out when they spotted their loved ones. The army trucks that had brought the bodies to the fairgrounds would also take them to railroad stations for the final journey to their hometowns. If families could afford the expense, hearses were available as well.39
At 5:30 Tuesday evening an army officer from the Horticulture Building apprised waiting survivors there would be no more identifications that night. At this point 149 bodies, nearly half of the 317 dead, had been identified, and 37 had already been released for shipment. The army officer informed the milling crowd that transportation and lodging would be provided by the Salvation Army to anyone who wanted to wait until the next day. Several who waited moved in for a last look at the “evenly placed caskets, their lids now closed, gray and pearl and black, a spray of roses or lilies on each one.” For the 168 families who decided to wait the night out there would be “another black night of suspense lighted only by the hope that a beloved face would be white, and whole and familiar.”40
There was very little that could be done to make the Horticulture Building welcoming to bereaved family members, but building manager C. K. Rowland “did what he could to make the grim room less dreary” by moving plants that would have decorated the grounds at fair time into the makeshift mortuary. By one account, “they were the only ‘bouquets’ for those who had gone west, and somehow they made the grisly scene a bit more bearable.”41 The weather seemed to have reverted to winter, with light frost expected in exposed areas as the sky cleared. Indeed, it was so cold that the opening baseball series between the Columbus Senators and the Milwaukee Brewers had to be rescheduled to June. Tuesday night the mercury had plunged to thirty degrees, and the following morning was expected to be fifteen to twenty degrees below normal. It was imperative, therefore, to offer some type of seating inside the building. But the fifty chairs set up for mourners provided minimal comfort.
The fairgrounds housed many of the overnighters in its colosseum. Around “a roaring fire” one family sat with “immobile faces, benumbed by catastrophe. A daughter and granddaughter watched anxiously a tired old face which alternately dropped in slumber and raised in vague grief.” Two Newberry boys,42 of the four the old woman had raised, were listed among the dead. One had not been identified yet, but once he was, his mother could say “they played together, lived together and now they have died together.” That’s all she wanted at this point. She managed to smile as she took a tin cup of coffee that was handed to her.
Although the state capital, Columbus, was used to visitors, it is doubtful that anyone could remember so many cars from so many different Ohio cities in town at the same time. “Car after car bearing licenses issued from remote corners of the state and which gave the evidence of being driven at a terrific clip over the state’s highways pulled into the fairgrounds disgorging drawn faced occupants.”43 It wasn’t long before the fairgrounds were teeming with so many cars that it became necessary to close the gates to all but selected visitors, in an attempt to create a bulwark between the bereaved and morbidly curious rubberneckers. Anyone found lurking around just out of curiosity was “routed in short order.” Among those volunteering to keep curious bystanders at bay were a number of “actives and pledges” of Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity at Ohio State University, who helped guard the doors to the Horticulture Building.44
Orders were sent out Tuesday night by Colonel J. S. Shetler, from the 37th Division of the Ohio National Guard that relatives of the victims would not be allowed to enter the Horticulture Building until Wednesday morning, April 23. Shetler’s 150 guardsmen would remain on duty until Wednesday night to keep the curious throngs from the building. Relatives who were able to provide burial and shipping permits were spared the ordeal of the initial protocol requiring first going to the prison to make arrangements for the bodies. Instead, they could now go directly to the fairgrounds, where state officials assisted in identification and bodies were neatly grouped in sections arranged in alphabetical order. By the end of Tuesday fingerprints had been taken of fifty-five yet to be identified men in hopes of establishing their identities.
Word came Wednesday that the 318th convict had died, thirty-year-old Edward Willis, doing five to seven for larceny. Cause of death was reported as pneumonia. Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. the “parade of sorrow started,” as relatives from distant reaches of the state who had been notified by telegram that their loved ones had perished gathered at the Horticulture Building to identify husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers, “some seared beyond almost recognition.” They found 318 “different colored coffins in rows the length of the building,” some covered with flowers placed by friends or relatives. One reporter described long lines of women making their way down the rows of caskets, “seeking but fearing to find.”
The Ohio State Journal’s Mary V. Daughtery, one of the few women to report the tragedy, was perhaps better able to empathize with the bereaved women than her male counterparts. She noted, “Women used to screaming, screamed, and mothers with suddenly bitter faces [railed] against the state” for the deaths of their misdemeanant sons. “Then there were quiet little women with ancient black hats perched, dusty and bent, on their wisps of hair. They did not weep or rail, but now and then an epidemic of frenzy caught the long line in its grasp, and then they searched their purses for handkerchiefs, and reached for support.”45
Daugherty interviewed one grandmother who had told her grandchildren that their father was dead rather than admit that he was in the big house. She said, “I’d hate to have anybody see me here. You see I tried to think of him as dead too, for the children’s sake.” But she admitted having saved money for his burial. During their conversation the grandmother “shivered at the sudden scream of another woman.” The reporter described “a tall, lanky figure in a brown coat” reaching toward a casket and taking off the roses that had been placed there. She threw them to the ground and then “ground them into the floor with her heel.” A “Junior League Woman” who had accompanied her tried to offer support, but the “woman turned on her violently, as if to strike.” A man in uniform rushed over to intervene. “It was the end as she fell to the floor in a violent fit of weeping which continued until she was removed in a state of collapse.”46
No matter where one looked, “serenity was rare on any face, whether of the waiting bereaved or of the hundred or more workers from the Red Cross and Salvation Army who went to and fro among the moving ranks, giving comfort and advice.” On the edge of the crowd, correspondent Mary Daugherty espied “two well-dressed gentlewomen” who seemed to be in their late thirties. Daugherty apparently learned their stories from Salvation Army volunteers or “sympathetic bystanders.” It turned out they were sisters who had found their younger brother among the dead “on the rough tables.” The dead boy had made the mistake of joining a friend, the son of a bank cashier, in a bank heist. Their brother had agreed to drive the car and help take care of the stolen bonds. The cashier’s son escaped with the cash, leaving his partner in crime to face the music as a co-conspirator. He was due to be paroled in June, in part because of his extreme youth.47 Little did he expect that he would get out much sooner—but in a coffin.
Almost anywhere the reporter turned there was a human interest story. There was the case of a youthful mother of five. One of her children happened to be in a Cleveland hospital with a serious disorder at the same time she was reclaiming her husband’s body and trying to find out if she had insurance to cover expenses. Daugherty saw her walking around the fairground for almost an hour “in a sort of apathy” before collapsing.
Once the dead had been removed from the prison and the fairgrounds, it was time to take stock of some of the Ohio Penitentiary personalities who had perished. Among them was Robert Stone, serving a life sentence for the murder of a railroad detective, the brother
