closest to a now-billowing cloud of smoke began yelling and rapping the bars with their tin cups, like actors in some B-grade prison movie.
Many survivors pegged the time of day by their cheap dollar alarm clocks, while others depended on a centrally located wall clock to determine what time the fire began. Still others, serving relatively long prison sentences, had timed their daily routines to the minute and claimed they had little need for a clock. Edward Dolan, a prisoner out of Hamilton County, later testified that he was sitting in his cell on the first tier, reading a magazine, as three cellmates played cards, between 5:20 and 5:25 when he heard the shout of “Fire!” Asked how he was so sure about the time, he said it was because he was “waiting for the baseball man to bring the baseball extra [on the radio].”5
Six years into a ten-to-twenty-five-year stretch, Robert Farr was on the second tier playing checkers. He remembered the time because “it was customary like clockwork to play checkers from five to seven.” After just a couple of games he heard screams and shouts and the rattling of bars from prisoners on the upper ranges of the cellblock. Prisons get used to the almost nonstop noise and clamor that comes with caging up thousands of young men with nothing much to do. Like others, Farr first thought there was “nothing to it,” probably a cell fire, and no reason to get overly excited. So the checkers games continued. Farr remembered that he and his partner, whom he described as “rapid players,” had been playing long enough to have finished a game and started another one when the yelling became more intense. They finished another game and had started again when the “smoke began to roll in” and his partner insisted they had to quit.6
Inmate Roy Williams was “just getting ready to play a game of hearts” on the bottom range of cells when he smelled smoke coming from the direction of the cotton mill. He would later report, “We heard a couple of shots and smelled smoke, and we figured it was the cotton mill, the wind being from that direction, blowing the smoke into the cellblock.”7 Williams hoped that it wasn’t the cotton mill because he had already “rebuilt the place twice over” and “didn’t want that job again.” But if it was, he hoped “they burn[ed] it to the ground.” In moments, one of the boys looked out and spotted a big cloud of smoke and said, “Hell that is right out here.” On the same tier of cells, James Waltham asked a guard what was going on and was told by the nonchalant keeper that there “was some timber burning, nothing to get worried about.”
Two tiers up, Edward Saas was engrossed in a game of pinochle with his cell partner. He didn’t smell the smoke right away or become aware of the brewing disaster until he heard some hollering from tier two, just below him. He didn’t pay it much mind at first, thinking it was a joke: “they were hollering, but that whole bunch is mostly half-wits and always raising hell.”8 But the smoke “got bad quickly.” Saas and his cellmate were among the many convicts who took blankets and put them up on the cell bars to combat the smoke, but to little effect, as the smoke was now as low as their range on the third tier. Innovating moment by moment, they next soaked towels in water and wrapped them around their heads. It was only ten minutes since the first hint of fire.
George W. Johnson, better known by his hometown nickname “Cleveland,” was serving a five-to-ten-year bit for perjury. He had been paroled after five years but twenty-nine months later was back in stir for a parole violation to finish out his sentence. He was working in the chapel as a porter close to the G&H blocks, mopping up, dusting off erasers, and cleaning windows, when he first noticed some smoke between 5:20 and 5:25. Fellow Cleveland native Roy “Whitey” Steele was on the bottom tier when he heard some screams and saw a little smoke on the upper ranges. He didn’t think much of it at the moment, but curiosity got the better of him. He flashed the range with “a piece of mirror about an inch square” and “pushed it out in the block,” where he could see “flames and a lot of smoke and we got scared and tried to break down the cell, a one-armed man and myself.”9
Cincinnati-raised Edward J. Gallagher, a self-described “orphan asylum boy,” was housed on the fourth tier. Gallagher and his cellies had come back from the first mess about 4:10, “rolled a smoke,” and were waiting for the mailman. For Gallagher, the hand-rolled smoke was much more important; mail service didn’t mean much to him, since “I never get any mail, I ain’t got any family, but I like to see my partners get letters.” Gallagher dozed off, but woke up again between 5:20 and 5:30 to find that his cellmates had covered their faces with towels and handkerchiefs. In prison jargon he asked them, “What’s the come? What’s the kid?” They pointed to the outside, where he saw the smoke.10
Murray Wolfe, in the first cell on the first tier, had returned to his cell after the first mess sometime between 4 and 4:10. He proceeded to wash up and clean his teeth before hopping on his bunk to read the latest copy of the Saturday Evening Post. Following prison rules, which prohibited smoking in his bunk, Wolfe sat on the side of his bunk with his feet dangling over the side, “smoking and reading at the same time, making myself comfortable” until the evening papers were delivered: “just a procedure for myself in the evening. I try to keep my mind occupied while I am in here reading. That is the only way I can keep it occupied.” He later testified that he heard shouts of “Fire!” around 5:20. A former newspaper reporter, he had a good eye and ear for detail. He remembered that most of the inmates were talking, paying attention to each other, killing time, waiting for the papers. Like others, at first Wolfe thought it was typical mattress fire, having “no idea of the immensity” of the fire until “smoke began curling” up through the bottom ventilators.”11
Wolfe’s location in the first cell of the lowest tier placed him closest to the chief day guard’s desk, situated in front of the cell, so he was well tuned to the rhythms of the guards night and day. From his vantage point he could see fifty-five-year old head day guard Thomas Watkinson washing his face and hands in the guardroom basin just outside his cell. Known as “the Englishman” for his nativity, he would probably have had his coat and hat off as he prepped to go home. Although he should have been on duty until his shift ended at 6 p.m., following his usual routine he began getting ready to end his day shift at 5:15 and then headed down to the guard room, where by 5:45 he would meet with the incoming night-shift guards, who went on duty at 6 p.m. This transition rarely took place later than 6:15. The fact that the fire occurred between shifts contributed mightily to the chaos and confusion that followed.
It had been a rough patch of days for the Englishman. The inmates had been “pestering” him because he had locked up the cons on the second tier on Easter Sunday, forcing them to miss their Easter dinner and the opportunity to attend Easter church services. As Watkinson dried off his hands and face, inmate Wolfe noticed that his “face changed terribly. I think the man was stupefied. I think he was frightened to death.” Another inmate claimed, “He just stood there like a damned fool.”12
During the day Watkinson was partnered with guard Hubert Richardson, whose recollections somewhat contradicted Wolfe’s testimony. Richardson claimed the Englishman was actually in the process of getting a convict shoeshine in the guardroom when Richardson alerted him to the fire. Richardson was posted on the sixth range when he spotted the fire in the north end of the cellhouse. A former decorator by trade, he blamed current health issues on his prior profession, admitting, “I can’t hold my water”; that is, the paint-related lead in his system from his previous occupation necessitated his constant urination. He had just returned from another run to the bathroom and was walking his range to make sure all was well when he looked to the north and saw “blazes” about 5:40.
The cantankerous “Englishman,” Thomas Watkinson, would later explain to a Board of Inquiry that Richardson was “kind of new.” Since there was “no place to take a leak there,” the rookie guard walked down the stairs and up to the neighboring E&F dormitory, “where
