Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [74]
Inside the auditorium itself four policemen were stationed at various points, armed with white flags bearing a red cross. In the event of an audience member falling victim to the heat, the policeman would give the signal to other teams of policemen armed with stretchers and accompanied by one of the Bellevue doctors. While the press would later criticize the police for barring some reporters’ entry, their precautions for victims of heat appeared thorough and professional.
In spite of the total police presence of 275 men inside the Garden, disaster almost struck when the doors were opened at 7:00 PM. Harkening back to the Cleveland meeting four years before, thousands of people immediately rushed through the doors and raced for open seats. “The crush of human beings was frightful,” one observer noted. “It was a panic to all intents and purposes,” said another, “and the weakest was sent to the wall.” As the police tried to “stem the tide,” Patrolman Andrew Devery was struck so violently in the stomach that he had to be taken to the basement hospital, the first casualty of the evening. Another policeman was knocked down by the crowd, and yet another pressed by the crowd so hard against the interior glass doors that he nearly broke through.
Twenty-five policemen had been stationed at the entrance to deal with the crowd, and they attempted several times to form a wedge and cut the crowd in two. Just outside the doors the situation was the same. Acting Deputy Chief Moses W. Cortright commanded the policemen attempting to control the stampede of people. A powerful man of strong build, he took an active role in trying to press the crowd back to prevent injury, and after fifteen minutes of extreme exertion, he became the first heat victim of the evening. Led to the basement by one of his men, Cortright had aromatic spirits of ammonia and an ice cap administered to him by Dr. Nammack. Within the hour Cortright had recovered and wanted to return to duty, but the doctor kept him in the hospital until ten o’clock.
In the end, no case of heat prostration was severe enough to warrant the ice bath, and all of the cases of heat exhaustion came early in the evening during that initial crush at the entrance. Once inside the vast auditorium, the panic subsided. “Strong men drew aside to adjust their garments after the wild stampede,” one reporter observed, “and women gasped their relief at so narrow an escape from physical injury.”
The Garden was hot. One observer noted a temperature of 97 degrees, with the sticky humidity caused by the close-packed thousands. In fact the heat seemed to make more of an impression on the audience than Bryan’s speech. “Sweltering,” was a common word. “Furnace-like,” one person said.
The audience’s suffering was prodigious. “Anything for Comfort,” a Tribune subheading announced, in a special section dedicated to covering only the spectators’ actions in the heat. A number of observers noted that with every coat and vest removed, the audience appeared as a sea of white. “The south gallery which stretched its length opposite the rostrum looked not unlike a laundry with its washing hung to the breeze after the crowd had disposed itself for the season of refreshing,” the Tribune reporter wrote. “Every man elbowed his neighbor with freedom as he wielded his enormous palm-leaf fan after the awkward fashion peculiar