Christmas fire brings tragedy, mystery
By GENE CURTIS World Staff Writer
Fire turned a fun night of singing carols, enjoying refreshments and exchanging gifts into tragedy at a Christmas Eve celebration in 1924. It also created a mystery that wasn't solved for 32 years.
The fire in the one-room Babb Switch School near Hobart left 36 dead and many injured and also led to a new state law that was copied by all other states.
The mystery involved the one person unaccounted for -- Mary Elizabeth Edens, a 3-year-old girl who had been sitting on the lap of her aunt, Alice Noah, when the fire began. Santa Claus Dow Bolding set off the blaze when he reached into the branches of the cedar Christmas tree for one of the last presents and knocked over a burning candle.
"The candle touched a little limb, and the tree was so dry that one whole side was blazing almost instantly," a witness recalled.
Noah died the next day after telling the girl's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Edens, that she had handed the child to someone outside the fiery building. The parents at first thought the child might have been taken to Hobart by one of the rescuers. But no one could account for her.
The aunt's story was borne out by a count of the missing and dead. The bodies of 36 of the 37 who were missing were found, but Mary Elizabeth's body was not among them.
Mary Elizabeth's disappearance remained a mystery until 1956, when an accountant in San Bernardino, Calif., read a newspaper story about the search for the missing girl and connected it with a woman he knew as Mary Reynolds, a Barstow dress shop owner.
The accountant, a Lions Club member, wrote the Hobart Lions Club president that "I have, among my clientele, a prominent young businesswoman who does not know who her father and mother were nor has she been able to find out anything as to possible relatives."
The Hobart Lions provided information about a scar on the missing girl's foot and pictures that were compared with pictures of Reynolds when she was about the same age.
There also was information that the woman in question, as a child, had been "very fond of bacon rinds." Back in Oklahoma, her Aunt Bertha recalled snatching bacon rinds from the missing girl's hand and telling her they were bad for her.
On the night of the fire, she apparently had been handed to a vagabond couple who took her to a series of nomadic camps in Arkansas and Kansas before arriving in California, where she was abandoned. She later worked for her room and board and finally was adopted when she was 15. The woman who adopted her failed in an attempt to learn about her background.
After her identity was confirmed, the long-missing woman returned to Hobart to get acquainted with her parents and other relatives. She later wrote a book, "Mary, A Child of Tragedy," under her new married name of Grossnickle and told her story on national television.
She told her parents she had early memories of "first one family, then another."
About 200 people had crammed into the small building for the event, which was a typical rural Christmas Eve party until the fire. Attempts by several men to put out the fire failed.
The revelers tried to escape through the only door, the Dec. 25, 1924, Tulsa World reported. However, the door opened inwardly and the crowd trying to get out kept it from being opened wide enough for escape.
The trapped victims broke every window, but heavy screens that had been bolted over them to keep prowlers out kept the victims in. The broken windows also created a draft that fed the flames, farmer Andrew Jackson related after his escape. "Within three minutes the dry wood of the room was a mass of flames that licked at the heels of the frenzied, pawing mob that fought for freedom."
Gov. Martin Trapp launched a campaign immediately after the fire to require strict safety regulations in rural school buildings. As a result, the Legislature passed laws requiring that all doors swing out and banned steel netting on the windows of public buildings. The laws also required proper use of gasoline lamps and prohibited the use of candles on trees in public buildings. Buildings also were required to have more than one exit and more windows.
The new Oklahoma safety laws were copied by the legislatures in the other 47
states.
Our Lady of the Angels
In the early 1900’s, the once tiny one-room, single story schoolhouses started to transform into multi-room and multi-story buildings. These structures were built with little or no fire protection or life safety features incorporated into their design.
The reason for this is simple, the technology just did not exist. Another reason for having these factors left out was that most standards and model codes did not exist at the time or that their scope was limited. An ever-increasing population within the community soon contributed to classrooms becoming overcrowded, which gave the appearance of “human stockyards”. These facts combined with the lack of fire protection and life safety features added up to a deadly combination referred to as the “Disaster cocktail”, which had already been stirred.
During a rather routine school day,
one of these schools became a deathtrap for teachers and
students alike. When
everyone in the
school became aware
that a fire had started within the
school,
it was too late
for escape.
The fire had started on the basement level and made
its
way up through the brick and wood structure rapidly
due to
the use of
“balloon” construction. Within moments
exiting the school was useless due to
heat, smoke, and
flames. Conditions
then deteriorated rapidly and students began
to
panic.
Children began to trample other children in the hope of escaping the now raging inferno. Some children fell dead were they stood due to either toxic smoke gases, extreme radiant heat or burns received by the oncoming flames. Fire exits could not be reached or were locked. Panic set in and the teachers could not maintain order. Although all of this was transpiring at a maddening pace, one teacher was successful in getting her students down an exit stairwell. As the school burned, horrified parents rushed to the building and witnessed children trapped at the windows. The onlookers witnessed the smoke and fires greatly intensify within the structure. As the citizens of this community witnessed this horror, inside the children’s bodies began to pile even higher. The fire department arrived, but due to the fire having gained such a big advantage, any action taken could not have prevented the loss of more young lives. |
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As a result of this fire having taken place in a school full of children, Americans began to examine, study, and institute fire protection and life safety standards for school structures. New fire laws and standards for construction were enforced. This combined with a new attitude towards establishing safer schools for children was soon to be realized. Unfortunately, loss of life in fires involving school buildings would not end with this blaze. A fire 50 years later at the “Our Lady of the Angels” catholic school in Chicago, would not only claim the lives of the innocent, but, would change once again the standards which our schools would be built and maintained.
The fire and outcome told in our introduction was taken from accounts given of the “Lake View Elementary” school fire. This fire occurred in Collinwood, Ohio in the year 1908 and claimed 175 lives. Other fires involving schools would occur and would claim the lives of both children as well as adults.
On December 24, 1924, grade school children
were performing an annual Christmas songfest at the Babb
Switch School in
Hobart, Oklahoma
when fire erupted. A
candle placed on the top of a
Christmas
tree, located on
the
schools stage fell into the tree branches causing the tree
to burst into flames. Parents seeing the fire rushed the
stage to rescue the
children. The
children unaware of why
everyone was rushing at them began
to
retreat. This caused
the tree to
topple. The play had been taking place in the
rear
of a one-room schoolhouse, which happened to be the
farthest distance from
an exit. The
fire then forced the
children farther to the rear of the
stage.
This led to the
children
becoming trapped with no avenue for escape. Parents
grabbed children and ran through the flames towards the
only exit door. Men
arrived and
began pulling bodies
through the exit door. The door had
become
jammed due to
the onslaught
of humanity. Within minutes the building was
incinerated
along with the loss of thirty-six lives. Most
being small
children.
Boy and Girl, Victims of Fire, Were All Set for Holiday Nuptials
The Oklahoman Dec. 26, 1924, Front Page