story was given significant attention by the African American press. An article in the Chicago Defender entitled “Guard Slays Two,” based on the recollections of several survivors, reported that “two Race prisoners were killed by a guard when they attempted to escape from their cell.” The paper preferred the sobriquet “Race prisoner” over other identifiers used by mainstream press.
The most graphic account of the shooting was provided by the Ohio State Journal, reported by a white lifer who refused to give his name.
That guard was the worst coward I ever saw. I feel sorry for him if he ever shows his face inside the prison again. It wasn’t so bad when he just refused to open the gates, but then I and another convict, who had been freed by Guard Little, went to the coward and begged him to open the doors, and again he refused. My partner had a heavy chisel and he offered to the 2 boys locked in the cell. The guard tried to take it away from the men, but they refused and went to work on the lock fighting to get out. The guard said, ‘Give me that chisel or I’ll shoot you’ at the same time cursing loudly. They refused and he fired twice. We saw both men fall and the guard run from the tier, taking the keys with him … we heard he had been placed under arrest by the warden.
Prison officials denied these charges but refused to report where the guard was.
One of the rare accounts of an inmate killed by gunshot wounds came from Sonny Hanovich, who claimed, more than a half century later, to have seen one body with a bullet hole in the back, and to have heard of another shot in his cell. Perhaps he was referring to the aforementioned account, but this incident is all but missing from every modern chronicle of the fatal fire and has never been satisfactorily substantiated.
Although there were several accounts of bullet wounds and shootings of inmates, no bullet wounds were ever authenticated. But the story gained credence the more times it was told. Tell a story enough times and it becomes fact. Although the shooting was quickly “corroborated by a group of twenty or more men,” officials continued to deny it, saying there was nothing to it. To the credit of the officials, in order to put the rumors to rest, a careful check for bullet wounds was made of every corpse at the temporary morgue, as well as all bodies being taken away for burial.
Several inmates and guards later reported hearing gunshots right before the inferno moved into G&H. During the investigation in the days after the fire, it was revealed that day guard Harold Whetstone, on watch above the warden’s residence (his perch consisted of a little walkway about fourteen or fifteen feet long that ran along the Spring Street wall), had heard several gunshots being fired over in the yard north of the chapel at about 5:40. Looking in the direction of the shots, he saw another guard named Porter around five hundred feet away, firing shots into the air. He deduced correctly that it was an attempt to grab his attention. Whetstone responded in kind, firing his 30-30 into the air. Porter, a day guard at the wagon stockade that ran through the cellblock, yelled back, “Turn in the fire alarm.” Whetstone pointed to the guardroom and hollered back, “I did.” In fact, he had done so three times before a shot had been fired.88
The night of the fire witnessed the actions of remarkable heroes, while others in the days to come would be given credit for actions they could not have taken. One inmate, “Wild” Bill Croninger, was credited with having saved twelve men before collapsing and dying. As some told it, he went into the dense smoke repeatedly until he could not go any further. Injured and overcome by smoke, he sank down, said, “I’ve done my part,” and took his last breath. It made for a sensational story—but it wasn’t true. According to several Columbus historians, Croninger was not listed among the dead. In reality he was arrested several years after the fire for a spree of petty thefts. His codefendant Don Ford, however, was the nineteen-year-old son of an inmate who did die in the fire. Croninger had been friends with his father, who perished while serving time for child abandonment.89
One “big burly negro convict” told three rescuers, “I can walk, leave me alone” after they dragged him to safety from the building ruins. Once they let him go, the convict “straightened up, brushed a brawny hand across a pathetically seared face and headed down the path to the hospital. Took several resolute steps then faltered and plunged face downward into a pool of water. He managed to roll over on his side. ‘I can’t walk,’ he muttered, ‘lay me down.’ They did and he was dead.”90
One of the most difficult challenges was bringing out the bodies of the dead from the top three tiers. A number of them were lowered to the ground with ropes and, once prostrate on the quadrangle, were covered with blankets, “where they lay in grotesque positions” until removed by National Guardsmen. The process began before the fire was out but after most victims had succumbed to smoke. Demonstrating the ingenuity shared by longtime inmates, bodies were lowered from tiers with ropes as “flames still licked at ruins” and lethal smoke filled the air. A score of convicts managed to find some ropes somewhere. “Tripping over the hot and smouldering [sic] embers they scrambled up the six tiers of the ruined prison. Howling, eager, unorganized, they managed to get into shape for the work. They distributed themselves, a few men on each level, and strung their ropes from one tier to another. The first body was dangled down and swayed a moment in midair,” before one rescuer yelled from above, ‘Here comes one! Here comes one!’” Another disembodied voice chimed in, “Here he comes, here he comes, ketch ’im, don’t let him fall…. The bodies dangled down in an endless stream” as the prisoners got the hang of working together. Occasionally cries of alarm rent the air; in one case they indicated that “a body had fallen on the backs of laboring men on the third tier.”91
Above the din inside the walls, parallel acts of boldness were taking place as volunteers from all walks of life volunteered to assist. Although gate regulations prohibited anyone except soldiers and law enforcement officers beyond the bullpen Monday night, “a Boy Scout of ‘half-pint’ size, his shoulders thrust back, trooped through the phalanx of guards to gain the inner sanctum.” Joining the legions of volunteers, Bertillon identification system officers Homer Richter and Johnny Rings of the city police “donned a uniform Monday night for the first time in many years and acted as patrolmen.”92
Sirens and ambulances could be heard speeding back and forth through the rubbernecking crowds interfering with traffic down Spring Street from High Street all the way to Front Street. Doctors and medical personnel responded in great numbers. As they drove up to the gate they were stopped by police and asked, “Are you a doctor?” Those who answered in the affirmative were told “Go on, hurry” and directed down to the railroad yards on the east side of the prison, where they got out of their cars and walked to the pen doors. They moved snakelike through the guardroom out into the prison yard and into the hospital, where they found the dead and dying crammed into every conceivable space “like sardines.”
As a result of the overwhelming response, doctors soon had little space to navigate in. Others were told to go and sit in the front office until their colleagues needed relief. Likewise, nurses, described by one reporter as “calm, cool, and efficient looking,” swarmed through the front doors.93 They too waited until needed in the hospital, when they headed across the prison quad in small groups. Few had time to worry about walking through a gauntlet of hundreds of Ohio’s most dangerous convicts, including Dr. Betty Morris, the first female physician at the scene of the fire. It was hard to miss her moving through the prison yard reviving men with “spirits of ammonia.” Her bravery led one journalist to write, “The only woman among a crowd of workers and white and black prisoners, she was treated with utmost respect.”94
In perhaps the oddest moment of the tragic evening, Ohio State University junior James F. Laughead, who happened to be driving past the prison as
