickly filled the third floor. They might be able to get down the fire escape...

Except that they probably couldn't even make it to the fire escapes, and even if they did, they likely couldn't find them, and even if they found  them, the fire escapes would have been death traps.

 First, like the second floor fire escape windows, those on the third floor were unmarked, so even finding them was a problem...if they could even get to them. There were actually three fire escapes from the third floor, but all three fire escape windows were all the way at the front of the building, meaning that the third floor occupants would still have to fight their way through blinding, caustic smoke for the entire nearly eighty foot length of the third floor to even try to find them.

And even if they could find the third floor fire escape windows, many of the windows on the second floor floor were already open, so first heavy smoke, then flames were rolling out of the windows, turning the fire escape into a death trap as they rolled up through the open grill work of  both the third floor fire escape landing and the fire escape itself.

And they had yet another problem that very quickly made reaching, finding, and using the fire escapes a trio of a moot points...

Even as those who'd made it out watched, they heard the tinkling of breaking glass over the rumble of flames as heat popped more second floor window. Shards of glass fell to the sidewalk looking like sparklers as they tumbled, followed by flames boiling out of the now shattered window and rolling up the wall. The problem was, not all of the breaking glass was coming from the second floor windows.

The fire rolling out of the second floor windows was boiling up across the third floor windows, and it didn't take but a minute or so for the heat to pop a couple of them, allowing flames to roll in through the windows, and play across the third floor ceiling, joining up with the fire blowing out of the rear stairway as they rolled towards the center of the room.

Our terrified third floor occupants managed to make it to a window at the rear of the building and, coughing and hacking from the smoke quickly filling the floor, bathed in sweat from the oven-like and still rising heat, they shoved it open, to see flames rolling out of over half of the second floor windows. They had one choice. They jumped.

Even as those who'd made it out watched this horrible scene, they heard the shrill and insistent clanging of the bell at the Keystone Fire Company, only three blocks away, followed by the bell at Friendship Hook and Ladder (Which also had an engine and hose wagon), only a few blocks up South Reading Ave from Keystone.

 A ten year old boy had managed to snake his way through the crowd and reach the main exit before it became panic-blocked. He bolted down the steps and ran home, mute with terror, barely able to tell his dad what was wrong. His dad told him to run to Keystone's firehouse (Which doubled as the town hall) to turn in the alarm, a run he made in record time. And even as he ran towards Keystone's firehouse as fast as his ten-year-old legs could carry him, the operator at the local telephone exchange was connecting a couple of callers to Keystones phone number. It's debatable which or who actually turned in the alarm first...remember this was before there was a phone in every house and building so whoever called it in first had to find a phone.  Boyertown likely didn't have a telegraph alarm system, so there was no corner alarm box to pull. That ten year old frantically pounding on the door at Keystone's station could very well have been the first report of the fire. 

...But whoever it was, the bells started clanging into the night about fifteen or so minutes after the fire started. At least help was on the way. So they thought...hard as it was to believe, things were about to get worse.

It was pushing 9:30 PM when the fire started, so many of Boyertown's residents had either called it a night or were getting ready to do so when those first heart-stopping 'GONG!!'s of Keystone and Friendship's fire bells peeled into the cold night.

For nearly three centuries volunteer firefighters have laid their clothes out at night so they could dress and be out of the house fast, and with it being the middle of a Pennsylvania January, I can just about guarantee that these guys had their clothing already staged in layers, long underwear already inside heavy shirts and trousers. By the time the bell peeled for the second or third time, a score or more wives had been awakened as covers were thrown aside and their husbands' feet thudded to the floor. All over Boyertown, volunteer firefighters fielded the inevitable 'Dad, where is it?!? questions from kids as they yanked clothes and shoes on and headed for the front door, hearing 'Be careful, honey' from wives as they said 'I don't know yet' to those same kids.

The night's cold hit them like a punch as they bailed out of front doors and headed for their respective fire houses at a dead run. Most of the members of both fire companies lived fairly near the station, so this was the quickest way to respond. A glance towards down town as they ran told them that this was going to be a long night. They didn't know the half of it.

There are calls that you just know are going to be bad even before you get to the station and this was one of them. The fire had a major head start on them. By the time Keystone and Friendship's volunteers were heading for the stations, the second floor of the Rhoads building was puking heavy fire and smoke, fire was roaring up the rear stairwell and into the third floor, and terrified screams were fighting a macabre battle of the bands with the fire bells.

A couple of the firefighters who had to pass the fire scene to get to their stations stopped at the scene as a panicked crowd surrounded them, screaming that there were people trapped in the building. Several of them, accompanied by a few townspeople, pounded up the main stairway to the second floor landing, where they ran up on a macabre, horrible sight.

  A dozen or more people (Some sources say as many as thirty) were scattered on the stairway, injured from tumbling down the steps. These first arriving firefighters, helped by some citizens, first pulled these people out of the building, then bounded up the steps, horrified as they saw smoke pushing from around the bodies stacked in the doorway. They began pulling people off of the top of the stack and passing them down the steps, getting another maybe half a dozen people out that way, while another group worked on the closed door.

They somehow got it partially open (Some sources say they took it off of the hinges) and as they did so a wave of people (Most probably either dead or near death) tumbled down the steps, limbs and heads bobbling in the loose, uncontrolled bobbling of unconsciousness. The firefighters and citizens dragged these last rescues down the steps even as flames rolled through the open door and chased them back down. They'd have to wait until the rigs got there before they could do anything else. Most of the people who'd been in the stairwell would live, and a couple of the people who they pulled from the doorway would survive, but most of those people were either already dead when they tumbled out of the door, or would die before medical help could reach them.

At least one or two other rescues were made, probably from fire escape windows...one young boy who had reentered the building to search for his siblings was seen at a window and pulled out by a fire fighter, and one Keystone member...Charles Mayer...entered the second floor (Again, probably over a fire escape) when he learned that his wife and daughter were in the building.

By the time he climbed in the fire escape window, the second floor was rolling, with fire blowing out of  well over half of the windows, and it boggles my mind that he managed to get inside and make a search without modern protective gear and breathing apparatus, but he did so, and found  his wife fairly quickly. He managed to get her to the fire escape window and out (Possibly rescuing a couple of other people wile he was at it). The he headed back inside to try and find his 18 year old daughter, Gwendolyn (Probably 'Gwen' to friends and family). He had to have been crawling on the floor, breathing that two or three inches of good air that hugs the floor in a building fire as he searched...the heat would have made every summer day at the beach seem like mid-winter, and his clothes were likely charring on his body when he found Gwen...

...He didn't make it out. He would be found holding Gwendolyn in his arms. Charles Mayer would be one of two Line of Duty deaths resulting from the fire.

As the drama at the scene was playing out, firefighters ran up to the two stations, making ready to roll. Keystone's station was only about three blocks or so east of the fire, on South Reading Ave, near it's intersection with Philadelphia Ave. They could see the orange-tinted column of smoke from the fire boiling up over the roofs of the buildings across the street, pumping up their adrenaline and kicking the sense of urgency off of the charts, even as one of the members ran inside, and pushed the bay doors open. They knew they had a major disaster on their hands, and more importantly, they absolutely knew that they needed to get to the scene and get water on the fire if there was any hope of saving any of the people still trapped on the second floor.

They could look down Philadelphia Ave and see the Rhoads Building in full bloom, lighting the street and the horrified crowd milling around in front of the building up like noon-time, could possibly hear the crowd screaming, pushing their desperation to get on scene and get water flowing to near panic levels. It was this rush to get on the street and to the scene that caused someone to make what ended up being a bad, bad decision.

Keystone had both a small Silsby steamer and a hose wagon, both horse drawn, and because they were volunteers, the horses were kept at a nearby livery stable instead of being stabled in the building as they would be in a salaried station. This meant that the livery stable had to be opened to get the horses.  The stable's owner was likely either a member of Keystone, or responded to the stable when the bells hit as if he was a member...if not, the fire company may have had a key, but whichever it may have been, it still meant a delay in getting the rigs on the street.

A restored 1877 Silsby steam pumper of the type that both Keystone and Friendship likely ran. These rigs were far smaller than the big steamers that large cities ran, with a capacity of somewhere between 350-500 GPM. You can estimate a rig's capacity by counting discharges...This rig only has one discharge on each side (You can see one of them beneath the seat) so 500 GPM is the absolute most it can supply. (You can still use this method to figure out an engine's pump capacity today, BTW. Count the 2 1/2 inch discharges and multiply by 250). The larger hose connections beneath the gong are the intakes. Though these smaller rigs were designed to be horse-drawn they were light enough ...barely...to be hand drawn by a large enough crew.   Keystone's guys hand-pulled their hose wagon that night, resulting in a fatal accident, but I can just about bet that they waited until they had horses for the steamer. Why? If the relatively light weight hose wagon got away from it's crew, the heavier steamer...even the small steamers weighed in at around 5,000 pounds...would have absolutely done so as well.

A small horse drawn hose wagon of the type often run by volunteer fire companies. Like the smaller steamers, it could be hand drawn if need be, but loaded with 1000 feet or so of hose, nozzles, and other fire fighting tools, they could tip the scale at around two tons...1000 feet of the double-jacketed 2 1/2 inch hose with brass couplings used back then (And for much of the 20th century) weighed around 1400 pounds all by itself. The pictured rig could well have been a volunteer rig, BTW...note the helmets carried on the rig. Many volunteer fire companies.,..especially in the northeastern U.S....had their members' gear hung on racks on the side of the rig until well into the 20th Century. That way members could respond directly to the fire scene and grab their gear off of the rig rather than responding to the station.

There is a cautionary concept in firefighting that's summed up in an age-old rhyme...'Scream and shout, run about, throw your head in the corner and keep on cranking the throttle out'. What this ancient rhyme describes is a bunch of firefighters acting without thinking the action through. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is probably exactly what happened when someone came up with 'Get a crew to drag (Hand-pull) the 'wagon to the fire, we'll follow with the engine when we get the horses'

In concept, it should have worked...the fire wasn't but three blocks away, and they'd be going slightly down-grade heading for the fire, making it easier to hand pull the heavy hose wagon. The 'wagon could get to the scene, and 'lay in' from a hydrant, with the crew pulling an additional line or two, and spinning nozzles on so all they'd have to do when the steamer rolled up was connect to the hydrant and screw the hand lines onto discharges...a slightly more complicated version of what they would have done anyway, had wagon and steamer arrived together.

A crew quickly formed up, grabbed the heavy tongue that the horses would have normally been hitched to, and dragged the rig out of the station, swinging out onto South Reading, running the short block to Philadelphia Ave, then hanging a right onto Philadelphia, with a firefighter named John Graver among those providing the motive power. He was particularly anxious to get to the scene...his sister Lottie was in the audience. (She made it to a window and jumped, but sadly, she would die from injures caused by the fall from the second floor.)

Hand-pulling the rigs to near-by calls wasn't that unusual...if the call was close to the station, they could often pull the rigs to the scene and get water on the fire in the time it would have taken to get the horses from the livery stable, get them hitched up, and respond to the scene. But they overlooked one thing, and it was a biggie. Philadelphia Ave had just recently been paved, and this was the first call they had gotten since that happened, so they weren't used to hand-pulling the rig on pavement rather than dirt. Nor had they called a training night and made a quick turn up Philadelphia ave and back to see the difference between pulling on dirt and on pavement. And because of this oversight, the downgrade that should have helped them, instead beat them

 They started down the hill, towards the fire and probably hadn't made it ten yards before the wagon began getting away from them on the hill. The hose wagon began pushing it's crew of firefighters rather than them pulling it and when they tried to back-step in order to slow it, their heels just dragged on the pavement instead of digging in as they would have on dirt. One by one they lost their grip as the hose wagon gained speed, spinning away from it to avoid being crushed under the wheels.

John Graver didn't push away quickly enough when his feet went out from under him. Or maybe he was too close to the wagon itself when the tongue slipped from his grip, but whatever happened he knew he was  in deep trouble. He probably tried to jog to the left, away from the now out of control hose wagon, only to see the heavy vehicle tracking to the left as well, almost as if it was following him. John looked back at the pursuing rig and, ran headlong into a tree in front of 49 East Philadelphia Ave, letting out an agonized cry as the 'wagon slammed  hard into that same tree, smashing a wheel into kindling even as it crushed him between the front of the rig and the trunk of the tree.

A Google Street View pic of the building at 49 East Philadelphia Ave in Boyertown (Corner of E.Philadelphia and Chestnut), which was the home of Dr Thomas J.B. Rhoads, who owned the Rhoads Building, in 1908. Keystone firefighter John Graver was killed when Keystone's hose cart got away from the crew hand-pulling it and crushed him between the rig and a tree in front of this house, also damaging the hose cart beyond use (The tree was likely where the small tree on the left side of the frame is today). This accident not only resulted in Graver's death, it also put Keystone's hose wagon out of service, delaying getting water in the fire until Friendship's steamer and wagon could arrive on scene.

His fellow firefighters, horrified, ran over and grabbed the tongue or the front and corners of the box, and shoved back desperately, trying to shove the rig away from the tree so they could get Graver out. A couple of other guys trotted towards the front door of the house they had crashed in front of, 49 East Philadelphia Ave, at the corner of Chestnut and East Philadelphia.

I'm going to bet that the steamer was enroute by then, and if it was, when the rig's driver saw the wagon's crew trying to move the wrecked hose wagon, with Graver pinned between wagon and tree, he almost broke the reins hauling the team to a stop. He was stopped just long enough to be told 'Go, go, we've got this...!', by one of the wagon firefighters, who then pointed at the house just behind the tree that the hose wagon was now partially wrapped around...'That's Dr Rhoads' house!'

Huh?!?

In one of those ironic twists that seems like it should be straight out of a novel or movie, 49 East Philadelphia was the home of Dr Thomas Rhoads...the owner of the burning building, who was already more than aware that his building was on fire. Worse, his cousin Mahelia Grimm had taken his seven year old grandson, who lived with he and his wife, to the play (Both would make it out unharmed), so I can almost bet that Dr Rhoads was just about heading out the door to go to the scene himself when he heard either the hose wagon slamming into the tree or frantic and desperate knocking at his door.

He opened the door to see several frantic Keystone firefighters who started talking at once to tell him of the accident and Graver's injuries. Behind them he could see several other firefighters shoving the wrecked wagon away from he tree as a few others eased the injured man from between the rig and the trunk. Two of the rescuers quickly supported Graver between them, and started walking him towards the door. Graver, who was reportedly conscious throughout his ordeal, was grimacing in pain.

That had to one of the most horrible 'Torn between two decisions' moments anyone's ever experienced. On one hand, Dr Rhoads wanted to go to the scene...already lighting the area up like daylight just two blocks away...to see to his grandson and cousin, on the other he had a gravely injured man right there. He chose to try and save the injured man.

There wasn't any detail about Thomas Graver's injuries, but the runaway wagon likely crushed his chest, and very possibly caused catastrophic abdominal injuries as well when it slammed into the tree with him in between tree and rig. This would have caused major life-threatening trauma that would have required immediate surgery if it had occurred today. In a small town 111 years ago, miles from the nearest hospital, it was all but a lost cause.

 Probably casting a last quick glance at the raging fire a few hundred feet away as he did so and saying another prayer for his grandson and cousin while he was at it, Dr Rhoads and several of the firefighters gingerly carried Graver inside his house, to his office, where he attempted to save him. Tragically, Thomas Graver...who reportedly was conscious and alert all through this, and who told the rest of his crew that he was fine, and to leave him and go to the scene...would die within two hours, to become the second Line of Duty Death of the night.

 Already reeling from the loss of their fellow firefighter and close comrade, they were also facing a major setback in the not-yet-started fight to control the fire...they no longer had any way to fight fire. True, the steamer was on scene, but the loss of their hose wagon was a crushing blow, because those classic steam-powered fire engines were single purpose beasts...they carried no hose other that the hard suction hose used to connect to hydrants or draft from cisterns or lakes, no ladders or other tools...all of that was carried by either the 'Wagon' or a ladder rig, so while the steamer's crew could take a hydrant and get it's water supply established, that's all they could do.

Just because they couldn't put water on the fire, however didn't mean they stood around with their hands in their pockets.While several firefighters may have worked on getting a line from the wrecked wagon to the scene (See below) another group, led by their Chief, Ephraim Gehris, ran into the front entrance and up the stairway to the auditorium, joining in the rescue effort in the front stairwell, possibly, as noted above, rescuing as many as thirty people before the fire chased them back out to the street.

While several of the period news articles I read about the fire stated that they had water on the fire 'five minutes after the alarm was turned in' (Keep in mind that this could have been as many as fifteen, twenty or even more minutes after the fire started), I have a sneaking suspicion that it took considerably longer to get water flowing. Five minutes from the time of alarm to water on the fire would have been good time today, using technology that either didn't exist at all, or was barely taking hold in 1908. It just plain long wouldn't have happened 111 years ago, even if everything had gone right.

 It would have taken Keystone more than five minutes to get a large enough crew up for their doomed attempt to hand pull the hose wagon, and get horses from the livery stable for the steamer. Ditto Friendship getting horses for their rigs. It was probably closer to fifteen minutes after the bells started ringing before Keystone's guys ran up, and another five or so, at least, before Friendship's rigs rolled in, then another five minutes...or more...to get a line in service.  With all the obstacles Keystone's crew had facing them, it could well have been closer to twenty or twenty five minutes after the first toll of the bell before they actually had 'Water on the fire'.

Lets look at the struggle to get water on the fire in a little bit more detail. Part of me says that the members of Keystone's crew who weren't in the stairwell making rescues dragged hose off of the wrecked hose wagon and hand-jacked it to the scene, but that would have been a back-breaking and time consuming task. A fifty foot section of double jacketed 2 1/2 inch hose with brass couplings weighs over 70 pounds, so they would have had to pull the line off of the wagon, and have at least one man per section to hand-jack it the two blocks to the scene, then they would have had to 'reverse' it...the coupling on the end of the hose load nearest the fire would be a female coupling, which would screw into the male connection on the engine's discharge just fine...but the male hose connection that the nozzle was screwed onto was back towards the wrecked rig, a block or more away from the scene. They'd have to cut the stretched out line at a coupling near the wrecked wagon, drag it (And of course, the rest of the line connected to the steamer) to the scene, then screw a nozzle on and start fighting fire.

This would have taken several minutes to accomplish on a warm drill night in mid spring. On a frigid winter night after loosing a member, with a major fire burning uncontrolled and dozens of frantic citizens getting underfoot as they asked about their relatives and friends, it would have been pushing impossible.

Once Friendship's rigs passed them, they likely abandoned that effort, if they had indeed actually started it, and ran for the scene to help Friendships crew get set up. If the sources I found were accurate...and that could well be a big 'if'...Friendship rolled in only a few minutes behind Keystone's steamer. They were also stationed on South Reading Ave, only a few blocks further down than Keystone, so they had to pass Keystone's wrecked hose wagon to get to the scene, which would have been the first sign that things at the fire scene were going south, fast.

 The crew of Friendship's hose wagon  likely wrapped the same hydrant that Keystone's steamer was already on with stream up, then 'laid in' ...pulling forward, which would drag the flat-packed hose off of the rear of the wagon, leaving a trail of hose leading from the hydrant to the fire. Keystone's steamer, with steam up, and already connected to the hydrant, was ready to rock and roll, so all they had to do was connect the end of the hose line to a discharge. Once the wagon reached the Rhoads building, a combined crew from both companies probably started scrambling, pulling extra line off to give them some maneuverability, then screwing a nozzle on to their end and calling for the steamer's engineer to 'Charge The Line!'. Then the engineer opened both the throttle and the discharge, sending them water (Likely with a loudly shouted 'Water comin'!!!!' that was also passed up the line.)

As the crew on the nozzle started fighting fire, the crew of Friendship's wagon then went hunting for a hydrant for their own steamer, probably catching one on the other side of the fire building, turning the wagon around, wrapping the hydrant, and again laying a line to the fire, while their steamer took the hydrant, and they quickly got a second line in service.

Of course, things very likely didn't go as smoothly as that description makes it sound, and Friendship's guys had a pretty jarring heads-up that things weren't going well when they saw Keystone's wrecked hose wagon (And possibly Keystones guys frantically pulling hose off of it) then rolled in to find Keystone's steamer on a hydrant, with no line connected and no one fighting fire. When they realized that they had to get lines in service for both steamers, it inevitably caused a few minutes of confusion that they could ill afford, this on top of having to deal with the confusion caused by hundreds of citizens milling around the scene, begging for them to try and rescue their loved ones. All of this confusion inevitably lost them several minutes getting water on the fire.. In the long run, of course, no matter how long it took them to get water flowing, it didn't change the ultimate outcome any at all, for either the victims or the building.

By the time Friendship rolled in, everyone who was going to make it out, had made it out, and they still had a large, three story building with the top two floors well involved, along with a major exposure problem...a row of three story brick row houses on Washington Street, attached to the rear of the building (The 'Charlie Side' in modern fire service speak) in imminent danger of becoming involved as well. Across the ally, on the north side of the building, you had the wood frame Mansion House Hotel. With the limited manpower and equipment they had, Boyertown's guys were behind the eight ball, in a big way, even without the massive number of injuries and fatalities.

Within a few minutes after Friendship got on scene, both Keystone's and Friendship's steamers were belting their own smoke columns into the night sky as they pumped the two or three two and a half inch hand lines they had in service, the guys on the nozzles directing the 250 gallon-per-minute streams into the flame-spewing maws that used to be windows, trying not to think about what was lying on the other side of the windows and knowing they were going to loose the whole block.

There was absolutely no way they were going to put the fire out, or stop it from taking the houses with the resources they had on scene, and they likely knew it. They may not have known the technical reasons they weren't going to put the fire out, or the science behind those reasons, but they knew they were going to loose the building and the block.

There is another modern fire service concept known as 'If your GPMs don't match or exceed your BTUs, you're S.O.L. All it means is, if you're not flowing enough water to absorb all of the heat produced by the flames, you're not going to extinguish the fire...it'll just keep growing and spreading. Keystone's and Friendship's rigs were small steamers...small enough to hand-pull, meaning they were, at most, 3rd or 4th size Silsbys, with capacities of from 350-500 or so GPM, and each 2 1/2 inch hose line would flow 250 GPM, which means that once they finally got water flowing, the two or three lines they had in service were flowing...at the most...around 750 GPM on a fire that would've required at least two or three times that to contain. All they were doing was annoying the fire a bit. 

They were hard pressed keeping the fire from rolling merrily up both Washington Street and Philadelphia Ave, much less knocking it down. And these weren't the only problems they had...not by a long shot.

Not only were they dealing with a catastrophic loss of life, along with a major building fire that was threatening to 'Walk the dog' on them, and take a couple of blocks of homes with it, they also had dozens of injured people, with both burns and fractures and other trauma from jumping, and hundreds of horrified townspeople showing up looking for missing relatives and friends. Remember, Boyertown was (and still is) a small, close-knit town, so everyone in town was either related to or knew someone who had attended the play.

The firefighters on scene desperately needed someone to both acquire and organize more resources, and thankfully the person who ended up having that herculean task dropped in his lap was just the man for the job.The two fire companies weren't the only ones who responded to the scene when the fire bells began tolling...Veterinarian Daniel Kohler headed for the scene at a dead run, not in his capacity as a vet, but in his capacity as father. His eleven year old son Lawrence had been at the play, and thankfully had made it out of the building early in the fire...Kohler all but ran into him when he got to the scene.

After making absolutely sure his son was OK, Kohler went to work in his other official capacity, that of town Burgess, which was approximately the  same as a Mayor in Pennsylvania Dutch communities. In many ways it was actually a ceremonial position...leading parades and giving speeches when appropriate were his primary duties...but he was still the head of the town government. He took one look at the building, which was by then puking fire from just about every second floor window and extending into the third floor, and at the crowd that was well on it's way to filling the streets surrounding the fire from sidewalk to sidewalk, and knew they would need help, and lots of it. He'd make several important phone calls with-in the next few minutes, and the first two were to Pottstown and Reading to get help on the way for Boyertown's firefighters.

I don't know if he found Keystone's Chief Gehris, who was probably in charge of the fire, or if the chief found him, but at about 9:45 Kohler called for help, in the form of both rigs and manpower, from both Reading, sixteen or so miles to the east, and Pottstown, six miles to the south, just across the county line in Montgomery County. Unfortunately, that help wouldn't get to the scene immediately, or even particularly quickly,

Today, the initial alarm for a commercial structure fire at Philadelphia and Washington Avenues in Boyertown would have house sirens wailing or diaphones blasting at multiple stations in Berks County...the county now boasts over sixty fire companies, and several of them would be dispatched on the first alarm, with the first units rolling in to the scene just minutes after tones tweeted over fire radios. If those initial companies needed help, a quick 'Dispatch, give me a second (Or greater) alarm!' would have more Berks County units rolling in to the scene. The entire first and second alarm assignments would be on scene fighting fire in less time than it took Keystone and Friendship to get the first stream flowing the night of the Opera House fire.

But things were far different 111 years ago. Of course, there weren't anywhere near as many fire companies back then, but the number of fire companies wasn't the issue. The problem was getting to an incident further away than their own communities...or getting help into their own communities if they needed it. Fire apparatus from that era just wasn't able to get from one town to the other quickly. 

First, while gasoline powered, motorized fire apparatus was becoming more and more accepted by the fire service by 1908, they hadn't appeared in either Reading or Pottstown (Or any of the rest of Berks County) yet.  Reading wouldn't get their first motorized rig until 1911, Pottstown's first gas-powered rig wouldn't be on the street until 1915, and motorized rigs wouldn't come come to Keystone or Friendship until about 1920. The lack of motorized rigs makes the less than awesome road system that existed back in 1908 a moot point.

Oh, they could get rigs from one town to the other if the need arose, but they wouldn't do it quickly. Back then, Mutual Aid responses involved a far more time consuming, complicated process than the quick run to a neighboring jurisdiction on good roads with sirens screaming that we take for granted today. While the firefighters of 1908 may not have had good roads in 1908, but they did have railroads.

 Back in the horse-drawn era, rigs, horses, and personnel were transported by train when they responded to another city on mutual aid. I'm making a big assumption here, but I have a sneaking suspicion that many cities kept a special train at a rail yard consisting of a given number of flat cars, livestock cars, and coaches, ready to be loaded if mutual aid was requested... they almost had to have done this. Otherwise scrambling to find the needed rolling stock and get it all on one siding, coupled together and ready to load would make an already time-consuming task almost impossible. And trust me on this, getting apparatus and crews dispatched to the rail yard and loaded and getting the train on the way to the city requesting aid was very likely a logistics nightmare.

 They wouldn't have to have a mile long train ready, obviously...a couple of flat cars, a cattle car, and a couple of coaches. Reading had 14 engine companies, and Pottstown four, so neither would be sending more than two companies, Pottstown likely only one. (Both, in fact, sent a single engine company, though Reading's got there late in the fire.) But just getting those on the way...well, lets take a look.

A decision had to be made as to how many companies would respond, as well as selecting which specific companies would go. On top of that, Pottstown's four fire companies and Reading's fourteen companies were all primarily volunteer with paid drivers 111 years back. Both cities sent a single engine and crew, so getting crews together added a good bit more time to the response.

 They were probably dispatched by telephone. then whatever alerting system was used to call up the volunteers had to be activated, and the crews had to respond to the station, hitch up the horses and head for the rail yards. While all of this was going on, the railroad was scrounging up a locomotive and crew.

The apparatus had to be loaded (Likely by hand...and Pottstown and Reading likely had the larger...second or even first size...steamers, which weighed in at upwards of 3-5 tons apiece. Pushing one of those rigs up a ramp onto a flatcar would have been a backbreaking job requiring a slew of men). While the steamers and hose wagons were being loaded on the flatcars, the horses would be loaded onto a 'cattle car'  (Their drivers would have possibly ridden the cattle car with them to keep them calm) and the crew would get settled in a coach. The locomotive (Which hopefully, already had steam up) was backed in, coupled to the train, and headed towards the requesting city. If there wasn't already a locomotive available with steam up, add another hour or so to the response time (This could well be why Reading's crews, who didn't get on scene until the fire was under control, were so late arriving in Boyertown.).

Of course the railroad had to add the train to the schedule (Numbering it as an 'Extra' train), station masters and dispatchers had to be notified, and other 'T's crossed and 'i's dotted. Then there was the time enroute, and once they arrived the rigs and horses had to be unloaded. It could easily be an hour or more after the request before the train hauling the rigs and manpower was enroute, another half hour or so to unload when they arrived, plus travel time, so it could be a couple of hours...or more... before a mutual aid company was flowing water at the scene.

Both departments did have one thing going for them...Reading was a railroad town, with a railroad actually named  after it, and Pottstown was a mill town, with lots of rail activity, and lots of sidings so both cities likely had the already made up consist ready for loading and coupling to a locomotive...this being said, you'd think Reading would be more in the ball game than Pottstown, but Pottstown was also ten miles closer than Reading...at any rate, Pottstown's crews were ready to roll by 11:30 PM or so...a shade under two hours after they were called...

Once the engineer was given the 'Highball' signal, thought, the trips weren't all that long. Steam locomotives had reached a pretty high level of sophistication by 1908, and these would be light-weight trains, likely consisting of a pair of coaches, a single flatcar, carrying both steamer and hose wagon, and a single cattle car for the horses. Even a yard switcher would be able to haul the train at a good clip, especially if it was a larger switcher such as an 0-6-0 (Six big driving wheels with no unpowered 'bogie' trucks ahead of or behind them). Whatever the motive power on the train's head ends was, it was likely a comparatively fast, short trip once they were loaded and rolling.

Once they eased out of the congestion of the yard, onto the main line, the engineer would have eased the throttle open wide. I can only imagine what that ride was like for the fire-fighters from Pottstown's Goodwill Fire Company, which was the company that responded, knowing they were on the way to a major fire as the train hurtled towards Boyertown. The locomotive drive wheel connecting rods would have been moving so fast that they were just blurs, exhaust thundering, whistle screeching the classic long-long-short-long warning as they approached crossings. I can just about bet that all eyes were on the windows as they closed in on Boyertown, someone very likely letting go with a heart-felt 'Holy s***, it's gettin' it!!' when they caught sight of what looked like the sun coming up hours too early.. There's a good bet, however, that they didn't know the full extent of the disaster until they rolled in to Boyertown.

We'll take a look at their arrival on scene a few paragraphs down, but first...

...Kohler had a migraine headache's worth of other problems to deal with as well, and thankfully they were taken care of much more efficiently than the task of getting mutual aid rigs and fire fighters to the scene would be.  Between burns and injuries caused by jumping and being trampled, many of the people who had escaped were seriously injured, and they were roaming around a chaotic, dynamic fire scene. Three of Boyertown's doctors...Drs. John Borneman, Charles Dotterer, and Henry Ludwig...responded to the scene early on, and were quickly overwhelmed by both the number of serious injuries and the worried relatives of play-goers who were showing up in droves, begging for word of their loved ones.

Kohler made a call for doctors and nurses, along with a call for State Police back-up from the State Police barracks in Reading, at the same time he made the call for extra fire apparatus and manpower, and they would arrive well before the steamers and firefighters from Pottstown, because getting the medical and law enforcement back-up to Boyertown would be a much less daunting problem than transporting the mutual aid fire fighters and equipment would be.

 An electric commuter railway...aka Trolley line...ran from Reading to Boyertown, so when calls went to hospitals. as well as to physicians private homes, a dozen doctors and five nurses eagerly answered the call. They quickly gathered equipment and probably met up at a designated trolley stop, where a special car was likely already waiting. A contingent of seven State Police officers, dispatched from the Reading barracks, was likely already on board, ready to roll, when the medical personnel arrived at the designated stop.

Probably within a half hour after the call for State Police and medical help went out, a trolley was rocking through the countryside, heading for Boyertown. I can only imagine the reactions from the troopers, MDs and nurses when they spotted the glow lighting up the sky in the direction of Boyertown, which was likely visible for miles before they arrived.

The State Troopers were requested to handle the hundreds of horrified relatives and friends of people who had attended the play, who, as noted above, started showing up only minutes into the fire as news of the catastrophe spread through the town like, well, wildfire. They weren't just impeding the three doctors who were frantically trying to get ahead of the injuries caused by the fire...before the firefighters, who were already dealing with a wrecked piece of apparatus, a gravely injured firefighter, and a major fire with a massive loss of life, even got water on the fire, they had citizens surrounding them, begging for news of loved ones and friends.

Some likely even pleaded with the guys to try to get inside and search for their missing loved ones, but one glance at the building made it obvious that this was impossible. Not only was fire showing from every second floor window as well as a few third floor windows by the time Kohler made the call for mutual aid, it was also visible in the middle front windows...the stairwell windows...on the second floor. Not only was getting inside to make a search impossible, at this point, it was pointless...there was no way anyone still in the building was alive.

There had been several joyful reunions as people who made it out in time were located by their relatives, but there were just as many, if not more, people darting around frantically, searching for missing relatives and friends...unfortunately most wouldn't learn their loved ones' fates until the building could be entered, and bodies removed and identified. Clinging to what was rapidly becoming false hope, they would crowd around the rigs and firefighters, unintentionally impeding efforts to control the fire, until the State Troopers rolled in from Reading.  Sadly, none of them would get good news.

The trolleys carrying the troopers, doctors and nurses rolled in well before the train carrying the mutual aid fire companies, possibly as early as a bit before 10:30, and definitely by 11 PM. The State Troopers quickly roped off a fire line and pushed the crowd back behind it, likely with threats of arrest if anyone so much as thought about crossing it. While they were controlling the crowd, the doctors and nurses found their three local cohorts, quickly got organized, and began treating the injured and preparing the worst injured for transport to a hospital in Reading...interesting only four would be transported to the hospital, and only around two dozen or so would really need treatment. Most of the injured would be taken back to their homes to be cared for, a common practice in that era.

Goodwill's crew rolled in long after the State Troopers and medical personnel did, but once they got into Boyertown they unloaded and went right to wo...Uh, no, sadly, they didn't. Though it wasn't specified exactly how they did it or how bad it was, somehow their steamer was damaged while being unloaded. Even worse, as they hustled to fix the damaged steamer, they were watching the fire...Boyertown's railroad station was located only one block to the south of the Rhoads Building.

Ever resourceful as the Pennsylvania Dutch were, they managed to repair it and get it to the scene. Thanks to having to make that repair, however,  it was between 11:50 and Midnight... a good two and a half hours into the fire, and at least an hour after the State Police and medical personnel arrived...when Goodwill's crew and rigs finally rolled in to the scene, found a water supply, and began fighting fire.

 By the time this happened, flames were rolling out of every window on both the second and third floors, and were probably through the roof, shoving a huge column of smoke skyward as it lit that end of Philadelphia Ave up like noon-time. The radiant heat was tremendous, forcing the crowds watching the fire across and down both streets. With three steamers now on hydrants, and plenty of hose available, Firefighters were soon probably throwing at least 1000 GPM into the fire through a quartet of hose lines. The problem was, they probably needed twice that if not more. They very likely concentrated on keeping the fire contained to the Rhoads Building and and keeping it from extending to the Mansion House Hotel, across the alley from the fire.

Of course, all of the hose streams weren't tackling the Rhoads building...the fire had also extended to the row houses on Washington Street, and was working it's way through the common attic shared by all of the houses. At least one line was probably throwing water into the burning houses and they made a valiant stab at saving the houses, but I have a sneaking suspicion that, without the modern gear and breathing apparatus we have today, it was a loosing battle from the get-go. They didn't have the manpower or equipment to get inside, get ahead of the fire, pull ceilings, and directly attack the fire in the attic, so all they could do was 'Hit it hard from the yard'...pour water in from the outside. They'd leave the houses standing but all were severely damaged by fire, smoke, and water. This being said, they still made a nice stop on the row houses, limiting fire damage to the fourth floor and attics of all of them. This, of course, was no consolation for the horrible loss of life in the Rhoads Building.

The Pottstown firefighters hadn't been on scene thirty minutes when a muted crunching, like someone dropping a safe on a big pile of balsa wood, echoed across the scene even as a mushroom of fire rolled a hundred or so feet into the air before before settling down to twenty or so foot flames that turned the fire into a flaring orange beacon visible for a dozen miles in all directions. The entire remaining roof had collapsed into the third floor.

The third floor, weakened and likely already partially burned away, only held for a minute or so at the most before it pancaked down onto the second floor, kicking a large hunk of the Washington Street wall out while it was at it, sending firefighters scrambling for their lives as the wall sections folded outward and clatter-crashed to the ground, sending bricks bouncing like ping-pong balls.

Firefighters quickly regrouped and, watching the remaining walls warily, began pouring water into the gaping gaps in the side walls. A couple more firefighters may have laddered the porch roof at the front of the building so they could direct a stream through the front windows. By 3AM or so, they were making progress (Or, more likely, the fire was beginning to burn out).

First, both firefighters and crowd noticed that the flames roaring out of the opening where the roof used to be had retreated back inside the building, only occasionally peeking above the walls, then the black smoke began to lighten and turn gray, then white as it mixed with steam.

By 4:15 the fire was under control, though clouds of steam and smoke still rolled from the ruins and glimmers of flame still peeked from beneath the rubble. The unmistakable odor of a burned building...burned wood, plaster and paint has a distinctive aroma that you recognize instantly after smelling it the first time...permeated the area, with a nastier over-cooked pork odor underlying it. That odor was another one that firefighters knew all too well.

There were a couple of minor wins...the second floor held, and firefighters managed, somehow, to keep the fire out of the bank and limit damage to the hardware store...but these were hollow triumphs given the massive loss of life.

Someone was going to have to deal with the massive and horrible task of removing and attempting to identify dozens of bodies (The death toll would end up being even worse than they originally imagined), and Burgess Kohler had that covered as well. Shortly After Kohler got Fire Mutual Aid,  State Police, and medical assistance enroute, he made a forth phone call anticipating the catastrophic death toll...that call went to Berks County Coroner Robert Strasser. Strasser wasn't immediately available, though, because he was in the middle of performing an autopsy. I can only imagine he was looking forward to going home and kicking back to relax as he walked out of the autopsy theater (In a funeral home, BTW, rather than a hospital) only to be met with the news of the ongoing disaster in Boyertown.

He was one of the few Berk County residents who owned a car, and he immediately called his deputy coroner, grabbed what ever he thought he might need to take with him, cranked the big touring car (It was never specified what make he owned) to life, probably picked Deputy Coroner William Smith up enroute and set out from Reading for Boyertown, getting on the road at a bit after midnight.

It took them an hour and a half to make the sixteen or so mile trip in frigidly cold weather on muddy, narrow, and crooked roads, in an open car that very probably utilized acetylene headlights. I can only imagine that they watched the huge glow to their east with way more than a little trepidation as they rocked over the bumpy roads at the breakneck speed of ten or so miles per hour, and given the conditions they actually made pretty good time...night time road trips of any length at all just weren't a common occurrence back then,

Fire was still blowing through the roof for the entire length of the building when they rolled into Boyertown (Also passing Keystone's wrecked hose cart). He likely parked as close to the scene as possible, walked in, and found Kohler, taking command of all but the firefighting end of the scene.

While the fire was under control by 4:15 AM, it was far from 'Tapped Out', and it would be hours before they could get inside the building to search for bodies...even if the ruins hadn't been far too hot for them to get inside, they couldn't see. While lights such as carbon-arc lights were available in larger cities (And were, in fact, used at the Iroquois Theater fire), they weren't available in small towns without electricity such as Boyertown back in 1908. This, however, didn't keep Strasser from starting to set things up. He likely searched out the owners of Boyertown's three funeral homes and began setting up to use them as morgues. The largest of them, owned by James Brown, was located directly across the street in the D.C. Brumbach Furniture Store (Back then, it was, apparently, very common for funeral homes/morgues to be  located within furniture stores.), and both of the other two...owned by Harrison Houck  and James Brumbach...were also located close by on Philadelphia Ave

  After he got morgue arrangements settled, Strasser went to the Union House Hotel and rented a couple of rooms, probably to be paid for by the county, to use as his base of operations...this would be where an office would be set up to handle inquiries about missing relatives, and body identification.

While he was at it, he also very likely made arrangements for the blankets he was going to need to wrap the bodies, twine to secure said blankets, and began devising a plan on just how to handle the identification. Early on he decided he was going to use a plan similar to the one used after the San Francisco Earthquake, very likely also heeding lessons learned from the Iroquois Theater fire.

Each body would be assigned a number before it was removed from the scene. Then, once the body was assigned a number, any personal effects found with it would be placed in a pouch that would be assigned a corresponding number, and a detailed description of the body as related to size, approximate age, sex, clothing, and personal effects found with it would be noted both on a report, and a sheet kept with the body. Numbering it before it was removed from the scene would, hopefully, allow them to avoid the confusion and errors that occurred at the Iroquois Theater fire.

 The sun came up, finally, to reveal a windowless, roofless shell, dozens of exhausted firefighters, and a still big crowd of onlookers that would grow even bigger as the day progressed. Strasser wanted to see what he had to deal with before he came up with a plan to remove the bodies, so he possibly first tried going up the front stairway. He was horrified when he saw the massive pileup of bodies blocking the main entrance...he'd been coroner less than a year, and had never had to deal with anything even close to this horror. He climbed back down the steps and got with Friendship Hook and Ladder's chief.

The Rhoads Building after the fire.The doorway barely visible on the left rear corner of the Rhoads Building, next to the first row house, was street exit for the rear stairway, which allowed most of the cast and a very few of the audience to escape. Sadly, several of the cast returned to search for relatives or retrieve personal possessions, only to become trapped. This was a huge, intense, and devastating fire, especially for a small town, and would have required an all-out effort to contain and control even if it had occurred at 1 AM with the building empty. The massive death toll took it from bad to unthinkably horrible...and it could have been even worse but for a bit of luck...some of the only good luck that occurred on that long, cold night. When the roof collapsed about three hours into the fire...very shortly after Pottstowns' Goodwill Fire Company got on scene...it kicked that missing section of the third floor wall out, endangering several firefighters when the wall section hit the ground. It either missed all of the firefighters on the Washington Street side of the building, or all of them managed to get out from under it. When the roof collapsed, it also carried most of the third floor with it, into the second floor. The fire absolutely devastated the second and third floors, burning all but unchecked and consuming the majority of the combustibles on those two floors while it was at it. Though fire fighters finally got several lines...possibly as many as four...in service, they likely put much of their effort into keeping the fire from walking up the block or crossing the street. They managed to limit the damage to the Rhoads Buildings first floor, and made an impressive stop on the row houses. Though all of the houses were heavily damaged...the fire ran the attic and dropped down into the forth floor of all of them...the firefighters managed to limit damage enough that they were repairable. Of course these saves...or maybe semi-saves would be the better term...were little consolation to the firefighters and citizens of Boyertown. Over 160 of their friends and neighbors were buried under the burned remains of the third floor and roof.

Looking up Washington Street towards Philadelphia Ave, with the damaged row houses on the left. Fire damage to thee row houses was apparently limited to the fourth floors, attic, and roof

The alley side of the gutted Rhoads Building, with the back of the first row house on the extreme right side of the frame...sorry about the quality. The Rhoads Building apparently had a small basement...likely where the furnace was..,while the row houses appear to have been three floors on the back side

Interior of the second floor after the fire. The photographer was standing just behind the area where the stereopticon was set up at the right front corner of the building. One of the two pressurized gas tanks for the stereopticon is standing upright just about mid frame, the other is in the pile of rubble immediately to it's left.  One sign that both tanks were left on...the tanks are intact, meaning that all of the gas, be it oxygen or carbonated hydrogen, vented either before or during the fire. Had they been turned off, the tanks would have exploded, pretty spectacularly at that, from the heat of the fire. As can be seen in the picture, the second and third floors were absolutely devastated. the fire burned all but unchecked for almost seven hours, and most of the combustible material was turned to ash while the big floor and roof joists were burned to a fraction of their original size. You're looking towards the stage here, and absolutely nothing remains of it. Also keep in mind that the third floor collapsed into the second floor.

Fortunately, Friendship Hook And Ladder, did have the breed of rig that gave it it's name, and though it had arrived too late for it's ladders to be used for any rescues...as noted previously, everyone who was going to make it out had made it out by the time Friendship got on scene...they could be, and were, used to access the second floor. As Friendship's crew was laddering the second floor, Strasser got with the C.O. of the State Police detachment (Who had been there all night, and now faced a long, long day) and, side-eyeing the already growing crowd, asked that the area be roped off to give them a path to the morgues. Strasser was about to piss off the citizens of Boyertown...but it was out of necessity.

He climbed the ladder and pulled himself through the window opening, his boots sinking several inches into a sodden, ashy mud, and gazed around at the ruined interior of the building. The roof was completely gone, and every bit of combustible material on the walls had burned away except some of the support beams that had once supported the floor joists for the third floor. Some of those joists, as well as roof joists, were tumbled together on the floor, burned to less that half of their original size. . And what was all of this burned debris near the wa... 

'...Oh, my God...' He may have thought. 'I'm standing on them!' And that was when each separate piece of debris...some of them piled on top of each other...took form and substance, and he realized that he was staring at burned bodies...dozens of them...stacked near the windows. And the worst was yet to come.

Strasser made a lap of the floor, trying to avoid any weak spots in the flooring, and all but recoiled in horror when he immediately ran up on a pile of charred bodies almost six feet high at the front of the building, where the stairway door had been, and where panicked, terrified men, women, and children had climbed over each other trying to get through the one door that was open.

Strasser shuddered in horror as he climbed back through the window, then composed himself and began formulating a plan to remove the bodies as he climbed down.  He sent a couple of guys to grab the blankets he'd arranged for, gave a couple of other people the clipboard and (I'm assuming here) blank paper for numbered tags, and sent another crew, with a wagon, to scare up some boards.  Then he had Friendship's crew place a ladder on the main stairway. (The stairway was three feet wide at the bottom, where the ticket booth narrowed it, and six feet wide above the ticket booth, leaving plenty of room on either side.

Then he outlined his plan...a crew would work their way in, first working from the steps to clear the bodies from the doorway, then removing the bodies that were inside the second floor. As noted above, as each body was removed, it would be checked for personal effects, which would be placed in a separate pouch, The documentation crew would write a brief description, including a description of the personal effects found with the body.The body would then be assigned a number, with the same number assigned to the pouch of personal effects.  It would then be wrapped securely in a blanket and placed on one of the boards, which would then be slid down the ladder and out of the building. Once out of the building, it would be taken to one of the morgues along a roped off path guarded by the State Troopers..

Strasser needed a couple of people to take charge of the search itself while he set up shop at the hotel. The president of Pottstown's Goodwill Fire Company, William Young, had been there all night, but he was more than willing to take charge at the scene. The body recovery operation would be a massive job for one person to handle by himself. Strasser decided, rightly, that Young would need an assistant.

Dr J.R,Evans, who was the Burger of nearby Malvern, had journeyed to Boyertown as soon as he heard about the fire to look for his sister-in-law and niece, who he thankfully found alive and unharmed. Having found them,  he decided to hang around at the scene to see if he could be of any assistance. He may have silently harbored some brief second thoughts about doing so when he became the second in command of the search for bodies.

Strasser quickly outlined his plan to the two men, made sure they understood it, and very likely told them to come find him at what would become the incident command post (Though that term wouldn't actually be coined for decades) at the Union House if they needed anything.

When they started removing bodies at about 8 AM, Strasser knew it would be slow going, but he actually didn't know the half of it...body recovery would end up taking far longer then he originally thought.

On top of that, before the recovery efforts began he had decreed that no one would be allowed to view the bodies until all had been recovered and numbered, a necessary step to avoid confusion and errors, but a step also meant that no one could look for their missing loved ones until all of the bodies had been recovered. This was a decision that was about to create days worth of frustration for both the citizens of Boyertown and Strasser himself, and their very first taste of that frustration would be the length of time it took for crews to get the bodies to morgues.

Word that the body removal was about to begin spread through the huge crowd like ripples from a pebble tossed into a pond, groups turning to people behind and to the side, saying 'They're getting ready to take them out!!' in an an audible wave of sound that had an equally humongous wave of people suddenly crowding against the ropes set up by the State Police officers. They were about to find out the same thing that Strasser and his crew were finding out hands-on.

 The bodies were packed so tightly together in the doorway that removing them at all...much less in a manner that kept them intact...was a job that required both backbreaking effort and near-surgical delicacy, so even with several men working at a time, it took ten or so minutes to get each body free of the pile-up, record it, and lower it down the front stairway. Despite their best efforts, by noon, only forty-five bodies had been removed from the building, most very likely from the area surrounding the main entrance.

The entrance to the main stairway, at the front of the building, leading up to the second floor auditorium. The ladder was used as a slide to bring bodies down from the second floor. Somewhere between a dozen and as many as thirty people who had tumbled down these steps were removed by bystanders and early-arriving firefighters in the initial stages of the fire. Dozens of bodies were stacked up in the doorway at the top of the steps, with close to a hundred more bodies piled up behind them. The door at the top of the stairway was a double door, but only one side was open, and everyone tried to get through that single three foot wide opening at once, stacking on top of each other like cord wood, and jamming themselves in the doorway

Young and Evans were running into other frustrations as well. Even with the slow going, they still  ran out of space at Brumbach's, so the other two morgues had to be opened, and the fire lines adjusted accordingly.  It may have been at this point that one of them asked Strasser to find a larger venue to act as a morgue, and the town's Superintendent of Schools was called on to open up Washington Street School if the need arose. He told them that he would do so if needed and it absolutely would be needed, sooner than they thought.

At some point during the morning they also ran out of blankets to cover the bodies, and asked the women of Boyertown of it was possible they could find more.  The ladies of the town responded in force, heading for home, then returning with arm-fulls of them. If only every problem they ran into could be fixed that quickly.

One of the biggest problems Young and Evans ran into was the citizens themselves. Crowds of people desperate to find their lost relatives tried to view the bodies as they were removed, then tried to follow the bodies into whichever of the three morgues they were taken to, only to be politely but firmly turned away by the State Troopers. Inevitably, a general murmuring of 'They're not letting us search for our relatives' began rumbling through the crowd, but they wouldn't be the State Cops' only or biggest problem by far on this long, long day. Young and Evans only had body recovery to worry about...the State Cops had the entire scene to secure.

The State Police Officer  in charge anticipated what was coming, and called Reading to request back-up, probably not long after body recover began, and I have a feeling a couple more trolley-loads of 'Staties' were rolling through the countryside towards Boyertown before many people finished breakfast. They wouldn't arrive a minute too soon.

News of the fire had spread through the area with amazing speed (Especially for an era that existed long before the omnipresent electronic communications we have today) and every train that rolled into Boyertown brought with it dozens of what Emergency Service Personnel today refer to as 'Looky-Loos'.  Overly curious citizens who's only purpose in being there was to see the incident, often (Usually, in fact) getting in the way while they were at it.

There were actually cases of a smiling dad, with his kid on his shoulders, pointing out nuances and details of the scene while standing right next to grief-stricken relatives with tears streaming down their cheeks. While it wasn't actually mentioned in any sources I found, I can just about bet that this was both what the State Police detachment's C.O. was thinking of when he called for reinforcements and when they came in real handy.  I can just about bet that the State Troopers made an effort to separate the 'Looky-loos' from the actual relatives, and push them back further behind the fire lines.

Some of them, however, were determined to view the ruins close up and personal.

One far less than stellar individual, along with his girlfriend, actually managed to slip past the State Cops and climb half way up the Washington street fire escape before a Trooper spotted him. Said Trooper, very likely using that loudly spat 'SIR!!!!' that cops have used for well over a century, told him to come back down NOW!!. Our intrepid 'Looky-Loo' tried to pass himself off as a member of the Press (They had a bit more freedom of movement on scenes back then than they do today) but that fell through when he couldn't produce any credentials. Next he tried arguing with the cop, something that generally never works out well for the arguer. The Troopers ended up forcefully marching him back to the fire line, the only time that actually had to be done during the entire incident.

Meanwhile, Young, Dr Evans, and their crew were tired, hungry, half-frozen, and far more than a little frustrated.  They took a well deserved break around noon to regroup, warm up, and probably get some lunch and while they were at it, they also ran into some good luck. Reading and Philadelphia Railway Superintendent W. H. Keffer arrived in Boyertown shortly after noon, took one look at the scene, and asked who was in charge. He was directed to the hotel, where he approached Strasser and asked if his men could be of assistance. Strasser, probably thanking him effusively, told him they needed bodies, shovels, and pry-bars, and within an hour a couple of dozen men bearing the requested tools arrived on scene.

More ladders were pulled off of Friendship's truck, and both sides of the building were laddered (Specifically at the front corners of both the Washington Street and alley sides of the building), and the new arrivals, under Evans and Young's supervision went to work. More boards were found and laid on the ladders so they could be used as slides, and bodies began coming down in a near assembly line-like operation, at the rate of one every two or three minutes.

A body being removed from the second floor in the later part of the body recovery process, using a board placed on a ladder as a slide. From looking at the building and background, the ladder was likely sat at a window on the alley side of the building at the building's front corner....that looks like it could be the end of building's front porch at the lower left of the frame. The Alley side fire escape would be out of frame above and to the right..

Washington Street School, which was used as a morgue. This building's long gone, having been replaced by a new high school building in 1921.

Work progressed so quickly that Washington Street School was opened up by about two PM, and several class rooms were designated as morgue rooms, the desks pushed together so they could be used as tables to support the bodies, and wagons were used to transport the bodies enmasse, ten or more at a time...seventy-two bodies would ultimately be taken to the school. Another crew...probably the bunch who'd been removing bodies all morning...was sent to the morgue to receive the bodies and get them inside.This is where those looking for missing loved ones ran into even more frustration, when members of the press were issued special passes that allowed them access to the morgues while they were forbidden from entering.

Denying the townspeople access, while unpopular, was necessary, because to allow them access to the bodies before all were removed would have created bedlam, and made errors in identification all but inevitable. By 3 PM over a hundred bodies had been removed, and the count increased to 162 by 4:30...I believe it was at 166 when, with the sun heading down, the search for bodies was terminated for the night.

Now all of these bodies had to be embalmed, and there was no way Boyertown's three undertakers could handle that many bodies on their own, but Strasser had foreseen this problem as well. Early in the day he called several nearby communities and requested undertakers to help with this task, and fifty-five responded from as far away as Philadelphia, coming by trolley and train. They would work on that grim task all night, probably using kerosene lanterns for light.

With the exception of the undertakers, and the State Police officers guarding the morgues, everyone else went home for the night, many of them sleeping like the oft-noted log as sheer exhaustion dragged them under, others lying awake as they wondered about the fates of their loved ones and friends. For those who managed some sleep, the sun probably peeked above the eastern horizon far too soon...it wasn't over yet by a long shot.

I have a feeling that as soon as it was light enough to do so, a final search was made of the ruins to ensure all of the victims had been found. Those looking for missing loved ones were sure they'd be allowed to view the bodies as soon as this final search was complete, but they would again be turned away, adding to their growing frustration.

.Strasser wanted to get the coroners inquest over and done with as quickly as possible, so he had already picked a jury of six men to serve, and this is what caused the already frustrated family members even more heart-ache. According to State Law, the members of the Coroner's Jury had to view the bodies before they had been disturbed in any way other than embalming. This, of course, meant that those searching for the missing weren't allowed to view the bodies until the members of the jury did so, which also meant that they had to wait another hour or two for the jurors to walk from one morgue to the other and view the bodies.

The morgues finally opened to the public at 10:30 AM, but the identification of bodies was slow going. Almost ALL of the bodies were burned beyond any hope of identification, meaning that they had to be I.D.ed through the clothing and personal effects found with them, and considering the intensity and duration of the fire, most of those personal effects were also damaged.

On top of that, Strasser ordered that only four people at a time be allowed in each morgue (Again, necessary to stave off confusion) and required a signed permit from each person before they were allowed to enter, but even with these precautions there was still a good bit of confusion, with at least one child's body claimed by three sets of bereaved parents before the issue was straightened out and the body claimed by the proper family.

Then, as if things weren't bad enough, the phone call...the one that almost caused a riot... came in either late morning or very early afternoon.

Strasser wouldn't allow bodies to be released to families with out a death certificate personally signed by him, so if they ran out of signed forms, they couldn't release any bodies.  And, as efficient as he had been, Strasser apparently hadn't pre-signed that many...or maybe any...death certificates. Maybe that was what he was doing when the phone rang, and he found himself talking to the Clerk of the Circuit Court in Reading, who was, likely not all that pleasantly, asking him just where the heck he was, because he was supposed to be testifying at a murder trial.

Strasser tried to get excused, but the Court Clerk wouldn't go for it.  Arguing with the Clerk of Court in that type of situation is essentially arguing with the Judge by proxy, and arguing with a judge never works out well for the arguer, so Strasser made sure his deputy coroner was straight on not releasing bodies in his absence, cranked his car up, and headed for Reading. And, while bodies were still being identified, they were not being released (Note here...some sources say that citizens weren't even allowed in the buildings, so identification may have actually come to a standstill). Whichever it may have been, the citizens of Boyertown who had been waiting to either identify or claim their dead were getting pissed, to the point that some feared that violence would break out.

After he testified, Strasser found a payphone (Yes, they existed in 1908) and called Smith (The Deputy coroner) at the hotel, to ask how things were going, and got an ear-full of the fact that the good citizens of Boyertown were getting ready to rumble...seriously, both he and the State Police were scared a riot would break out. Strasser quickly gave Deputy Coroner Smith permission to sign Death Certificates in his absence and a riot was avoided as the identifications continued. Then, after hanging up, Strasser buttonholed the District Attorney to plead his case. There was the possibility he'd be called back to the stand for redirect, but he was needed even more in Boyertown...he was released to return to the scene, and arrived back in Boyertown sometime near 6 PM.

Then, sometime after Strasser left Reading and while he was enroute back to Boyertown, they ran out of death certificate forms, and more had to be delivered. Of course, they didn't find this out while Strasser was still in Reading, when they could have just put a couple of boxes of them in his car. Deputy Coroner Smith called Reading and ordered some more, likely telling them they needed them yesterday. More Death Certificates were delivered by 9 PM, probably by trolley, though the exact method wasn't specified. Strasser worked well into the wee-hours filling out and signing death certificates.

Because of the day's setbacks and shortages, only twenty five bodies had been claimed by their families, and moved to their homes for wakes by the time the morgue at the school closed at about 5 PM...when the sun started down...because of lack of lights in the school building. (My opinion here...while they had risked using kerosene lanterns to embalm the bodies, several people felt they had dodged a bullet, and didn't want to risk it a second night...nothing would be even more horrible than burning the bodies a second time.)

Strasser also required that any bodies that were claimed by families living in another community be accompanied by a receipt listing the deceased's identification, and this frustrated the out-of-town undertakers to no end, as they weren't used to such rigid requirements, but, again, Strasser stressed that these procedures were absolutely required to ensure that the right body was transported to the right location (And, equally importantly, that the wrong body wasn't transported and buried at the wrong location...something that did happen one time. More about that in 'Notes').

The heart-breaking task of searching for, identifying, and claiming bodies went on for almost a week...families would continue looking for their missing and trying to identify bodies until Saturday, Jan 18th, and twenty-five bodies would never be identified.

Even worse, three entire families (Those of Morris Anderson, Charles Nuss, and Robert Taggert ) were totally wiped out in the fire, and no one even realized that they were missing for several days. The Taggert family is a good example. The Taggerts lived on a farm several miles outside of Boyertown, Several neighbors realized they had heard their livestock mooing and calling plaintively for a couple of days, and went to the Taggerts' farm to find the animals near starvation and the home empty...it was only then that they realized that all of them must have died in the fire.

The same type of scenereo likely played out with the Anderson's and the Nusses, when their neighbors realized they hadn't seen them at all since the night of the fire.

Once all of the bodies were embalmed and identifications began, Boyertown's three undertakers were all but overwhelmed...they had plenty of help during the embalming of bodies, but once that was finished, the out of town undertakers headed for home. It was up to the locals (One of whom, Harrison Houck, not only lost his son in the fire, but had to prepare the boy's body for burial) to arrange funerals...this in itself was a week or more long process that I'l hit in more detail in 'Notes'

Meanwhile, Kohler wasn't just sitting on his laurels and watching everyone else...he was busy seeing to it that the injured were all cared for, that medical supplies were available, and that everyone had what they needed to try to survive one of the worst ordeals that any small town has ever endured.  While he was at it (We'll take a look at all of this in 'Notes', too) he was arranging for a relief fund for those who had lost husbands and fathers (Remember, back then the man of the house was almost always the primary provider for the family).

And, as funerals were arranged, and relief efforts were launched, Strasser had a task of his own ahead of him...determining just who was responsible for almost 170 deaths (Several of the injured were still hanging on almost a week after the fire).  Subpoenas were issued and served to fifty witnesses, among them Harry Fletcher, Dr Rhoads, and Harriet Monroe. Strasser was determined he was going to make someone pay for the carnage...but first, he already had a problem with the investigation, and that problem was evidence disappearing.

We're not talking small evidence, either, because both of the tanks for the stereopticon disappeared, only to be returned, altered, a day later, and all of this happened before Strasser even knew it had happened.

On Wednesday the 15th, while Strasser was in Reading testifying at the murder trial and everyone else was at the morgues, a motion-picture house operator from nearby Quakerstown by the name of W.R. Javens showed up at the burned out Rhoads Building and presented a pass, allegedly signed by Strasser,  allowing him to remove the tanks from the building. The troopers guarding the building didn't question it's authenticity in the least, so Havens removed the two tanks (Both were about three feet tall and six or so inches in diameter, so he probably had to make two trips into the building) and carried them to the Boyertown railroad station, where he had them shipped to Quakertown. OH...when the tanks were removed, the regulators and hose outlets were attached...keep this fact in mind.

The very next day both tanks were returned to Boyertown, addressed to a guy named 'R.E.Ransom', Ransom, of course, was Javens, who picked up the tanks and took them back to the Rhoads Building, sans regulators and hose outlets.

And there they sat until Monday the 20th...one week after the fire... when someone asked Strasser why the tanks had been removed from the building, and why the regulators had been removed from the tanks. While his actual reaction has been lost to history, I have a feeling he went slam off, especially when told that the tanks had been returned without the regulators. That in itself was a huge problem, investigation-wise, because without the regulators they couldn't determine if Fisher had turned the tanks off before he bailed out of the building, which he claimed he had indeed done

Strasser quickly assigned a plainclothes State Police detective to the case, also assigning Deputy Coroner Smith to assist him. He then gave them his car, and sent them to Quakertown to find Javens, who they didn't find because he was on a train enroute to Boyertown at about the same time they left for Quakertown.  And as Smith and the detective strolled around Quakertown, inquiring about Javens' whereabouts, Javens sauntered into the Union House Hotel, found Strasser, and confessed to moving the tanks (And forging the note allowing him to remove the tanks as well).

That would have been an interesting conversation to hear, but it's also lost to history...what we do know is that Strasser had Javens arrested for larceny. He appeared at a hearing before a magistrate, where he absolutely refused to state a reason for taking and returning the tanks, or speculate on what may have happened to the regulators. The magistrate held him over for a second hearing with a bail of 600 dollars...$16,500 in 2019 dollars...which he couldn't come up with. He was taken to the Reading Jail and incarcerated. His attorney bailed him out the next day, and he was told to be at a second hearing on January 27th.

At that second hearing Javens had apparently come up with a reason for taking the things...he claimed that he had taken the tanks for entertainment purposes, figuring that advertising them as the cause of the fire would draw crowds, who he could charge a nickel or so a head to see them. Then, he continued, he thought about his decision, and realized that the instant that he advertised the tanks, he'd very likely get in serious trouble, so he decided to return them. He had no knowledge what so ever, according to him at any rate, as to what happened to the regulators.  He had also apparently decided that bringing them back would negate any trouble he may have been in.

The magistrate told him he was bound over for trial on the single charge of larceny (Anyone pulling a stunt like this today would be charged with, at the minimum, Interfering With An Investigation, Obstructing Justice, and Grand Theft, not to mention Forgery and Uttering). He was tried nine months later, in October, and had the charges dismissed for lack of evidence, despite the fact that he actually admitted to the crime...something else that likely wouldn't have happened today

Javens reasoning for taking the tanks made some twisted sort of sense...lowlifes existed 111 years ago, too...except for one thing. The regulators. The missing regulators caused more than a little suspicion, leading many people to wonder if, just maybe, he and Fisher might have been friends, and if he might have removed the regulators  to cover up the fact that Fisher did not cut the tanks off. If that was what he was trying to do, it worked.

The Coroners Inquest started the day after Javens' second hearing...January 28th...and when the issue of the tanks and the regulators was brought up, Deputy Coroner Smith could only say that the tanks had been in the building and intact, with regulators in place and no sign of an explosion the day after the fire...he hadn't had the expertise necessary to determine if the tanks were off or on. He also testified that when the tanks were returned they had been tampered with, with the regulators missing, and therefore they couldn't determine whether Fisher had turned the tanks off before he escaped or not.

This sort of left Fisher in Limbo, and frustrated Strasser to no end, but the tanks were far from the only subject covered at the inquest, which as I noted above kicked off on January 28th...two weeks and one day after the fire. Things were about to get interesting...

At Two PM on that cold Tuesday afternoon the six jurors along with all fifty witnesses climbed the steps to the second floor of Keystone's fire house and took seats, with Strasser presiding over the inquest, and attorney William Young questioning witnesses. Six State troopers guarded the firehouse to keep any unauthorized persons from entering, as it was closed to the public, and questioning of the witnesses began. The inquest would recess late Tuesday evening and continue on Wednesday morning.

The great majority of the witnesses were people who had either survived the fire or who had been on scene immediately after it started, and more than a few of them were still wearing either bandages or scars from burns.

These were all eye-witnesses, so they must have given accurate testimony as to exactly what happened, right? Errr...wrong. Ask any investigator and they'll tell you that eyewitnesses are often their least accurate sources of information. They likely weren't more than three witnesses in when it became obvious that no one, apparently, saw the exact same thing. The only thing all of the witnesses agreed on was the suddenness of the fire, just how fast it spread throughout the second floor of the Rhoads building, and just how little time people had to escape.

These witnesses weren't the stars of the show, anyway...there were four witnesses whose testimony Strasser was particularly anxious to hear...Harriet Monroe, Dr Rhoads, Harry Fisher, and State Factory Inspector Harry Bechtel. Unfortunately, one of them wouldn't  be there...but in a way you couldn't blame her. That witness was Harriet Monroe.

She had been in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania...seventy miles from Boyertown...when the Operas House burned, and had the soul-shattering experience of glancing at a newspaper the next day and seeing a headline proclaiming 'FIRE IN THE OPERA HOUSE IN BOYERTOWN'. Then she scrambled to get a ticket for what had to have felt like one of the longest train rides in recorded history to arrive in Boyertown and find that her sister was dead and that she'd lost her business.

She stayed in Boyertown just long enough to identify her sister's body and wire her brother-in-law, Edwin Earhart, about the fire and his sister's death. and then, traumatized and shaken to the core, caught a train for her home town of Washington, DC

Her sister's body was so badly burned that they identified it by a mileage book found on her person, and a ring found on her finger...her husband did not claim the body, and her brother made the decision to have her buried at Boyertown's Fairview Cemetery.

Then Harriet Monroe got a letter...essentially a subpoena...requesting her presence in Boyertown for the inquest, a request that she declined through her attorney in a letter citing her health. In this same letter she reiterated the fact that Fisher was well trained, and his handling of the gas tanks had nothing to do with the fire, but unbeknownst to her, Charles Sheridan...her regular Stereopticon operator...did come to Boyertown to testify, and he brought her letter telling him to lie about Fisher's level of training with him, reading it to the jury along with Della Mayers letter voicing her concerns about Fisher's lack of skill. Those two letters would carry far more weight than her letter to Strasser proclaiming her innocence.

Harry Fisher's testimony was equally damaging when he stated that he had only taken charge of the stereopticon on January 6th, and had only operated it four times before the fatal performance, all of them rehearsals. Interestingly, a suggestion was made that a stereopticon be procured and set up in the room for a demonstration of just how they worked and were operated. Keystone's Chief Gehris, likely envisioning his station going the same way as the Rhoads Building, and knowing that there was only the single stairway for an exit, said something to the effect of 'Not only 'No', but hell no' to the request. The demonstration did take place, but at Strasser's room at the Union House (That's right...in a hotel full of people?!?). Thankfully, it came off without a hitch.

Next on the hot seat was Dr Rhoads, but very few people were really interested in causing him any grief. Dr Rhoads was pushing 70 and had served his community well both as a physician and as a business owner and politician.. At his age he still made house calls (Several of the injured from the fire, in fact, were under his care), he had served as Boyertown's Berger and he'd founded the town's premiere bank...The Farmer's bank...which had been housed on the first floor of The Rhoads Building.

He had also endured a rough year kicked off by the temporary closing of the bank in July of '07, caused by a fraudulent 130,000 dollar loan (That'd be a 3.5 million dollar fraud today, folks), a set-back the bank was just recovering from in January of 1908 after the bank's board contributed $30,000 (815.5 grand today) of their own money to restore the bank's cash flow.

He was also devastated by the fire...and not just because of the physical loss of the building. The loss of the building was probably the very least of his worries as it was fully insured. Remember Boyertown was a small town, so it's a good bet that he knew the majority of the people who died in the fire, and had probably known them for all of their lives. Many of them, in fact, had probably been his patients. But devastated as he was, he wasn't going to take the blame for the fire. The only suggestion made by the State Factory Inspector (Closest thing Pennsylvania had to a State Fire Marshal back in that era), made several years earlier, had been the addition of fire escapes, a suggestion that he followed.

He reminded the Jury that, while he owned the building, the Opera House was actually leased by Edgar Mauger. He was also asked why the theater was kerosene-lit when gas lines ran right past the building, and in reply he stated that he had been planning to electrify the building as soon as Boyertown got electricity town-wide, and saw no need to go to the expense of installing gas lights for only a year or two.

The State Factory Inspector for the area...a gent named Harry Bechtel...testified that he had inspected the building, noted the high window sills and other safety defects, and advised Dr Rhoads that they needed to be corrected, a claim that Dr Rhoads politely but firmly denied ever happening.

 The Jury ultimately refused to assign Dr Rhoads any blame, despite his alleged knowledge of the building's safety deficiencies and lack of action to correct them. In clearing Dr Roads of blame, they stated that Edgar Mauger, as manager of the Opera House, bore more responsibility for seeing that the improvements were made.

Bechtel, during his testimony, had very neatly taken the heat off of Dr Rhoads and dropped it smack dab on top of himself both by his attitude and, more importantly, by pissing the jury (And all of the town) slam off. How'd he do that?

Simple...he insulted the town, which is a sure-fire way to alienate yourself from the entire populace of a small town.

Bechtel had testified that he inspected the Opera House, advised Dr Rhoads of the changes that needed to be made, and when asked if he had followed up on these requested changes, he said that he had not. He was grilled relentlessly on this oversight, finally stating (You can imagine the tone of voice this was said in real easily) 'I have far more important places to go than a measly little town like Boyertown...' 

The Jury had heard enough.

At 9 PM on Wednesday the 29th, State Troopers escorted the jury to the library at The Union House where they would deliberate for about four hours. At one AM on Thursday the 30th, the library doors opened and the members of the jury walked out and rendered their verdict, stating that the primary causes of the great loss of life were Harriet Monroe's hiring of an inexperienced and incompetent stereopticon operator, and Harry Bechtel's lax enforcement of existing safety regulations. They declined to blame either Dr Rhoads or Edgar Mauger, and likewise declined to blame Harry Fisher, basically noting that he couldn't help being dropped into a job that he really hadn't been trained to do.

They also noted that the fire safety laws  and building codes in Pennsylvania were woefully inadequate, and asked that they be beefed up.

They then concluded by asking that District Attorney Harry Schaeffer swear out warrants for manslaughter for both Ms Monroe and Harry Becthel.

D.A. Schaeffer promised swift action against the accused and justice for the deceased and bereaved.

Problem is, that didn't happen. And we can, at least partially, blame those inadequate (In actuality, nearly nonexistent) fire codes. And the flu.

D.A. Shaeffer caught the flu at about the same time the verdict was announced and found himself sick in bed for a solid week.  During that same week, Harry Becthel apologized for his remarks about Boyertown (Blaming those same remarks on the flu, which he apparently had during the inquest. I can't help but wonder if he passed it on the the D.A.). Then, after making that apology, his presence was demanded in the State Capitol of Harrisburg, where his boss chewed him out and suspended him for a week without pay for making those same remarks. (But not for failing to enforce the fire codes. Why? You may ask. Keep reading.).

That week in bed apparently gave Schaeffer time to reflect on just how good a case he had...or didn't have...and whether he could get a conviction because, once he was back on his feet, he announced that he would not be pressing charges against Harriet Monroe until he had evidence of actual criminal negligence. And while he was at it, he wouldn't be pressing charges against Harry Becthel either.

When pressed for his reasoning he noted that 'There is a great deal of difference between carelessness and Criminal Negligence. As for his reasoning on letting Becthel off the hook, he did so because the existing laws didn't apply.

SO no warrants were ever sworn out against anyone. There was, according to Shaeffer, no evidence that Ms Monroe was actually guilty of negligence (Though her letter to Charles Sheriden asking him to lie about Fisher's qualifications sure made it seem as if she thought she was in the wrong.)

As for his decision not to charge Becthel, it turned out that the factory inspector could suggest all of the safety improvements he wanted, but he couldn't demand anything other than exterior fire escapes (Which the Rhoads Building had). Unfortunately, the laws of Pennsylvania didn't really address what interior features a building could and should (And equally importantly, couldn't and shouldn't) have, which meant that he couldn't be found negligent for not enforcing the laws regarding the Rhoads Building's safety defects because there were no laws to enforce. Those laws simply didn't exist at the time.

The residents of Boyertown weren't happy, either with Ms Monroe and Harry Becthel getting off the hook, or the fact that Dr Rhoads and Edgar Mauger were found not to be responsible for the building's safety flaws.  Of course, again, if they had been found responsible, the laws really didn't address it other than maybe finding them negligent.

As unpopular as the decision to not swear out any warrants was, it was,...legally, at any rate...the correct one. There was no case. All a trial would have done was draw out the community's pain for months, only to have the defendants found not guilty due to a lack of evidence, if the charges weren't just dismissed with prejudice because, well, no laws were actually broken.

Strasser probably breathed a huge sigh of relief when the verdict was finally read...his part in the ordeal was over, though I have to wonder just how easy it would have been to put such a horrific incident out of his mind. He dotted the last few 'i's and crossed the last 't's on the morning of January 30th and climbed in his car, aiming it back towards Reading for the final time. He noted some time later that his one regret was that no one had to face any consequences for the disaster.

Boyertown's residents could finally begin picking up the pieces, but it would be a long, painful process. Around eight percent of the town's population died in the fire, so everyone in town knew someone...and most multiple people...who had died.

Fifteen children and teens were orphaned. Twenty-one lost mothers, and fourteen lost fathers. Several families lost multiple children.

Washington Street School wouldn't reopen until February 3rd, after a thorough cleaning, giving the kids an unexpected three weeks off in January, but it was a vacation they neither wanted...given the reason they got it...or were able to enjoy. Too many of them had lost parents and siblings, and too many of their friends had died in the fire. When the school reopened there were twenty-six empty desks. Nearly a full quarter of the high school's 40 students...nine of them...were among the dead. Three teachers also died in the fire, leaving empty desks at the front of the classrooms as well. The one class that lost no students lost it's teacher.

Several business owners died in the fire, as well as several valued employees. Dr Rhoads was one of the business owners who lost employees, as the head teller of The Farmer's Bank was among those who died.

Charles Spatz...editor of The Burke County Democrat, Boyertown's paper...was badly injured when he bailed out of the window, and was bed-ridden for several weeks. On top of that, his Linotype operator was also one of the fire's victims, but neither of these issues caused the paper to cease operation for more than a day or so. Charles Spatz's sixteen year old son Carl returned home from boarding school and took over for him...If Carl Spatz's name sounds familiar, BTW, there's a good reason. We'll take a closer look at both him and his dad (And how a sixteen year old kid all but single-handedly published the paper) in Notes.

The building's gutted, roofless shell loomed over Downtown Boyertown until the end of January, acting as a very visible and very unwelcome reminder of the tragedy. Dr Rhoads promised to rebuild the building within a year or so, but most importantly for the town's morale, he wasted no time in having the burned out shell of the fire building torn down and removed.

Demolition of the building's shell was well under way by the end of January, and ground was broken for it's replacement in the spring. The new building was similar in appearance to the one it replaced, but a bit larger. Construction-wise it bore no resemblance what-so-ever to the old Rhoads building. The new building was built of brick and concrete, probably with a steel (Or in that era, possibly iron) framework, and featured offices on the second floor rather than a performance venue.

The row houses on Washington Street, at the rear of the building, were also repaired and rebuilt.

The building is still in use today, though the offices have been converted to apartments. A plaque memorializing the fire victims is displayed on the wall at the northeast corner of the building, on Washington Street.

The new Rhoads Building shortly after it opened in 1909. Note the electrical service drop above the third window back from the front of the building. This building was constructed of concrete with a steel or possibly iron frame. The new building did not include an auditorium...the second and third floors instead contained offices. The row houses were also rebuilt. The fourth floor and attic were removed, making them three story houses, and a new attic and roof were installed. The interiors were also, I'm sure, completely remodeled. These houses also still stand today.

The new Rhodes building as it appears today. The offices that once occupied the second and third floors were converted to apartments decades ago,

Looking up Washington Street towards Philadelphia Ave today, with the row houses in the foreground. After the fire, the fire-gutted forth floor was removed from the row houses, and they were rebuilt as three story houses. They are still in use...greatly modernized...as residences today.

Plaque dedicated to the fire's victims, located on the Washington Street side of the building

As time progressed and the tragedy slipped further and further into the past, Boyertown grieved in relative isolation and silence. Understandably, many of those who were either survivors of the fire or had lost loved ones absolutely refused to speak of it again. The impression I get is that anniversaries of the fire are remembered in far more detail now than they were in the years and decades immediately following it, but this is also understandable. It wasn't exactly an event to be celebrated. Most likely, yearly memorial services...both private and church sponsored... were held for those lost in the fire, but I have a feeling there were few, if any, of those photo-and-fact-loaded anniversary-of-the-disaster articles that are a feature of any past disaster today.

This, of course caused the fire to slip into the twilight of history. No one's left who remembered it first hand,...the last person alive when the fire occurred passed away over a decade ago. Even an infant born in that long ago year would be 111 years old now.

That doesn't mean the fire's been forgotten...far from it, in fact. Thanks to organizations such as The Boyertown Historical Society, the Rhoads Opera House Fire is, arguably, better known in it's own community than either the Richmond, Brooklyn, or Iroquois Theater fires are in their home cities.

  Around the time of the fire's 100th anniversary there were lectures and historic walking tours highlighting important sites as well as the requisite anniversary articles in newspapers such as The Reading Eagle. There was even an hour long documentary about the fire on a local TV station.

 I know that remembrance walk was held for at least a couple of years on either side of the centennial  anniversary, and detailed articles are still published annually. The Boyertown Historic Society has amassed a wealth of data on the fire. I'm pretty sure that the great majority of the four thousand or so people who currently call Boyertown home could tell you the significance of the building at East Philadelphia Ave and Washington Street without even missing a beat.

But this is understandable, too. To the people living in Boyertown and environs there-of today, the fire was an interesting if tragic historic event that sets their small town apart from the rest.

To the people who called Boyertown 'Home' in 1908, however, it was a soul-shattering tragedy that devastated their small town.

<***>Notes, Links, And Stuff<***>

I got lucky with this one on several different levels.

First, despite the 111 year gap between the fire and this blog post, there is actually a good bit of info on-line about the fire. True, many of the articles, most of which were written around the fire's Centennial Anniversary, rehash the exact same information...but not all. Thanks to stories being passed down, remembered, and preserved over the years there are also some unique takes on the fire from the viewpoint of people whose lives it impacted. I had enough good, solid information just from articles I'd found to write a pretty decent post (And, in fact was well on my way to doing just that when...)

...I ran up on bit of luck #2. I'd seen reference to a pair of books penned by Mary Jane Schneider and illustrated by Julia Longacre several times as I researched the fire...but couldn't find the books themselves, either in print or in Google Books, where you can usually find at least some of the text of just about every tome ever written. Then the Olen Valley Community Library decided to sell some of it's books. Guess which books...several copies, of them, in fact...were among them  And, this being the second decade of the 21st Century, they listed them in that grandest of all online department stores, Amazon. And I ran across the link as I did yet another article search. The library's cast-offs were about to become my research-treasure (And, in fact, the source of a good three quarters of my research info).

The books are The Boyertown Opera House Fire Volume I: Midwinter Mourning and The Boyertown Opera House Fire Volume II: A Town In Tragedy and they give a very concise, well written and informative look at not only the fire and it's aftermath, but life in Boyertown in the first decade of the last century, as well as a detailed biography of all 170 of the fire's victims. The books were on sale for eight bucks and change apiece. Even my tiny budget could handle that...I didn't even have to think about it before I clicked 'Add To Cart'.

Then they arrived three days earlier than promised to...Really, I should be used to this by now...refute a good bit of what I'd already written. This, however, was no big deal either....I'd much rather rewrite part of, or even all, of a post and have it as accurate as possible than go in unnecessarily blind, and be called out on errors that I had no excuse for making.

Then I ran up on Bit Of Luck #3, when I gave the Boyertown Historical Society a call, and was put in touch with a lady named Lindsay Dierolf, who is the collection manager for the Boyertown Area Historical Society. She and I had a long, informative, and very pleasant phone conversation about All Things Opera House that cleared up several things I'd been wondering about...the exchanges of ideas continued with a couple of Emails, and all of the above left me more then impressed with both Ms Dierolf and her organization. Really, every small town should have both a Historical society as dedicated to preserving their town's past as this crew is, with members as knowledgeable and dedicated as she is.

Of course this still doesn't mean I had all of the info I would have liked. As happens in almost all fire-related historical research, I found very little about the actual fire ground operations, and the little info I did find tended to be contradictory. One news article, for example, says that firefighters were playing streams of water on the fire within five minutes of the alarm sounding, but reading Ms Schneider's book quickly refuted that one, an opinion that was strengthened further by my conversation with Ms Dierolf. 

So, as almost always occurs in these posts, I had to do a bit...ok, a good bit...OK, a Lot...of speculating as to what happened when the bells finally started ringing in Keystone and Friendship's bell towers. Interestingly enough, as I read Ms Schneider's excellent books, I realized that some of the stories told by people who either escaped or assisted with rescues was a bit contradictory as well (And this is to be expected when you have a few dozen people relating events...again, eyewitnesses are often the worst witnesses).

 For this reason I added my own interpretation of what happened on the second floor of The Rhoads Building on that cold January evening 111 years back. Of course we'll never know exactly what happened that night, and I can only hope I came close and did it...and the 170 victims...justice. And, as always, I hope I made it interesting and informative while I was at it.

Any errors, of course, are mine and mine alone, and if anyone sees anything that needs changing or fixing, please feel free to put it in the comments. As are all of my posts, this one is a constant work in progress.

<***>

To kick the Notes off, lets talk Fire Safety Reform in the early 20th century.

The Iroquois Theater Fire just over four years earlier had brought the problem of fire safety, and more importantly, the lack there of into sharp focus nation-wide and there was a huge and forceful push to  to improve fire safety...in large theaters located in large and medium sized cities.

Unfortunately, hundreds of small venues like the Opera House fell through the cracks because, well, they weren't really theaters as defined by the authorities pushing for reform. They were auditoriums. The owners and managers of these smaller venues...if they even gave fire safety a moment's thought in the first place...agreed with this definition. Not having to make expensive changes to meet new codes meant not having to spend money (A mindset that, unfortunately, can still be found regularly today.)

After all, their thoughts likely continued (Again, if they even gave it any thought at all), there was no way they could kill 600 people in their auditorium!! The place doesn't even hold that many people!

But...as Boyertown was about to find out graphically and horribly...they could kill nearly two hundred people with little or no effort at all. And there were hundreds, if not thousands of small, second floor auditoriums just like The Rhoads Opera House throughout the country, all of them in small rural towns, with all of them...Every. Single. One...boasting most if not all of the fire hazards that killed 169 people on the second floor of the Rhoads Building on that cold January 13th 111 years back.

And, also like the Rhoads Building, very few laws, ordinances, or regulations actually covered these venues. State building inspectors, whatever their actual title may have been in their respective states, could suggest improvements to the buildings they inspected until they were blue in the face, but the problem was, they couldn't require theses changes be made. And as long as they couldn't, say, threaten to close down the auditorium if it didn't comply (Because there were no laws to comply with) another disaster of the same magnitude as the Opera House was just waiting to happen.

While small towns nationwide took a hard look at their auditoriums (And every small town had, if you include school auditoriums, and churches, two or three), many states didn't go as far as actually legislating changes in the laws, and among the few that did pass laws governing fire safety in small 'Places of Public Assembly' (As such venues were, and are, technically known), not a single one passed laws  that were as stringent as those that were passed in Pennsylvania.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was shocked into taking serious action.

The changes started even before laws were passed. Every town in P.A., of any size, up to and including Philadelphia, took a long, hard look at pretty much every type of occupancy where a large number of people could gather, and it was a good thing they did...it was discovered that one school district had a couple of ancient buildings that had no fire escapes, and they they hadn't held a fire drill in four years. Bet that changed real quick.

Owners of movie houses...especially those converted from other types of buildings...were told to add fire escapes, with appropriate exits leading to them, or close. Except that they still couldn't force them to close, because the law still didn't require dedicated fire exits leading to the fire escapes.

Fire escapes were already required on buildings of three or more floors at the time, but we just saw graphically just how well that worked out when no other safety features...such as dedicated, well lit, well marked fire exits...were mandatory. Which means that the  State Factory inspectors could demand that the fire escapes be added, but when it came down to legal brass tacks, they still couldn't demand that appropriately sized, marked, and lighted exit doors be installed along with the fire escapes. That being the case, there was a very real...and very valid...fear that things would quickly go back to the brutally unsafe way they were once the hysteria over the Opera House fire died down.

Of course, fire exits were far from the only fire hazard that was present in just about every early-20th-Century auditorium and movie house. The Opera House was very likely not the only auditorium still lit by kerosene lamps in 1908. Highly flammable muslin curtains were pretty much the small-venue-industry-standard. And the list goes on.

Fire Marshalls throughout Pa. were more than aware of the lack of fire safety that predominated in that era, and laws had been suggested even before the Opera House fire. Philadelphia's fire marshal had taken one look at the projectors of the day...both movie and slide...and declared them disasters waiting to happen. He was in the process of trying to get some laws governing the things through the legislature  when The Opera House fire occurred, and he went on record immediately afterward stating that the fire had been an  'Absolutely unnecessary tragedy'.

The fire apparently kicked the State legislature into action, and two laws slid through the legislative process like they were riding on greased runners, passing in 1909. One bill, Act 206A, dealt specifically with movie houses and slide shows, requiring all such equipment to be permanently installed  in enclosed, fire resistant enclosures remote from the audience seating. That alone would have very likely prevented the Opera House fire from becoming the multiple-fatality tragedy that it was. If it hadn't, the bill that birthed 206A...Act 233...likely would have not only prevented the deaths...it would have probably prevented the fire from starting in the first place.

This bill, which dealt with any Hall, auditorium, or theater of two or more floors and/or theaters incorporating a gallery, when passed, pretty much took every hazard that The Rhoads Building had incorporated, and specifically forbade them. The law didn't allow the use of any combustible or explosive oil for lighting (Pretty much requiring either gas or, if it was available, electricity for lighting.). Fire escape exits had to be appropriately sized, marked with proper signage, and properly lighted. Act 233 also stated that these exits must be kept unobstructed and in good repair, and the signage must be repainted yearly.

Second floor venues had to have more than one exit, and the main stairway had to have a landing at the exit leading to the stairway. That landing had to measure at least 4 ft by 4 ft.

Failure to comply with either law brought a 500 dollar fine (That'd be just north of $14,000 today) along with the possibility of imprisonment...up to 6 months for violating Act 233, up to 90 days for 206A.

There were still some shortfalls. Operators of projectors and stereopticons weren't required to be licensed, nor were the theaters themselves, and possibly most importantly, theses new laws didn't set any maximum seating restrictions (Occupancy restrictions are, today, among the most basic of fire codes.)

But the new laws did improve things...at least in Pennsylvania. But sadly, not everywhere.

Much like the laws governing school buses at grade crossings decades later, it was like pulling teeth to get every state to pass adequate fire codes, and often when they were passed, they were either too specific...the language, for example, would cover theaters, but not schools...or were written so that older buildings were grandfathered (One of the saddest fire disasters in the U.S...the Our Lady Of The Angels School Fire in Chicago...occurred for just this reason. And that was in 1958, fifty years after The Rhoads Opera House, so the battle to get proper fire codes passed went right on to the middle of the last century.)

It goes without saying that new laws in other states were almost always passed after a huge loss of life brought the problem to the fore front and the public demanded action to fix the problem. New laws may have improved things immensely in P.A., but the rest of the country still had lessons to learn...the first decade of the twentieth century had at least three catastrophic loss of life fires, with fifty or more deaths, and the first half of the century gave us nearly two dozen. Drop the number of deaths down to the general cut-off for 'Catastrophic loss of life...twenty-five or more dearths...and the number surges well beyond that mark..

Those lessons were, sadly, learned through a lot of sorrow and tears.

<***>

The main doors to the auditorium were locked. Or closed. and opened inward (And they did indeed open inward). And that was the absolute deciding factor in the large loss of life. You read that in just about every account of the fire (Along with the fact that one of the ushers apparently locked the doors to keep people from going in and out so he could watch the play). One problem. Didn't happen that way. It couldn't have. Too many people made it out for both of the the main exit doors to have been closed.

Say what???' You ask. Read on say I.

Lets do some math real quick.

There were 312 tickets sold to the Monday Night (Jan 13th) performance, then there were around 60 members of the cast and crew, for a total of 372 people in the building when the curtain rose for the first act . Possibly as many as ten left early for one reason or the other...not feeling well, child wanted to go home, didn't feel safe, what have you...giving us 362 inside when the hose came loose, the hissing startled everyone, and the kerosene lamp got kicked over.

As many as a dozen left as soon as the hissing started, going out the main entrance. We're down to 350. Possibly as many as 70 made it down the back stairs (Several people from the front row or two went out that way as well as the cast and crew.) Down to 280 people still inside.

Another 50-60 made it down the fire escapes. I'll be optimistic and say that 60 made it out that way. We're down to 220 people still inside the second floor.

Of that 220, 166 never made it out (Three of those who did make it out would die later.). 

That leaves 54 people still on the second floor who did make it out before someone tripped and fell stepping down to that first stairway step, initiating the massive pile-up of bodies that quickly blocked the exit, rendering it useless.

 If both doors had been closed, those fifty-four people would have never gotten them open because they opened inwards. The crowd pressing against them would have jammed both doors (Rather than just one of them, as actually did happen) closed just as effectively as a dead bolt. And those 54 people would have been trapped, making the death toll 220 instead of 170.

The accounts given by several of those who escaped even confirmed that one of the doors was open...people stating that they made it through the door while their wife/child/sibling/friend was torn away from them and trapped by the crowd.

So I think it happened real close to the way I wrote it. The usher scrambled as soon as the fire started, managing to get one side of the main entrance opened before the panic hit. He was probably trying to open the other side when the panicked mob hit the exit like a human tidal wave. 

Had he had another fifteen seconds or so...long enough to unbolt the other door and throw it open...there would have been a six foot wide exit available. I'm not going to pretend that everyone would have gotten out. There would have still been 220 people trying to get through one six foot wide opening with the second floor already well involved in fire. There would have still been lives lost. It would, in fact, probably still have been catastrophic. But everyone would at least had more of a chance.

<***>

It would be nice to say that the identification and claiming of bodies went off without a single hitch but, as awesome a job as Berks County Coroner Strasser did in organizing the identification and release of bodies, there were still errors, despite the strict protocols he put in place to prevent them.

There were a few problems at the morgues themselves...in one case, as I noted in the body of the post, three families claimed the same child's body, and that had to be worked out. It wouldn't surprise me if something similar happened a couple of times. But that wasn't the biggie...these issues were resolved before the bodies were actually removed from the morgue and buried.

While there weren't as many big problems...AKA the wrong body being claimed by a family...as there had been at the Iroquois Theater Fire five years earlier, there was one misidentified body claimed by...and buried by...the wrong family, and that one almost caused a scandal.

The Case Of The Mystery Woman started simply...and sadly...enough, with Morris and Rebecca Diamond looking for the body of their 14 year old daughter Rosa on the Wednesday after the fire, a search that was unsuccessful.

Fearing that they may not be able to find her because of the condition of the bodies, Morris set back out on Thursday morning, with a detailed list and description, compiled by his wife, of exactly what she was wearing, including jewelry. (No mother should ever have to compile such a list for such a reason.)  Included on this list was a description of a specific...and apparently fairly unusual... kind of safety pin that Rebecca Diamond had used on her daughter's undergarments.

Morris likely searched all of the morgues, and didn't make it to the Washington Street School until Thursday afternoon. He began checking the pouches containing personal effects, as he likely had at the other morgues. This time, however, he hadn't been searching long when he ran up on the exact kind of safety pin described by his wife in one of the pouches.

One problem. There was no jewelry with it. The jewelry, he surmised, could have been lost in the shuffle of body recovery. The Safety Pin, however, was attached to the undergarments...or at least the remains of them... that had been with what he assumed was his daughter's body. He immediately informed the officials in charge of the morgue that he'd found his daughter Rosa, then went to the Union House, where he met with Strasser and had a death certificate signed.

Once he claimed his daughter's body, he made arrangements for it to be shipped to Philadelphia by train, to be buried in a family plot. The casket was met by grieving, sobbing relatives, and interment took place in Mt Carmel Cemetery, on Philly's Frankfort Ave after a funeral service at the home of Rosa's grandmother.

Sad as this was, the family could now grieve properly, and begin to move on, if you can move on from such a horrible occurrence. Unfortunately, it wasn't over yet...things were about to get even sadder.

At just about the same time Morris Diamond was removing his daughter's body...or what he thought was his daughter's body...from the schoolhouse there was a body whose personal effects included pieces of a men's suit and a pocket watch. This body...body #162...went unclaimed despite this rather ornate and unique watch.

And then one of the people who had helped recover bodies told Strasser that 'Body #162 appeared to be that of a woman.

A woman who apparently had been dressed in men's clothing. Today that would hardly be worth a mention. In 1908, however, it was the stuff of deep scandal. The very thought that one of the ladies of the town would be skulking around dressed as a man was just ...well it just couldn't be! Except that, apparently, it was.

The first theory was that the Mystery Woman was possibly one of the cast in costume. This, at first glance, was a logical assumption, and better yet, one that would quickly derail any scandalous rumors that might get started. One problem, though.. The play was set in the mid 16th century. None of the cast would have been costumed in a then-modern men's suit. And just to be sure of this, several cast members were asked if, for some reason, such a costume had been worn by one of their female cast mates. The answer, of course, was an unequivocal 'no'.

Th Media sniffed out the story even as the 'Cast Member Theory' withered on the vine. The members of the Fourth Estate haven't changed their basic operating concept...Scandal Means Good Stories And Good Stories Mean More Profit, be it papers sold in 1908 or modern (Monetized) YouTube views today...in 111 years. Needless to say, the papers...both local and regional...grabbed the story and ran with it like a ball-carrier heading for the end zone. The story was reported extensively state-wide, with the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph  taking the very unusual action for that era of printing a paragraph about the 'Mystery Woman' in red ink.

Curiosity seekers (And I got the very definite impression that a lot of them were not Boyertown residents) showed up at the school to get a glimpse of the body, a situation that began to get out of hand quickly. Strasser took care of that problem by moving the body to a separate room, and placing it under lock, key, and guard.

Meanwhile, the residents of Boyertown engaged in another ancient small town past time...gossip and speculation, As in just who could this mystery woman be, and just why was she dressed in men's clothing.

 Theories ranged from a woman spying on her possibly unfaithful husband to a gang getting ready to rob the Farmer's Bank, and sightings, just before the fire, of women possibly dressed as men were suddenly remembered and reported in some detail. None of these reported sightings amounted to anything concrete.

 The Possible Criminal Gang theory...bolstered by a telegram from Philadelphia PD to Strasser detailing the arrest of a man in women's clothing who told detectives he'd been in Boyertown the day before the fire...took hold and grew roots. If the Mystery Woman was an outsider that meant that she wasn't a Boyertown resident, which meant that the townspeople could breathe a collective sigh of relief...at least now no scandal could be connected to their community.

But this still left an unsolved mystery...just who was she???

Those working the morgue reported that jewelry had been recovered along with the Mystery Woman's body, with a description of said jewelry provided to several media outlets (Spell that, of course, 'Newspapers) and the Philadelphia Inquirer sent a photographer, who took pictures of the items that were published in the Saturday January 18th edition of the paper.

Those items were a bracelet, a pair of diamond ear rings, and a signet ring with the initial 'R' on it.

The Diamonds, who were in Philly, saw this picture and felt their blood run cold...that signet ring belonged to their daughter. In fact, all of the jewelry belonged to Rosa.

Someone needed to go back to Boyertown and look  at the jewelry to confirm that it was, in fact, Rosa's but the Diamonds were absolutely sure it was (And equally sure that she had not been wearing a men's suit).  It wouldn't surprise me at all if Morris Diamond just wasn't up to the trip. The events of the last few days had taken his heart and used a sledge hammer on it.

As a member of Keystone Fire company, he'd arrived at the scene early in, tried to get in to find Rosa only to be forced out by the heat and fire. He had to be restrained by friends and fellow fire fighters when he tried to go in a second time, only to be told 'She's gone Morris...we saw her burning...' by one of the survivors who escaped (OK...that would have ended me right there. It just...would have.) then he had to search the morgues for her body. He was, very likely, just done. The man's heart was already shattered into tiny pieces at that point.

Rosa's cousin, Harry Englander,who had given her the signet ring, made the trip and quickly identified the ring as Rosa's, an identification he confirmed to both Strasser and a reporter from the Reading Eagle. Then (Even as Strasser was likely already scrambling to fix the mix-up) Englander sent a telegram to The Diamonds in Philly. They caught an afternoon train back to Boyertown, met with Strasser, and informed him that the 'Mystery Woman' was all but definitely their Rosa, and that she had gone to the play wearing her own clothes... not a men's suit. She had in fact taken a young handicapped girl who she was friends with to the play, and the two had arrived early...before the doors opened...and gone to a nearby store, where they had munched on candy while awaiting the 7:30 PM door-opening time. SO several people had seen her dressed in her own clothes.

Strasser was more than convinced, concluding that the volunteers working the morgue had managed to mix up the clothing while bringing the bodies to the morgue...something the numbered bodies and personal possession pouches was supposed to prevent. All it would've taken for a mis-identification to occur, however, was for one pouch to be misnumbered, or for some scraps of clothing/possessions to find their way into the wrong pouch, which is likely exactly what happened.  Given the conditions they were working under, he was lucky that this was the only major foul-up that occurred.

The mix-up had been discovered, but Strasser still had a problem. If this was Rosa Diamond's body, that meant that the wrong body had been buried in Philadelphia, and they had no idea who it was. The Diamonds assured Strasser that the other body would be returned to Boyertown post-haste (And then had to wait for him to go to Reading on business before Rosa's body was released to them). A likely mini-blizzard of phone calls and/or telegrams were exchanged to get the other body disinterred and on a train, hopefully in time for it to be buried with the other 24 unidentified bodies on Sunday the 19th...which didn't happen.

The unidentified body was disinterred and loaded on a train to Boyertown on Monday the 20th, a week to the day after the fire. The same morning that the Diamonds boarded a train to Philadelphia, with Rosa's finally positively identified body in the baggage car. The two trains likely passed each other somewhere along the way.

The actual mystery woman...she never was identified...was finally buried along with the rest of the unidentified dead from the fire, a day after their mass interment, making the total number of unidentified bodies twenty-five.

<***>

A quick disclaimer of sorts as well as the 'clencher' of the above note...the Mystery Woman/Rosa Diamond was the only mix-up that we know about for sure (Spell that The Only One That Was Caught). For the most part the clothing used to identify bodies actually consisted of burned scraps of clothing, probably found under the body where the fire couldn't reach it, so it's not unlikely that clothing got mixed up more than once. It's also likely that there were cases where (As was the apparent but unstated case here) all of the items found with the body weren't examined by the person searching for a missing loved one. Had Morris Diamond seen that signet ring he would have at least had reason to look at 'The Mystery Woman's' body more closely. But he didn't see the signet ring, of course, because he gave that body only a quick, cursory glance. After all, Rosa's body was originally thought to be male because of the remains of the men's suit.

 He had claimed the wrong body as Rosa's by the time the Mystery Woman was found to have, in fact, been a woman. Only that men's suit and the fact that the body was, somehow, determined to be female caused Strasser to delve more deeply into the body's I.D.

Keep in mind that, even though that men's suit was why Mr Diamond didn't even look at 'The Mystery Woman's' body when he was searching for Rosa, it was only because that same men's suit created a media frenzy that Rosa's body was actually finally identified, claimed by the Diamond's, and buried.

Now...lets change the scenereo a bit. What if the set of clothing that was incorrectly placed with Rosa's body had been a young girl's dress instead of a men's suit....but, obviously not  Rosa's dress.   And Morris Diamond had examined that body before examining the body he wrongly claimed as his daughters.. He would have still assumed his daughter's body was some other unfortunate young girl because the dress (Or remnants of a dress) displayed with it wasn't his daughter's, which means his examination of the body would have stopped before he saw the signet ring. And he would have still moved on, found that safety pin, assumed that Rosa's jewelry had been lost during recovery efforts, and claimed the wrong body as his daughter's.

It's a good bet that little or no further examination would have been done. The Diamonds, as they actually did, would have thought they had Rosa'a body. And those looking at Rosa's body wouldn't have been able to identify the clothing, or even if they did recognize the dress, they wouldn't have recognized the jewelry, and would have, very possibly, just assumed two young girls may have been wearing the same type dress.

The body would have still been an unidentified body. This, though, wouldn't have been an unidentified body that had generated a huge news story all it's own...this would have just been a little girl's unidentified body. One among twenty-five unidentified bodies.

 No photographer would have been sent get pictures of the jewelry. The description of the signet ring would have simply been published along with the description of the body it was found with, and these descriptions would be included in the descriptions of the other 24 unidentified bodies, probably in a side-bar to one of the main articles about the fire.

The Diamonds would have thought for sure that they had buried the correct body, and would have no reason to read the descriptions of unidentified bodies or the possessions found with them, There would be no sensationalized 'Mystery Woman' article for them to read, and therefore no photos of the signet ring for them to see.

Rosa's body would have been buried with the unidentified while her parents would have buried the wrong body, thinking they had buried Rosa. Of course, that very scenereo could have actually happened a couple of times. And, without the modern forms of forensic identification, such as DNA, that we enjoy today, no one would have been the wiser.

Not only could this have happened, it wouldn't surprise me if it did happen. At least in those cases (If they did indeed happen) the grieving families got a body that they thought was that of their loved one, and didn't have to suffer the heart wrenching ordeal of finding out that they had buried the wrong body, then having to go through the ordeal of searching for the right body...which may have also been misidentified, claimed and buried, which meant they would never find it...all over again.

That being said, Strasser still did an amazing job, especially given the conditions he had to deal with, and the technology he had to work with.

'Wait a minute Rob!' I can hear a couple of people 'What about the safety pin...."

And  here's our clencher...apparently, the exact same kind of  safety pin was found with both Rosa'a body and  the body that Mr Diamond initially claimed. Sometimes that item that you think is so unique that it's a fail-safe way of identifying someone, well, isn't. This, BTW, still can happen today, but the modern forensics I mentioned above make it into an aggravation rather than a major error.

<***>

There were 120 funerals, including a mass funeral and interment for the unidentified dead, in the week after the fire, with just shy of 150 of the victims being buried in Boyertown's Fairview Cemetery. While this was a tragic figure...normally a town the size of Boyertown wouldn't see that many funerals over the course of a decade...it was also a logistics nightmare. 

Boyertown was the home of Boyertown Burial Casket Company, one of the largest and best known casket manufacturers in the nation at the time, and they were suddenly working overtime to produce the number of caskets needed to bury the fire victims (Even as the plant employees mourned several of their fellow workers, who died in the fire). I have a feeling that, with a few exceptions, these were not overly fancy caskets....plain, only slightly adorned black caskets for adults, and small white caskets for children. 

It goes without saying that the employees and owners of the company would have not been at all unhappy if this sudden surge in business had never happened.

Then there were graves. The town actually had to call for help to get all of the graves dug and prepared in time for their respective funeral services, with as many as fifty to sixty extra workers in town at one point, and they still couldn't keep up with the demand for finished graves. Several times, mourners had to wait while workers finished digging and preparing their loved one's grave, and on a couple of occasions funerals were actually postponed. 

Extra hearses had to be ordered. Boyertown was also home to the Boyertown Carriage Works, a builder of horse drawn hearses at the time, and they provided a couple of stock models  ('Demonstrators' are not a new concept at all) for use by the town's undertakers, but this still  wasn't enough, and out of town undertakers loaned hearses to the local undertakers, which, like the mutual aid fire rigs from Pottstown, were very likely transported to Boyertown by train.

Clergymen were all but literally running form service to service, and a few interments...generally those of bodies so badly burned and in such horrible shape that they needed to be buried as soon as possible...took place without any clergy present at all. In the same vein, a couple of services took place without any family present (In both of theses type cases, a memorial service was generally held for the deceased in the days after the interment.)

And yes...as well as being sad and tragic, this week of funerals was just as hectic and morbidly frenetic as it seems.

<***>

One of the saddest facets of the fire was the number of children who died, and the number of families that lost multiple children and multiple family members:

Three entire families were wiped out

Twenty-six children under the age of 18 died.

Thirteen families lost multiple children. 

Seven children died along with both parents. 

Eight married couples died. 

Five sets of cousins died in the fire...in one case, that of the Moyer family, six cousins (Three of them sisters) died.

Fifteen children and teens were orphaned.

Twenty one children lost their mothers.

Fourteen lost their dads.

Words don't exist to describe just how horrible those numbers are.

<***>

Preparing the grave for and burying the unidentified dead was another task in and of itself, and was handled by the Citizens Relief Committee, a group we'll take a closer look at shortly. 

The grave was 48 by 36 feet, divided into separate graves by nine inch brick walls, and was ready by Sunday morning.  Local lodges provided pallbearers. Undertakers from four near-by towns as well as thirteen hearses were procured and the service was meticulously planned down to the last detail. 

Newspapers had reported on the preparations and schedule for the service, which was to start at 9 AM, and the public responded...to the tune of fifteen thousand spectators, who very literally filled the streets. Extra trains were run to transport the seven thousand people who traveled to Boyertown by train, while trolleys were running every twenty minutes to bring the three thousand people who traveled to Boyertown from Reading. The other five thousand came in via every other form of vehicle in existence during that era, including a few early automobiles.

This crowd had lined Washington Street and Philadelphia Ave from the school to Fairview Cemetery by well before 9 AM, when the service was to start. The undertakers likely spent a good portion of  early Sunday morning readying the bodies and getting them in the twenty-four caskets (The twenty-fifth body, wrongly identified as Rosa Diamond, was still in Philadelphia).

 The pallbearers...wearing white gloves, marched into the school house two by two, and brought out the first thirteen caskets, loading them into then hearses, which pulled away from the school in intervals, leaving 100 feet between each hearse. They then proceeded down Washington Street to Philadelphia Ave, past the ruins of the Rhoads Building, to the cemetery. The first hearse turned into the gate (Ironically, passing a poster advertising a lecture at the Opera House) at 9:45. The first casket was lowered into the grave very shortly there-after. 

 There would have to be two services, with thirteen (Five males and eight females) buried during the first service. The five males were interred first, followed by the eight females.The Reverend Melvin Kurtz began the service as the 7th casket was lowered into the grave, using the same quick but solemn and dignified service for each.

The first service had ended at 10:30 AM, and the hearses had left the cemetery to return to the school as soon as the first thirteen unidentified bodies were at the grave side...the remaining eleven bodies were being loaded as the service took place.

The second procession of eleven hearses, all carrying female bodies, arrived at the cemetery at about eleven AM, with the second service a solemn repeat of the first. The service concluded around noon...but the funerals weren't over for the day. There would be twelve more funerals, of known victims, before the day was through. 

Interestingly, the people of Boyertown...all of whom to the last man, woman, and child, turned out for the funeral of the unidentified...were pretty sure who was buried in that grave. The bodies were just in such a condition, with so few if any identifiable personal effects remaining, that there was no way to determine which body was which person. A memorial would later be erected with the names of all of the unidentified engraved there-on.

The memorial erected at Fairview Cemetery at the grave of the unidentified dead from the fire.

<***>

There can't be anything much worse than having your small town turned into a temporary tourist attraction during the darkest, saddest week in it's history, but that's exactly what happened to Boyertown on the day the Unidentified Dead were buried. 

The relief committee, along with Kohler, anticipated the influx of out of towners (Though I'm not sure they expected fifteen thousand of them.) and had forty-five State Troopers brought in to handle the crowds. Those forty-five troopers had a long, long day.

Keep in mind that Boyertown's population at the time was right around 2200, so the town was wall to wall packed with seven times it's normal population. Restaurants at the hotels ran out of food, a lunch wagon (The fore-runner of today's food trucks) was brought in, and ran out of food just as quickly, and there were so many people on the streets that town officials were actually scared that the streets built over old mines on the town's south end would collapse under the weight of all the people standing and walking on them. My bet is that one of the big jobs that Pa. State P.D. had was keeping people off of those particular streets. And another bet was that those efforts were met with people giving them every excuse and reason in the world as to why they should be allowed to stay on those same streets...the same breed of frustration that police officers encounter while doing crowd control to this very day.

I also have a feeling that the good citizens of Boyertown were just about done with strangers showing up and acting as if their town was a carnival or circus placed there for their entertainment. Thankfully the crowd realized the solemness of the funeral services required dignified and respectful behavior...I hate to think of how such a crowd would behave today...and behaved appropriately. I also have a feeling that had they not done so, things might have gotten a little ugly before the day was over...again, my bet is that the people of Boyertown were done with people coming in as tourists and using their tragedy as entertainment. I have a huge level of respect for all of Boyertown's citizens of that era for the amount of restraint they exhibited, and for the fact that they treated these people who'd invaded their town and their grief with the utmost of hospitality and respect.

I also have a feeling that Boyertown's 2200 or so citizens were not at all sad to see the last of these people board a train and leave them to their grief as the day drew to a close.

<***>

Danial Kohler was the man of the hour on a whole slew of different levels. He got all but literally yanked out of bed to have just about all of the ancillary command functions of one of the worst disasters in U.S. history dumped in his lap...while searching for his son...and dived right in with both feet. In doing so he exhibited an amazing talent for both organization and multi-tasking.

Lets take a look at just the first forty-eight hours or so of the incident to see just what Dan Kohler accomplished.

With-in thirty minutes of the fire's start, Kohler already had extra resources...Fire, police, and medical...on the way. Before sunrise the next morning he'd begun organizing a Relief Committee to assist the survivors of the fire, and by lunch-time on Tuesday he had met with the town's undertakers, asking them what they needed, and had extra resources to assist in burying Boyertown's dead...both extra hearses and extra hands to dig graves...lined up.

He was doing this while answering innumerable questions and taking an equal number of requests from the citizens and business owners of Boyertown, answering multiple phone calls from the mayors of every large city in Pennsylvania offering assistance, and handling the Press...and trust me on this, that was no easy task as the members of The Forth Estate were every bit as aggressive, if not a bit more so, in reporting a story and trying to get interviews back then as they are today

While all of this was going on, he also appointed twelve members of the community to the relief committee, and set up guide lines for what they needed to do, and how to best do it.

He did all of this, BTW, on Tuesday, the day after the fire. He was helped along by the very nature of the citizens of Boyertown, and indeed, the entire region. The Pennsylvania Dutch were and are renowned for having a penchant for order and organization that has served them well over the years, and made the formidable task of bringing order to the tragedy-stricken Chaos that was Boyertown on 1-14-08...the day after the fire...a little less difficult.

Oh...keep in mind that he did all of this with none of the technology that we take for granted today, with the exception of the telephone...and the telephone system as it existed in 1908 was a far, far different and more primitive beast that the system we enjoy today.

The madness continued on Wednesday...the day kicked off with a meeting of the relief committee, then continued with more offers of assistance,  dealing with reporters, who literally mobbed him on a couple of occasions, (and as busy as he was with everything else, he still took time to answer all of their questions, as asinine as a few of them inevitably were). While answering the questions posed to him by the Press, he also managed to defuse several untrue stories (Fake News is not a new thing) 

Getting the Relief Committee organized and to work in just over twenty four hours was his best accomplishment, IMHO.

Lets take a closer look at this crew's accomplishments...

<***>

Even as he was getting Mutual Aid enroute to Boyertown, and trying to make order out of the horror that was Monday night, Dan Kohler already knew what he needed to do. They were going to need a committee to both assist with the 'math' of the tragedy...How many were dead, missing, and injured as well as just who was missing, deceased, or injured...as well as providing the injured and the families of the deceased with what ever assistance they needed in both the short term and the long term.  

Getting such a committee off the ground and functioning efficiently in just 24 hours under the conditions he was faced with would be a herculean task today  In the technology-less first decade of the Twentieth Century, it was just a couple of clicks shy of impossible. But it still got done, and done well.

By early Wednesday morning, Kohler had chosen and anointed the twelve members of the Relief committee. By 9 AM or so, the committee was in Keystone Fire Company's second floor meeting room (Which also served as town hall) hammering out the details of what needed to be done and how to do it . Before this meeting even started, a proclamation both announcing the formation and purpose of the committee and asking for willing hands to assist in digging graves had been posted.

Proper burial of the dead was listed as the top priority, and one of the first tasks the committee took on was, as noted above, determining who was dead, alive, and missing, and just how much assistance each family needed in burying their dead.

They planned to visit every household in Boyertown over the course of the day...an enormous undertaking even in a town as small as Boyertown. To pull this off, they first divided Boyertown into four quadrants, using the railroad tracks as the north-south boundary, and Philadelphia Ave as the East-West boundary. All twelve members of the committee were issued badges (White with black letters) and divided into four three man teams.

They were, of course, trying to determine who was missing, and what assistance each family needed in burying their dead, but their rounds very quickly took on multiple tasks. They began running up on orphaned children and families who'd lost their primary bread-winner, as well as injured citizens who were in need of bandages and medicine (Not to mention medical help).

A printer was tasked with printing up applications for assistance, and these were distributed...along with, in some cases, emergency food supplies... to the families who required aid. One local drugstore was ordered to provide whatever medical supplies and medicines any family needed without charge, the items to be paid for through funds collected by the Relief Committee. Though it wasn't stated, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Relief Committee was also tasked with delivering these medical supplies.

In order to inform the citizens of Boyertown just how they planned to tackle the daunting tasks ahead of them, the Relief Committee hosted a public meeting at 8 PM on Tuesday night at Friendship Hook and Ladder's fire house. Fifty citizens...all male...showed up for the meeting, to be told that the  committee had compiled a list of the missing, that identification of the bodies was progressing slowly, and that a plot for burial of the unidentified dead, however many there might be, had been purchased, and gravediggers had been procured.  They also very likely outlined their plans for assisting the orphaned and widowed, and hosted the inevitable question and answer session.

After the meeting, the committee walked to Keystones station, and trudged up to the second floor to continue their work. The finally adjourned around midnight, went to Heritage House to present the list of missing persons to Strasser, and finally headed for home.

One item that I'm sure was discussed at the public meeting was money. An over-riding need that the relief committee, and Kohler, had to deal with was raising funds to both distribute to those in need, and fund the projects...such as the burial of the unidentified dead..that the committee was taking on.  As with every other task they took on, they kicked butt, and made it look easy. They got $2500...that'd be just shy of $69,500 today...from the Philadelphia Relief Committee alone. All told the Relief Committee managed to raise around $21,000...just over $584,500 in 2019 dollars...before all was said and done.

The donations were posted against expenses of $7,718 ($214,838 today) leaving the relief committee $13,282 to work with (Just shy of $370,000 today).

Among the charitable work funded by these donations was a $5.00 to $8.00 ($140 to $224 in 2019 dollars) weekly donation to several families for a period of three months...until they could get back on their feet and homes could be found for the orphaned children.

 The committee also set aside 7900 dollars...just shy of $220,000 in 2029 dollars...to set up trust funds  for the fifty kids who lost one or both parents, with each child receiving from $100 to $300 ($2785 to $8350 today) distributed in monthly payments to them until they were 21 years old.

The relief committee's attention to detail was exhaustive...not to mention exhausting. They met three times daily during the first week after the fire, once a day for the next month after that. The committee stayed active for at least a year, meeting once a week until a year or so after the fire.

<***>

Boyertown had a very progressive newspaper, headed by a very capable, knowledgeable, and business savvy editor, in 1908. The Burks County Democrat, with around 400 subscribers and a unsubscribed circulation of probably about three times that, was widely read and well respected in 1908. Charles Spatz had been editor of the paper for 24 years, and had a very definite finger on the county's pulse. Not only did he run the paper itself with an expertise born of experience, he also wrote a weekly column filled with wit, humor, and pretty on-the-mark analysis of everything from town goings-on to local and national politics (The paper's name pretty much indicates the political leanings of the area, paper, and editor during the early part of the 20th Century).

The paper itself was pretty state-of-the-art, especially for a small town weekly in the early Twentieth Century, but the fire made a strafing run on the staff. Charles Spatz was first painfully burned when the kerosene from the foot light tank lit off, then more seriously injured when he jumped from the window. His Linotype operator, Robert LaPish, died in the fire. And all of his other employees either lost relatives or were completely traumatized. On top of that they lost a couple of their more popular columnists to the fire. It appeared that the paper would miss reporting on what should have been it's biggest...and saddest...story. 

And that is exactly what would have happened had Charles Spatz not had some very capable back-up in the form of his sixteen year old son, Carl Spatz (If you're a history buff...especially a WW II History Buff...that name should ring a bell, BTW.). A quick phone call to Perioman Academy, in nearby Pennsburg, had Carl on the next available train, and by late on the day after the fire he had checked on his dad (Widely but inaccurately reported to be on death's door) and taken over at the paper, having to perform just about every job himself while he was at it.

Oh he had some help, including a couple of former employees as well as some friends of his dad, one of whom was Lewis Fegley, who had lost his daughter LuLu in the fire. He also had his dad to go to for advice (And to assist with writing stories) but the big stuff...gathering stories, handling business inquiries, rough setting the layout, setting up type and forms, and actually running the Linotype machine...he had to handle himself. 

As you read this, keep in mind that this was a sixteen year old kid doing all of this.

The paper went out weekly, on Saturdays, and that Saturday The Burk County Democrat landed on door steps and in news stands right on schedule. Oh there were typos, and print out of alignment, and much of the reporting on the fire was borrowed from larger papers, and the paper was a mere shadow of it's usual self,  but it was out, on time, and even included some commentary from it's editor, most particularly a disclaimer...or maybe a gentle warning...praising his son for tackling the task, admitting that the paper wasn't as sharp or professional looking as normal, and then basically stating that if young Carl hadn't abandoned his studies mid-year to come home and take care of business, there wouldn't have been any paper, so they should give the kid a break.

In that same first post-fire issue, Charles Spatz noted that he planned to be back at work with-in the next week, likely also planning to send Carl back to school and his studies. Neither happened, though. Charles Spatz wouldn't return to work until March, though he continued to write commentary for each weekly issue. 

Carl never returned to school, but continued working for the paper until he turned 18. (Anyone figured out why his name should be familiar yet?)

As for the Burke County Democrat, it stayed in business until 1930 (Likely, as with many businesses in the early 1930s, killed off by the Great Depression). While there are still several weekly papers in circulation in Berks County today, none of them are descended from the Democrat.

<***>

Again...anyone figured out just why Carl Spatz's name should be familiar? Anyone? Anyone?

OK, here's why. In 1918 Carl Spatz was admitted to to the United States Military Academy at West Point . Sometime after his appointment he witnessed a flying demonstration by Glenn Curtis, an event that began an interest in Aviation that just wouldn't quit.

He graduated ((97th out of 107) in 1915, was assigned to the Signal Corps Aviation School in 1915, and began training as a pilot in 1916.

He must have picked up on his lessons pretty quickly, and pretty well, because when he was sent 'Over There' in 1917, he shot down three enemy aircraft. In only three weeks.

Carl Spatz was assigned to several air bases...as commanding officer...during the period between wars, and earned successive promotions until entering WW II with the Army Air Corps, soon to be renamed the Army Air Forces. The promotions...both temporary and permanent...kept coming until he was given command of the 8th Air Force (Arguably the best known and most prestigious of the numbered Air Forces serving in Europe. This is the crew that carried out the Strategic Bombing campaign against Germany. An...er...obscure young actor by the name of James Stewart commanded an 8th Air Force bombing group). Spatz apparently did a pretty good job, because ultimately he was given command of all American Army Air Force air operations in the European Theater of War.

Then when the War in Europe ended in victory for the Allies, he attended the two surrender ceremonies (To the Allies on May 7th, 1945, and the the Soviets on May 8th). After attending the two surrender ceremonies, he was immediately shipped to the Pacific Theater, He was given command of U.S. Strategic Air Force operations in the Pacific Theater, where he headed up the short but intense strategic bombing campaign against Japan (Including the Atomic Bomb strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

When Japan surrendered, he was present at the surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay, on September 2, 1945, making him the only officer of his rank present at all three surrender ceremonies.

He continued his career after the war, was given command of the Army Air Forces in 1946, after General 'Hap' Arnold's retirement, and when the Army Air Force became the separate U.S. Air Force in 1947, he was became the very first Chief of Staff of that branch of the military.

Carl Spaatz (Nope, I didn't spell it wrong...more on that in a bit) retired from the Air Force in 1948, and worked for Time Magazine as Military Affairs Editor until 1961. He also served on The Committee of Senior Advisors to The Air Force Chief Of Staff from 1952 until his death in 1974, was Chairman of the Civil Air Patrol's National Board from 1948 until 1959, and served on the committee to choose the site for the U.S. Air Force Academy.

After his death in 1974, he was buried with Full Military Honors at the Air Force Academy cemetery in Colorado Springs.

Not bad for a small town kid!

<***>

Somehow during his life, Carl Spatz's name picked up an extra 'A' to become Carl Spaatz.  Ok, it was because of his wife and kids. They were tired of the family name being mispronounced.

By 1937 Carl Spatz had been married for awhile, a marriage that had also given him three very lovely daughters. The four women in his life were very displeased with the fact that many...likely most...people pronounced their name as if it rhymed with 'cats' rather than the correct pronunciation, rhyming with 'shots'.

As anyone with wives, daughters, nieces, girlfriends, etc can tell you, having displeased women in your life can make said life very uncomfortable on occasion. 

Carl had four at least occasionally displeased women in his life, all of them at least occasionally quad-teaming him, saying 'Honey/Daddy  fix it!'

So he did.

 In 1937, Carl Spatz had the family surname legally changed to 'Spaatz'

And that's why Carl Spaatz has that extras 'A' in his last name.

<***>

Charles Spatz wasn't the only person connected to the Rhoads Opera House Fire to be related to an aviation legend.

The others were Harriet Monroe and Della Mayers. Who were they related to?

Hint...Harriet's middle name was 'Earhart'.

Figured it out yet?

If you guessed that Harriet Monroe was somehow related to mysteriously missing aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, you were right on the money. 

But Ms Monroe wasn't just some distant relative. One of her brothers was Amelia Earhart's dad, making her the famed aviatrix's' paternal aunt.

I could find very little about just how close...or distant...the relationship between Harriet Monroe, Della Mayers, and their famous niece was, but the fact that they were, in fact, Aunt and Niece is a interesting little tidbit all on it's own.

<***>

While the press can be an absolute pain to deal with for upper echelon fire officers...this is why most departments of any size at all today have Public Information Officers (PIOs) whose job is dealing with them...they can also come in handy, so it's a good idea to keep them on your side. Pottstown's firefighters found this out first-hand when they became the unwilling subjects of an image-killing rumor as the coverage of the Opera House Fire ramped up.

These guys had been awakened from a dead sleep, loaded onto a train, taken to Boyertown, dealt with a broken steamer, then spent most of a night and day fighting a loosing battle with the fire, and assisting with body recovery at the most horribly tragic incident any of them would ever respond to.

And what do they get for their troubles? Rumors, and not the good kind. Two days after the fire, with many of the guys still dragging from both the physical and psychological abuse they had willingly subjected themselves to, someone possibly buttonholed one of them, and said, inevitably snidely, 'I heard the only work you guys did in Boyertown the other night was lifting whisky glasses to your mouth...word is all of you guys were drunk the whole time you were there...' Or worse, Pottstown's mayor possibly requested an audience with Goodwill's chief, Thomas Cook, requesting an explanation of these same rumors. 

Needless to say, the guys were booth horrified and beyond offended. Chief Cook immediately knocked out a letter to The Pottstown Daily News emphatically refuting the rumors, and my bet is he hand-delivered the letter to the Daily News' offices both to save time and to ensure that they actually received it..

The Daily News published the letter the next day, putting it prominently front and center on the editorial page, very likely with a letter from the editor backing them up.

I doubt that this completely shut the rumors down...like avalanches and run-away trains, rumors are hard to stop once they get rolling...but that letter probably made people think, and very probably at least knocked the wind out of the rumor's sails.

The sad thing about rumors like this one is that, thanks to the public's insatiable love for scandal, they still regularly get started today, and when they do, thanks to our modern communications technology and social media, they spread further and faster than Chief Cook and the editorial staff at The Pottstown Daily News could ever conceive of in their worst public-relations-snafu related nightmare.

<***>

The paparazzi are not a newly-minted concept in the American news media by a long shot. They've been around in one form or the other ever since the concept of 'celebrity' was formed.

Don't believe me? Lets take a look at what happened to Harry Fisher.

He managed to escape from the Opera House by bailing out of a window and jumping to the fire escape, but not before suffering painful burns to his scalp. Once he made it out of the building, he returned to the Union House, where he was staying. Once in his room, and more then aware that he was the central figure in the tragedy, he basically 'hid out', trying to avoid the press. He failed miserably in that department, though...reporters are amazingly resourceful when it comes to finding people who don't want to be found, and the press started hounding him almost as soon as the sun came up, with reporters knocking on his door before breakfast, requesting an interview...or just a word.

He was treated by a doctor on Tuesday. Given the fact that he was (Unsuccessfully) hiding from the Press, I'm assuming the doctor came to him. After examining Fisher and dressing his burns, the good doctor released him to return to his home in Bridgetown, New Jersey on Wednesday. He arrived  at the Boyertown train station along with a very unwanted and vocal entourage of reporters, all of them calling his name, shouting out questions, and otherwise making nuisances of themselves. He gave them a quick statement denying responsibility for the disaster, and stating that he had cut the tanks off, even as photographers fired off shots of him wrapped in a nightgown, with his head wrapped in bandages, that would appear in several papers the next day.

His every move was monitored...he had to change trains in Pottstown, and reporters changed trains right along with him, even reporting his time of arrival at Philadelphia's Reading Terminal. 

There is no way that photographs of Fisher in his injured and bandaged state beat him to Philly back in 1908, so someone either pointed him out, or people saw the bandages and put two and two together, because his fellow citizens took up the chase at Reading Terminal, point-blank asking him if he was to blame for the fire.

He denied this, then fled the terminal and found his younger sister, who worked at a near-by department store. She tried to run interference for him on the trolley ride to the ferry that crossed the Delaware River to Camden. While she was probably great moral support, she wasn't too successful at diverting the public's curiosity....news of who he was traveled, in that mysterious way that such news seems to travel, and he was also besieged on the trip across the Delaware River.

Once he got to Camden, he still had a two hour train ride home...and it was more of the same. He finally found some peace and quiet...or at least relative peace and quiet...when he got home.

He did ultimately agree to give The Philadelphia Press an interview, during which he reiterated that he was not to blame for the disaster, and that the tanks did not explode. And finally, the hoopla surrounding him died down. The Press went on to find a new scandal to chase and a new victim to harass

Ironically, when he returned to Boyertown two weeks later, to testify at the inquest, his arrival and presence there went all but unnoticed...something I have a sneakin' suspicion he was more then grateful for.

SO, as you can see, and as I noted, being hounded by The Press is as old as The Fourth Estate itself.

<***>

Sometimes the fact that one of the deaths attributed to the Rhoads Opera House Fire...(John Graver's death in the Hose wagon accident)...was a Line of Duty Death gets lost in the enormity of the tragedy, but even sadder is the fact that John Graver wasn't the only Boyertown firefighter who died that night, nor was he the only Line Of Duty Death.

Lets take a look at the second LODD first.  Keystone firefighter Charles Mayer died in the performance of his duties as a firefighter, when he became trapped while performing rescues. As I noted in the body of this post, he responded straight to the scene, and immediately entered the blazing second floor to search for his wife and daughter, managing to rescue his wife, and possibly making a couple of other rescues as well. He became trapped after getting his wife out, when he went back in to search for his daughter...he found her, but couldn't make it back to the windows to get out of the building. He would be found cradling his daughter's body in his arms.

Sadly, the fact that there were actually two Line of Duty Deaths attributed to the fire is apparently never mentioned.

Also, both Keystone and Friendship lost firefighters who were attending the play and became trapped when the fire started. Keystone lost two other members who were attending the play and became trapped...Herbert Gotshall and Charles Maurer. Charles Maurer was a former chief of the fire company, and was also President of the Fireman's Relief Association.

Friendship lost one firefighter...George Parsons...who was attending the play.

John Graver was chairman of the Fireman's Relief Committee, which had been formed six years earlier, as a joint effort by both fire companies, after two other Keystone firefighters were killed when a wall collapsed on them at another major fire. 

Both Keystone and Friendship still exist, BTW. Keystone was organized as the Keystone Steam Fire Engine Co #1 in 1873 and Friendship as Friendship Hook And Ladder in 1882. They were joined by a third fire company...Liberty Fire Company...in 1925. The three companies operated as independent fire companies until 2014, when the three companies consolidated to form Boyertown Area Fire and Rescue. Both Keystone and Friendship maintain a 'Social Quarters' at which they provide entertainment for the public, which raises funds used to help fund BAF&R's operations. 

BAF&R has far more apparatus available to them than the crews of Keystone and Friendship available to them on scene on that tragic night in 1908. Today BAF&R runs two engines, a rescue engine (An engine that also caries a good bit of rescue equipment, such as the Jaws of Life), a tanker, an aerial ladder, two brush trucks, and a quintet of auxiliary and utility rigs. They run out of two stations with 65 volunteers.

Just one of those modern engines can pump the same amount of water that all three steamers on scene at the Opera House were flowing with change left over. 

<***>

The type of incident that took John Graver's life...a vehicle accident involving a fire rig responding to a call...sadly, is not a rare occurrence, nor are fatalities caused by them rare. and, equally sadly, they were just as prevalent in the horse drawn era as they are now.

Many horse drawn rigs actually had safety belts for the drivers, but you still had guys who wouldn't use them.  (Another trend that's way older than you think it is). Firefighters getting thrown from a rig, and then getting crushed beneath it as the horses continued pulling it was an incident that happened several times yearly. Rigs overturned because the driver took a corner too fast, got hit by trolleys, got hit by trains, and dropped a wheel in a ditch, throwing the guys driving or riding the rig clear.

Once motorized apparatus came into vogue, and speeds increased, the danger increased as well (And, interestingly, safety belts disappeared from motorized rigs until well into the 20th century.

The deaths from motorized fire apparatus accidents began early. Just ten or so miles north of me, Richmond Va lost their Chief and the Chief's driver in July 1915, when the chiefs car hit a light pole while enroute to a call. And the vehicle accident deaths have continued throughout the decades, though safety features and mandatory seat belt use has helped reduce the number of deaths annually. 

Still, even with the safety improvements, vehicle accidents have accounted for the second or third highest number of annual line-of-duty firefighter deaths for years, and it's a trend that doesn't show much sign of ending. In order to get to a scene, you have to drive there, and as long as that's the case, the possibility of crashing while enroute (Or, for that matter, while returning to the station) will exist.

<***>

You guys knew this was coming...the ghost stories. Infamous disasters have a tendency to breed ghost stories the way celebrities breed gossip, and The Rhoads Opera House Fire ghost stories started early and continue today.

One of the first reports came before the ruins had even cooled down good, when an elderly man showed up at the scene and tried to enter the building. When asked what he was doing, he stated that his deceased wife called to him to meet her on the second floor so she could tell him good bye. Interestingly, though, none of the tellings of this tale mention either the elderly man's name or that of his wife.

Dr Rhoads, of course, rebuilt the building on the same site...using the original stone foundation...and inevitably ghosts of the fire victims are said to inhabit the apartments that now occupy the building's second and third floor. One resident of the apartments tells the story of a ghostly lady, dressed in turn-of-the-last-century finery, who walks through her apartment at the same time every year (Bet it's around Jan 13th) saying she must hurry because she's going to be late for the play. 

There was apparently a dance studio on the first floor at one time, and supposedly, many of the younger girls refused to use one of the dance rooms because it was already occupied...by ghosts. The realtor who handled rental of the building's apartments lost a potential tenant when the lady's son absolutely refused to enter the apartment, also because of the ghosts already in residence there.

There have also been reports of the faint odor of smoke in the building with no source found (Makes me wonder how many times Keystone's and Friendship's guys have heard '...Intersection of Philadelphia and Washington Avenues, for the odor of smoke in an apartment...' and rolled in to find nothing and...unofficially at any rate...attributed it to the ghosts of the past. This type of call, BTW, always comes in either at Oh-Dark-Hundred, or smack dab in the middle of a meal, usually when you're eating something that's not good heated up.)

The ghosts don't confine themselves to the new Rhoads Building, either. The former Mansion House Hotel...still in existence and now home to Durango's Saloon...is said to be an apparent meeting place for poltergeists, chief among them Harry Binder, who was a former proprietor of The Mansion House, and who died in the fire. He and/or his ghostly pals are known to move objects, flit across doorways as shadowy figures, and appear on photographs as strange mists.

There are a slew of ghostly tales that I don't have room to go into here, and I'll include a couple of sites dedicated to them in 'Links' 

Do I believe in them? I've always been open-minded about ghost stories. Some of them have perfectly good scientific explanations...but some are, and will probably remain, eerily mysterious. And they should stay that way...that's well over half the fun.

<***>

Let's play 'What If' for a bit.

What if this exact fire had happened in an identical building, including the rowhouses, in 2019 rather than 1908.

It couldn't have happened, of course, not in the same way (Or at least we like to think it couldn't have happened).


 Modern fire codes would not have allowed a Place Of Public Assembly on the second floor of the building with out major alterations, and this is purely a hypothetical exercise, because those alterations would have likely cost almost as much as a new building. But lets say the alterations were made.

There would have been actual fire doors at the fire escapes with a dedicated aisle leading to them, marked with lighted exit signs. The main entrance stairway would have had to have been completely rebuilt, and been a uniform width of 6 feet all the way down, with a landing and outward opening doors equipped with 'Panic Bars' on the second floor. There certainly wouldn't have been any kerosene lanterns on the stage, or anywhere else. and if there was a projector...a modern commercial projector, of course...it would have been in an enclosed booth. And the curtain would have been fire resistant.

That rear stairway would have also been marked as an exit, of course, and would have had to have been enclosed in a fire resistant enclosure. The stairwell doors would have been rated, auto-closing fire doors.

There would have been fire extinguishers all over the place, along with a fire alarm system, and possibly monitored smoke detectors that would have activated the building alarm, and sent a signal to a monitoring agency, such as ADT, who would notify the fire department.

So if a small fire started on stage in a similar building, brought up to modern fire code, in 2019, the smoke detectors would activate the building alarm as someone knocked it down with an extinguisher. As this was going on, the audience would be filing out calmly down the fire escapes and the main stairway while the cast went out of the back stairway. ADT would be calling Berks County's 911 center, who would also be fielding 911 calls from some of the audience who called it in on their cell phones.

A full commercial assignment (Possibly 4 engines, a pair of truck companies, and a heavy rescue along with a battalion chief) would be dispatched for a possible structure fire, and the first in engine would mark on scene with 'Nothing Showing from a three story commercial structure, evacuation of the building is underway...'

The crew of the first in engine would lay in from a hydrant, go into 'Investigative Mode', as an attack line...probably an 1 3/4 inch line...was pulled in case it was needed. Incoming units would be given assignments or told to stage until it was determined whether they were needed or not. If there was still some fire, the attack line would be taken inside, either up one of the stairways or a fire escape, to complete extinguishment. If not, the crews would overhaul the fire area to make sure there no more fire, remove smoke and water from the building, and gather information for the fire report.

It would be a non-event, news wise,  an interesting story for the building occupants to tell, and a routine run for the fire companies that responded..

If only it could have happened that way 111 years ago.

<***> LINKS <***>

I was not wanting for research material for this post...throw 'Rhoads Opera House Fire' in the ol' Google Machine or one of it's cousins and you get pages worth of articles and links. Of course a lot of them repeat the exact same information, but then you find those one or two that are treasure-troves of information that make all of that midnight oil expended in the name of research worth it.

As is often the case, it would be impossible to list every link I checked out on here, so I'm going to list the best dozen or so.


http://www.boyertownhistory.org/  Boyertown Historical Society's home page. This is one top-notch group of people, all of whom are dedicated to preserving the history of their town.

***

https://www.amazon.com/Town-Tragedy-Boyertown-Opera-House/dp/0962921815/ref=sr_1_12?keywords=Mary+Jane+Schneider&qid=1565808737&s=gateway&sr=8-12

https://www.amazon.com/Midwinter-Mourning-Boyertown-Opera-House/dp/0962921807/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Midwinter+Mourning&qid=1565808891&s=gateway&sr=8-2

The two above links are to Amazon's listing for Mary Jane Schneider's two excellent books about the fire. 'A Town In Tragedy' tells the story of the fire and it's aftermath in detail, while 'Midwinter Mourning' gives detailed information about all of the fire's victims. Both are awesome books, showing the fruits of what had to have been a massive amount of research. The Author's awesome research job made my own research far easier.

***

https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/10545480/the-forgotten-fire An article written for Firehouse Magazine by Mary Jane Schneider, who also authored the two books linked above

http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/berks/history/local/operahfire.txt Text document with a complete victims list

https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/335167?page=5#sr-105380882  Find-A-Grave page listing the burial locations of 143 of the 170 victims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoads_Opera_House_fire  The all-but-obligatory Wikipedia page.

http://www.gendisasters.com/pennsylvania/2185/boyertown%2C-pa-rhoades-opera-house-terrible-fire%2C-jan-1908  Gen. Disasters page, featuring the text of period news articles

https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/feature-articles/trapped-third-act-rhoads-opera-house-fire  An excellent and comprehensive article about the fire by Samantha Pearson, posted on The Pennsylvania Center For The Book's excellent website.

https://horrormoviepodcast.com/31-days-of-halloween-day-31-the-rhoads-opera-house-fire-the-legacy-of-a-tragedy-2008-by-dr-shock/ A quick little article by well known Horror Movie vlogger Dave 'Dr Shock' Becker as the final article in a series of 31 horror themed Halloween posts back in October 2015. A bit different than his usual subject matter, Dave Becker lives in Berks County just outside of Boyertown.

https://www.berksmontnews.com/news/rhoads-opera-house-fire-boyertown-an-untold-story-from-january/article_211450f8-7f67-5305-aed2-5f89cf0270a4.html A detailed and moving account of the story of Lottie Bauman, one of the victims of the fire, written by her twice removed cousin Betty J Burdan.

https://www.pottsmerc.com/lifestyle/first-history-horrific-boyertown-opera-house-fire-of-recalled/article_7123cc16-923c-5d2b-a8e5-69bc7b7ca061.html  Another comprehensive, well written article about the fire from The Mercury, an award-winning daily newspaper that covers portions of Berks, Montgomery, and Chester Counties in Pennsylvania. The article was written to coincide with the 110th anniversary of the fire.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2008/01/15/86413.htm Yet another anniversary article from The Insurance Journal, written to coincide with the fire's centennial anniversary.

https://www.thedeadhistory.com/rhoads-opera-house-fire-ghosts-of-greif/ One of two articles I found dedicated to the ghosts of the fire victims.

https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-blog/Opera-ghosts-echoes-of-the-rhoads-opera-house-fire   And the second ghostly article. Both are interesting reads.

<***>

 A Quick Take On Another Tragedy...The Wallaceton Theater Fire

Eight years and change after The Rhoads Opera House Fire, a similar tragedy struck my home state of Virginia....and this one fell completely through the cracks to be all but totally lost to history. One of the reasons it did so is particularly sad...but we'll get to that in a second.

In 1916 the tiny Norfolk County, Virginia community of Wallaceton, situated hard by the Dismal Swamp Canal in the southeastern corner of the state, consisted mainly of a large lumber mill and the housing for the mill's workers, the great majority of whom were African American. The mill's manager treated his workers fairly well. From what little I could find researching this fire, the housing was comfortable, the company store was well stocked and affordable, and everyone was happy. The management even provided his workers with a recreation center.

Sometime before 1916, a new company store was built, and the old one was renovated into a community center of sorts. Among the recreational pursuits this center offered were weekly movies.

The building was apparently set up fairly nicely for what it was, even featuring electric lights, powered by their own gasoline powered generator. Here's the thing...while the generator itself had to have been outside the building to avoid filling the place with carbon monoxide, I got the impression that the gas tank for the beast was just inside (?????) the building. (You guys see where this is going, don't ya?)

The three articles I found gave pitiful few details. Two of them, found on the genealogy site I use to find subjects for this blog, were barely a paragraph each, and the third, from a 'Rare Newspapers' type site, was maybe three paragraphs long and was the only one to provide any detail, skimpy as they may have been. This meant I had to read into the events leading up to the fire a bit, but I think that, as eighty or so people were filling the small building to just about capacity on the warm evening of May 10, 1916, the the building's manager was filling the generator's gas tank. And I think that while he was at it he managed to spill gasoline all over the place. 

Keep in mind that a gasoline powered generator in 1916 and one from 2016 are two entirely different beasts, The 1916 model is bulkier by far, less efficient, and utilizes a larger fuel tank (It very likely used a Model 'T' Ford engine). So when they spilled gas it was likely in the order of a gallon or more,. Gas fumes, once they mix with air, don't have to search hard at all to find an ignition source. And I think that's exactly what happened.

 From the description I read, I get the feeling that the gas tank and generator were in the rear of the building, so when the gas fumes...and spilled gas...lit up with an evil-sounding 'WHOOOMPH!!!' at least the fire didn't block the front door. The crowd had gotten seated, and the show had started and been going for at least several minutes when a sudden fast moving wall of fire rose to the ceiling (Very likely actually the underside of the roof) and rolled over everyone's heads while quickly filling the building with heat and choking smoke.Eighty people jumped up as one terrified body and bolted for the door in a terrified mass of humanity, all of them trying to make it out through a single standard sized doorway at the same time. Miraculously over half did made it out, though at least thirty were seriously burned.

 Somewhere between twenty-three and twenty-six died at that front entrance the exact same way people have died in every large loss of life building fire. Several were trampled to death as the crowd rushed the single door, then a jam-up formed in the doorway when multiple people tried to get out at the same time, piling on top of each other in the doorway and wedging themselves tightly, trapping themselves and everyone left in the building.

Wallaceton had no fire department, so the building burned unchecked, quickly becoming fully involved. Bystanders tried desperately to get to those trapped in the doorway, but frame buildings burn hot and fast when they get rolling, and the would be rescuers were quickly driven back. By the time the roof collapsed all of those still trapped were dead. The building, needless to say, burned to the ground.

There was only one doctor in or even near Wallaceton, and he was quickly overwhelmed by the number of seriously to critically burned patients, exhausting his medical supplies in well under a half hour.. He called Portsmouth for help (Very likely from Portsmouth Navel Hospital) then commandeered as many cars and trucks as he could find and had the injured transported to Portsmouth.

It was 1 AM before the building cooled enough for body removal to begin. Most of the dead were, according to the longer article, women and children

As I noted, only a couple of short articles were written about the fire, and it was quickly lost to history. Someone who was an infant in 1916 would be over 100 today, so there's no one left who remembers it. Maybe a few grandchildren...themselves likely to be in their 90s if they're still around...or great-grandchildren, who would probably be in their late 60s or 70s, remember their grandparents telling them about the fire.

Very little remains of Wallaceton. The lumber mill is long gone, along with all of the mill's auxiliary buildings All that remains of the community is the small manor house that gave the community and the mill it's name, and the old Canal watchman/lock keeper's cottage. Both are on the list of Historic Landmarks. The Dismal Swamp Canal continues to be used as a part of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Even Norfolk County itself is gone...it (along with the City of South Norfolk) became the City of Chesapeake back in 1963. By then the Wallaceton Theater Fire was already all but forgotten.

Why wasn't this reported more widely, you may ask. How can over twenty people...mostly women and children...burn to death with barely a whimper from the media? Sadly, it was very likely because this was the South in the early 1900s, and all of the victims were African American. That in itself makes this fire doubly tragic.