The Circus Fire (36 page)

How #1 evolved over the years into the incinerated baby is unclear. Reporters knew it as a seventh unidentified body, and perhaps the fact that it was small enough to be both indistinguishable and incinerated may have tempted one to make the leap. The label stuck.

The lists balanced perfectly now, seven missing and seven unidentified, until Wednesday when detectives located war worker Ermo Flanders at his East Hartford rooming house. Flanders had attended the circus; he'd been out when investigators checked earlier. Understandably, he was not happy about his name being in the paper all week.

The missing list was now six: Mrs. Budrick, Mrs. Fifield, a Mrs. Woodward from Stores, Eleanor Cook, Judy Norris, and Raymond Erickson.

On page 2 the
Times
ran a small article titled ELEANOR COOK, 8, ON MISSING LIST, topping it with a grainy shot of her. On page 9 the words "Who knows this child?" capped a picture of 1565.

The burial Monday of the unidentified piqued the nation's interest, unleashing a flood of mail from parents of runaways and couples locked in

ugly custody battles. "Mr. F
keeps Lila more or less in hiding because

he does not want his wife to have the child."

A New Jersey woman wondered if 2200 might be her brother, missing for over a year. Ed Lowe wrote back, asking for a dental chart, but the woman didn't have one. She thanked him anyway. "I wish I could find my brother," she said. "We are the only 2 left out of a family of seven. I am the oldest and I allways tried to keep in touch with him."

The Philadelphia Police were searching for two boys, thirteen and seventeen, rumored to have run away with the circus.

A Worcester woman was looking for her son, working with the show. The timekeeper said he'd received his pay on July 8th, then left town. A year later, his mother was still sending letters.

A mother from Stockholm, Maine, wrote: "Will you be kind anofe to look and fine my girl."

One writer suggested to Commissioner Hickey that all civilians wear steel ID tags on fine metal chains—not cotton string, as some servicemen had lost their dog tags at the Cocoanut Grove that way.

Mail concerning the cause of the fire was even heavier. From Philadelphia, a man wrote to Hickey, saying he'd spoken with a suspicious character in a lunch car when the circus played there. The man was a circus employee who confided that the elephants weren't poisoned back in 1941 but had in fact been asphyxiated by fumes in their railroad cars. He mentioned that in case of fire, a "master rope" freed the horses, and that his wife, a tightrope walker, had been killed some time ago in an accident. The writer said the man didn't make sense, but figured Hickey might be able to use some of the information.

Also from Philly, a woman reported that a spotlight blew up and caught a wire on fire the last night of the stand. A Hartford man remembered getting an electrical shock from a cable lying on the ground where the southwest bleachers met the track.

Some letters were obviously the work of cranks, others the ramblings of disturbed people drawn to the news. "Falling due on my blisters for Roosevelt—a former president's son. I told you before, you have to name all the living sons of the former presidents. I almost died of strep like Calvin Coolidge Jr. Now, if you haven't saved his life, you'll be having some uproar on account of him, and it might be the circus burned up on account of it."

But many of the leads seemed plausible. A Hartford woman testified that she and her son saw a man with a bloody shirt hurriedly wrapping his wrist with a roll of bandages or rags in a circus wagon about thirty feet west of the main entrance. He couldn't have been injured in the fire because she was one of the first ones out. She "thought that if there had been such a fight it might be connected with the origin of the fire. He was a white man, heavyset, had dark hair. He was apparently alone in the wagon."

The most promising letter came from the warden of Deer Lodge Prison in Montana. He had an inmate who'd worked for the circus last year. In November, in Nashville, the show let go a man he worked with named Cox. Cox swore that he would burn the show out, that it wouldn't get far in '44. He also told the inmate he'd served five years for burning down a hotel. The warden felt his prisoner's story would hold up. Hickey sent back a telegram, asking him to interview the man at length and get a full de-

scription of Cox and any other friends then working for the circus. He also got in touch with the chief of police in Nashville, hoping his people might be able to locate Cox.

Meanwhile, the legal front was heating up. Seeing that survivors' claims would easily outstrip the show's holdings—leaving clients who filed later with nothing—attorneys Edward Rogin, Julius Schatz and Arthur Weinstein applied with the superior court to place the circus in temporary receivership, nominating Rogin to be the receiver. The court agreed.

The circus didn't. Legally, the appointment of a receiver required a federal court order, not merely a state court's. But the alternative to a receivership was some form of bankruptcy, meaning the current officers would lose control of the corporation and the victims would receive little or nothing. This way, the circus could operate as usual, feeding their profits to the receiver over time to pay the damages. After discussing the situation with Rogin, Schatz and Weinstein, and then among themselves, Dan Gordon Judge, Aubrey Ringling Haley and Mrs. Edith Ringling agreed to the receivership. Rogin would process all claims and disburse all payments.

First though, he needed to help the circus get out of town. In the last twenty-four hours, complaints from neighbors on Cleveland had swamped the health department. Again, inspectors went out and toured the lot; this time they recommended the animals and cookhouse be relocated, possibly to the North Meadows, down by the river. The situation at the trains was no better.

As receiver, Rogin would take possession of the train cars, the wagons, the animals—all of the show's property and assets within the state of Connecticut. The court charged him to preserve and protect those assets, yet the only way he could restore the corporation to a moneymaking basis was to get the three sections back to Sarasota as fast as possible. To release them, he needed the circus to put up a sizable chunk of money. The insurance policies were a start. The rest he'd have to finesse.

In Rochester, Adolph Pastore and George Sanford walked out of Eastman Kodak headquarters with an original and a duplicate print of the film, got back in the Caddy and drove.

That night Mayor Mortensen went on WTHT, making a long speech. He lamented the lack of fire laws concerning carnivals and circuses—not merely here but around the country. The nation would be

watching Hartford. "We cannot renew to life a single one of those who have died so pitifully, but we can make certain that never again need so ghastly a toll of this kind be taken of a civilized community. If we were to fail to learn the sobering lesson of the disaster, this tragedy would only remain what it is today, completely senseless and cruel."

At Municipal and Hartford, three more patients died, bringing the total to 161. One was the Lithuanian immigrant, Charles Tomalonis. Fellow tobacco workers said he had no family here, and with the war, finding anyone in his home country was impossible. The search for his next of kin would last twenty-five years.

Thursday, a week after the fire, the
Courant
issued a special edition reprinting just their fire coverage from the 7th and 8th at the regular price of 4 cents a copy. It had no paid ads and, like their original run of 90,000 the previous Friday, sold out instantly.

Troopers delivered to the state's attorney's office a section of khaki canvas that had been part of the south wall of the men's room, also a portion of the menagerie sidewall. Commissioner Hickey adjourned his hearing till July 18th. So far eighty witnesses had testified, their names withheld from the public.

Detectives Thomas Barber and Edward Lowe, who'd helped at the circus grounds and then the armory and finally the Hartford Hospital morgue, began their own investigation in their spare time. They sent pictures of 1565 to every primary school in Connecticut and her dental charts to hundreds of area dentists, hoping for any lead. They questioned teachers and priests and mailmen, sure that somebody somewhere would remember her face.

"Within a couple of weeks," Lowe said, "we were discouraged. The missing children all turned out to be on vacation, at camp, or visiting relatives. In fact, so many children were reported missing that it made our search practically impossible. We decided to wait until school reopened to check reports of missing children."

Instead, they tried a more direct but much harder road. They spoke to parents who'd claimed bodies at the armory that fit 1565s description.

"These interviews were extremely painful," Lowe admitted. "People who had lost relatives in the fire wanted to forget the whole affair. Most didn't want to talk about it and we couldn't blame them. We got nowhere."

At Municipal, each nurse's aide tended one patient. One aide's was a woman whose condition was critical. Every time the aide changed her bandages, more skin would come off. The woman's six-year-old son had died in the fire, but they didn't dare tell her that. They told her he was in the pediatric ward, doing all right.

"They didn't tell her for a long time. She would ask me to go down and read to him. We had strict instructions not to tell her her son was dead. I would say, 'I'd be happy to.' I would go out and be lost for twenty-five to thirty minutes. Then I would come back and tell her all the stories I read to him. And for that twenty-five to thirty minutes, I would be out in the hall, crying like a baby."

Finally doctors told the woman the truth. Later the aide came in to face her.

"How could you do that?" the mother asked.

"I'm sorry. I was told to."

"Oh, my dear, I'm not yelling at you," the woman said. "I just don't know how you did it."

Hartford Hospital restored regular visiting hours. In those days, children weren't allowed in the wards. Martha Ann Moore's bed was close to a window. Outside, across the street, her granddaughter Janet Moore Sapolis waved up at her.

Elliott Smith's father came to Municipal every day. He worked downtown at the Factory Insurance Association, and took the bus up at lunch and then again in the evening. Elliott had developed pneumonia and lay in his coffinlike oxygen tent, talking up at him through the plastic windows. Ironically, his worst burns were where his rescuer had touched him—the hand the man with the mustache had clasped and where he'd lifted Elliott, across the back and thighs; the friction had ripped the cooked skin off. Mr. Smith shuttled between the fifth and third floor, where his wife Grace was recuperating. He stayed till 8:00, the end of visiting hours, then said goodbye and took the bus down Main to the Isle of Safety and caught another one to Vernon. All summer he ate late.

Joan Smith had gone to live with her aunt and uncle in Wilson. The

first week, her cousin Janet was still away at a lake. She had a large collection of Bobbsey Twins books; Joan read one a day till she returned. The girls went to summer school, making games and pictures for Elliott. Joan made up stories to tell him when she visited.

Their mother had suffered burns on her scalp and shoulders and on her ankles where the firemen had carried her out. The first time Joan went to visit her, she began crying before she even reached the room. The nurse was cross with her and said she couldn't go in like that. She gave Joan some ginger ale to calm her down. It worked, but when she went in it was obvious from her eyes that she'd been crying for some time. She couldn't hide that from her mother.

On the lot, Edward Rogin checked the circus' inventory of equipment, assisted by George W. Smith. With the stroke of a pen, Rogin officially took possession of everything on the lot. Then he went to the Windsor Street yards.

In Sarasota, the Ringling front office vigorously denied the show was in receivership.

About supper time, the radio stations broadcast a general call for information about the fire. Police were asking anyone who'd been in the southwest bleachers to please register at headquarters on Market Street. They repeated the request at 8:00 A.M. the next morning, receiving dozens of calls and letters.

The question of what to do with the circus was still up in the air. Acting under the mayor's direction, Dr. Burgdorf of the Board of Health ordered the circus off the lot by midnight Friday; precisely where they were supposed to go wasn't clear. Rogin wanted them gone from the city altogether. Hickey said they were not to leave Barbour Street until he completed his investigation.

That morning, Rogin, Schatz and Weinstein met in Schatz's office to find a way to break the deadlock. They needed to reassure the state before they could pull out. The key was getting the circus to put up enough money to cover the value of their rolling stock and equipment as a good faith gesture. The three men conferred with the show's attorneys and came