Baby Elizabeth Finally Falls in Crush of Panic in Canonsburg Theater and Is Trampled to Death Before Nellie, Who Had Been Protecting Her Thus Far, Can Rescue Her
SPECIAL TELEGRAM FROM A. C. EDWARDS, Staff Correspondent.
CANONSBURG, PA., Aug.,27 – An act of bravery, although it availed nothing, still illuminates the strong, sisterly love that prompted the deed, was the heroic effort made by Nellie Gibbs, aged 16, the daughter of Hugh Gibbs, of East College street, to save her sister in the theater panic here Saturday night. The father, with his three little daughters, attended the picture show. Fearing that they might get separated in the crush, the father gave his girls each their tickets, and shortly afterward lost sight of them. Elizabeth, aged 12, was the youngest and the frailest.
These three children were not victims of the blind terror that had seized upon those about them. They had seen the girl pianist stand up and beseech the people to be seated, saying that the alarm of fire was false, and they had seen those in the front seats of the house sit down – the panic was started from further back – but the three sisters were caught in the mesh, and they could not escape the surging human torrent that swept or trampled over everything before it.
Then commence an agonizing struggle of these three sisters to avoid being thrown to the floor and meeting a terrible fate. Brawny men with strength enough to have fought a way for them, instead struck women and children aside and plunged over the suffocating human beings underfoot, heedless of the suffering they inflicted. Others who jumped from the galleries knocked down persons about them like ninepins, and through it all the little girls, with arms wound about each other, tried to fight their feeble way toward the door. Then little Elizabeth tripped and fell. Her sister Nellie raised her to her feet, and supported the fainting child who was growing weaker under the terrific strain. Despair seized the older girl, who felt she was not strong enough to withstand the double strain much longer. Then there came a sudden surge from the crowd, and black night for poor little Elizabeth, who sank underfoot, and was not seen any more by Nellie until her mangled body was taken to the undertaker’s shop.
Nellie, her strength gone, was pushed into the black mass of people before her, and she was forced to her knees, and then the little girl prayed fervently to be allowed to live, and almost by a miracle she found the awful jam about her breaking away, and, rising to her feet, she staggered out of the fatal place of amusement.