The 1930 Fire
A botched escape attempt led to the deadliest fire in prison history on April 21, 1930. The final toll is given as 322 dead, although a thorough search of death certificates and records by the American Local History Network (at GenealogyBug.net) provides a complete list of victims of the fire, with death certificates, and it has only turned up 319. It's possible that the three conspirators are given as victims 320-322.
James Raymond's subsequent confession tells us how it happened. He and his two confederates, Clinton Grate and Hugh Gibbons, planned to set a fire in the roof of the cell block, which was under construction while it was rebuilt, and escape during the confusion. They placed a candle in a wide tray of kerosene and lit it. Their intention was for the flame to ignite the fuel, and thus begin the general fire, during the dinner hour, when the three of them (and most of the other convicts) were loose in the chow hall. But the device they rigged didn't ignite on schedule. Instead, it took about thirty minutes too long, and when flame finally started to spread, the inmates were securely locked back in their cells.
This was very bad news. More than confusion ensued when the half-completed roof caught fire. The area at the top of the block was as hot and dry as an attic, and was full of fresh lumber. A resin being used on the new wood was highly combustible. The work underway had generated mounds of sawdust, much of which floated in the air like pollen between grates to the fresh oxygen outside. When the kerosene caught, the entire new roof section essentially exploded.
Flaming beams fell into the block, along with burning tar and roof tiles, and the prison building itself began to burn right away. Many deaths occurred because of oxygen deprivation and smoke inhalation, but the fire itself roared up and down the catwalks and roasted quite a number of convicts alive in their cells. At this time prisons used a turnkey system, requiring that each cell door be opened individually by a guard; there was no centralized emergency unlocking mechanism--not even a lever at the end of a row of cells to be thrown in an emergency.
Guards fought the flames as best they could and unlocked cell door after cell door, indiscriminately, and the main gates of the prison were flung wide. Guards enlisted prisoners as well, tossing them sets of keys so they could keep freeing as many inmates as possible. People carried each other out without regard for uniform (and many of the uniforms had been blackened or burned by the end of the night). One guard recalled being overcome by smoke and waking up with two convicts carrying him out to the lawn.
The circumstances surrounding the freeing of the inmates are sometimes recounted differently. Some claim that armed police brigades formed a perimeter around the grounds. But more often I've read that the life-or-death nature of the emergency served to equalize inmates, guards, and administrators. At least one convict died after going back in several times and carrying out men overcome by smoke. Prison employees recalled prisoners whose heroism saved lives, and several pardons were later granted based on their conduct. Perhaps most striking, there were no escape attempts amidst all the confusion; one inmate got lost downtown and turned himself in at a police station in the early morning hours. (The three who planned to escape had not intended to hurt anyone, and obviously changed their minds once things went wrong.)
After the fire department extinguished the flames, an eerie tableau replaced the hellish screams and smell of burning flesh. The destroyed blocks contained a great many cell doors which had never been reached or unlocked; the bodies strewn on the floors and walkways were greatly outnumbered by those of men who had died like animals tortured in a cage. The heat had literally cooked whole groups of inmates alive, while huge numbers had suffocated as the oxygen sucked away, or had choked on the toxic black smoke. Many corpses were found kneeling at the cell latrine, head in the toilet bowl with a wet towel draped across in a desperate bid for clean air. 130 other victims were severely injured.
Coffins were displayed to mourners at the State Fairgrounds, lined up row on row. It was a ghastly sight, but no mortuary could contain so many. Closed caskets were the rule that day.
James Raymond's conscience got the better of him; as the Columbus Citizen reported on April 5, 1933, he approached a guard, confessed his role in the tragedy, and demanded to be locked in solitary confinement. There he came clean, naming Clinton Grate and Hugh Gibbons, and asking for nothing even when the warden offered him anything he wanted in return for a signed statement. Then Raymond hung himself with bedsheets. Grate and Gibbons were convicted of second degree murder and each handed a life sentence. Grate then hung himself as well, after making his own confession. Gibbons lived on for years but barely spoke of the event; people who knew him said he was haunted by his role in the fire, and went to his grave broken by remorse.
After the fire department extinguished the flames, an eerie tableau replaced the hellish screams and smell of burning flesh. The destroyed blocks contained a great many cell doors which had never been reached or unlocked; the bodies strewn on the floors and walkways were greatly outnumbered by those of men who had died like animals tortured in a cage. The heat had literally cooked whole groups of inmates alive, while huge numbers had suffocated as the oxygen sucked away, or had choked on the toxic black smoke. Many corpses were found kneeling at the cell latrine, head in the toilet bowl with a wet towel draped across in a desperate bid for clean air. 130 other victims were severely injured.
Coffins were displayed to mourners at the State Fairgrounds, lined up row on row. It was a ghastly sight, but no mortuary could contain so many. Closed caskets were the rule that day.
James Raymond's conscience got the better of him; as the Columbus Citizen reported on April 5, 1933, he approached a guard, confessed his role in the tragedy, and demanded to be locked in solitary confinement. There he came clean, naming Clinton Grate and Hugh Gibbons, and asking for nothing even when the warden offered him anything he wanted in return for a signed statement. Then Raymond hung himself with bedsheets. Grate and Gibbons were convicted of second degree murder and each handed a life sentence. Grate then hung himself as well, after making his own confession. Gibbons lived on for years but barely spoke of the event; people who knew him said he was haunted by his role in the fire, and went to his grave broken by remorse.
Like the fire at New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, or Ohio's Collinwood School, the 1930 fire at the Ohio Penitentiary revolutionized the way prisons are constructed and run. In Collinwood, part of what changed about school buildings involved outward-opening doors with emergency bars; in prisons, entire blocks are now required to have a lever (and usually a button) which opens all cell doors at once, and a fire evacuation plan has to be in effect. Because overcrowding was such a factor in the high body count, several hundred inmates were transferred to a correctional farm in London--though overcrowding is one problem America's prisons have never seriously attempted to solve, as a glance at current statistics will show you.
The worst prison fire ever, it remains the third-deadliest structural fire in American history. Worse: Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in 1942 (492 dead); and Chicago's 1903 Iroquois Theater fire (more than 605).
Many of the bodies were shipped home, but there were dozens of unidentified and unidentifiable corpses. These unfortunate folks lie underground in the state cemetery near the intersection of Harper and McKinley, below I-70 on Columbus's west side. Their stones read simply UNKNOWN, row after row. And then there are the mass graves: burial pits dug for those so destroyed by flame that little more than ash remained; body parts, where they were found; and in a few cases, human bodies tangled together in desperate, inextricable embrace. The extra-large grave lots provided for those marked UNKNOWNS are the final resting place of the saddest remnants of that event nearly a century gone.
It's the fire--the most agonizing event in a place that saw a century and a half of agony--which is most often cited as the source of the ghostly manifestations at the Pen. The smell of smoke, sound of screams, and sight of spectral flames and burning figures were commonly reported thereafter.
Many of the bodies were shipped home, but there were dozens of unidentified and unidentifiable corpses. These unfortunate folks lie underground in the state cemetery near the intersection of Harper and McKinley, below I-70 on Columbus's west side. Their stones read simply UNKNOWN, row after row. And then there are the mass graves: burial pits dug for those so destroyed by flame that little more than ash remained; body parts, where they were found; and in a few cases, human bodies tangled together in desperate, inextricable embrace. The extra-large grave lots provided for those marked UNKNOWNS are the final resting place of the saddest remnants of that event nearly a century gone.
It's the fire--the most agonizing event in a place that saw a century and a half of agony--which is most often cited as the source of the ghostly manifestations at the Pen. The smell of smoke, sound of screams, and sight of spectral flames and burning figures were commonly reported thereafter.
