admitted that “he considered the menace of a possible break for liberty by the prisoners as more pressing than the fire itself.” He also assumed that the proximity of the prison to the fire department, just blocks away, was his ace in the hole. But he placed too much faith in the firefighters’ response time.
Convinced that the fire was part of a larger escape attempt, the warden phoned the headquarters of the 166th Infantry Regiment of the Ohio Militia for support and went out to the street to await their arrival. As he left, he issued orders to shoot any escapees.34 When Columbus city police officers and federal troops from Fort Hayes arrived before the guardsmen, the warden, some ten minutes after positioning himself outside the walls, put his defensive strategy into practice, ordering the troops to facilitate the entry of the fire department through the stockade gate. By 6 p.m., Columbus city police had been ordered into the prison yard to restore a semblance of order. They were soon joined by other day guards. Unaware of the scale of the pending disaster, guards rushed to and fro, adding to the general disorder, picking up machine guns and shotguns, shouting for ammo, and preparing for a prison riot, while outside, grim-faced guards, police, and members of the arriving military units trained their gimlet eyes and weapons on the walls.
As the subsequent Board of Inquiry would prove, the warden had plenty of reasons to keep himself scarce within the prison walls. Father Albert O’Brien, who had reported that the convicts were probably ready to kill the warden if he stepped inside the prison courtyard during the pandemonium, added, “Those men had no thought of escape. They were thinking of those men perishing in the flames like moths. They were enraged because of the utter helplessness; because they were beyond the help of those gathered outside the wall.” When the warden finally entered the walls on Wednesday, two days after the fire, hundreds of convicts “let loose a crescendo of jeers and catcalls.”
There is some controversy over when Little and Baldwin retrieved the keys for the endangered cellblocks. Most accounts agree with their claim that Little already had the range keys in his pocket before he had heard anything about a fire.35 The two guards had established a well-rehearsed routine and had an understanding that Little would always open the small door in the guardroom containing the keys when they got ready to go on shift, take one set of keys, and carry it on to the cellblock. As night guards on G&H, either Baldwin or Little would work on the bottom range and hold on to the bottom range key while the other took the keys to the higher ranges. They would then switch range watch and keys each hour.
Whoever was manning the first tier was also responsible for the second tier and would stay at the desk located near the first tier, answering phone calls and the like. Unlike the other five tiers, the first floor was not enclosed, but the guard on the range was responsible for that floor and held the key to the cage as well as the first-tier range key, just in case incoming prisoners came in too late to be assigned a new cell. So, in effect, one guard would have two keys and the other would have five keys for the other five double ranges.36
Little was later queried why the keys were not returned to the safekeeping of the administrative offices after each count and why it was necessary for guards to hold onto the keys while on duty, since they were not really necessary for the count. Moreover, this strategy brought up serious security concerns in the event one of the guards was overpowered. Little explained that it was convenient to have them since the G&H guards were stationed “quite a distance” from the guardroom, and almost every evening packages were delivered, including new shoes and other items that could not be slid under the cell door like mail. Little also noted that the cellblock housed the machine shop company and all of the construction companies, and almost every day there were a few prisoners on special detail, so the keys were needed to let them back into their cells.37
Between 5:30 and 6, Ray W. Humphries, the editor of the popular civic publication Columbus This Week, returned to Columbus from Grove City. While taking a shortcut home that took him by the corner of West Spring and Dennison Avenue, he “noticed under the viaduct west of the penitentiary” members of the fire department and a lot of commotion. His journalistic instincts were strong, and he proceeded closer to the prison. “Some chap yelled at me from the filling station on the corner” and told him, “There is a Fire in the Penitentiary.”38
Humphries continued driving north on Dublin Avenue when he realized he had his Graflex camera with him. He got out of his car and looked for a good spot to take pictures from. He quickly spotted clouds of smoke coming from the cellblock. He then ran over to the Paragon Oil Co., where he took five pictures. He remembered an old newspaper adage: “When you get through taking pictures that are ‘unusual,’ you usually look at your watch.” He did; the time was 5:47. He went back to the corner of Spring and Dennison to get closer to the action but was forced back each time by a police cordon. He lamented that he “didn’t have a badge like a news photographer would.”39
Other locals took note as well. The operator of a nearby filling station near the southwest corner of the penitentiary remembered seeing flames and hearing cries as he rushed to the prison gate. “It seemed like a thousand men were yelling and beating on the bars.” He made out a lone voice screaming, “For God’s Sake let me out. I’m burning—I’m burning.” This proved too much for the attendant, and he reversed course away from the fire. When he came back about fifteen minutes later, “most of the cries had stopped” by then. One reporter would describe how the prisoners screamed in terror as a “snakelike coil of heavy black smoke crawled into the cells through ventilators.”40
The fire seemed to draw spectators like moths to a flame. Indeed, “The blazes leaping into the sky acted as a beacon for the curious from all over the city…. Rooftops were crowded in the vicinity, and thousands clambered upon every available point of vantage to see something.” Radio broadcasts also contributed to the growing crowds, especially since the late newspapers had not been delivered yet. “Even the radio, broadcasting its appeal [for help], struck alarm into the homes of thousands,” who would drive, walk, and run to Spring Street. Police were faced with the task of controlling the area so that rescue workers, doctors, guards, soldiers, and others could make their way into the burning Ohio Penitentiary.41
Radio transmissions might have brought legions of curious citizens, but the broadcasts’ ability to summon emergency personnel was inestimable. “Radio played one of the principal roles when Old Man Terror staged his recent thrilling two week melodrama…. Almost as the curtain rose on that spectacle of fire and disorder, radio was on the stage, and it stayed there until the show, from spot news standpoint, was over.”42
The blaze flashed along oil-soaked forms and dry timbers from I&K, undergoing reconstruction, southward into the ill-fated cellblocks, igniting the ancient wooden roof, which was overdue to be replaced. Clouds of smoke billowed out, filling not just the cellblocks but the prison quadrangle as well. Assistant Fire Chief Osborn would later suggest that the guards “seemed a little slow getting cells open,” but followed up by diplomatically commenting that he could “understand” their lack of progress “in the face of terrific heat, dense smoke and so many cells.”43 As the heat grew more intense, some prisoners still locked in the G&H tiers ran water in their sinks and dashed water on their faces and each other; others soaked blankets and hung them in front of their cells to keep smoke out; still others dipped their heads into their water-filled toilet bowls (some of the dead were found in this position). Several reportedly slit their own throats rather than burn alive, while others pleaded with guards to shoot them, forgetting that guards, even if they wanted to oblige the desperate men, were prohibited from carrying guns inside the cellblocks.
