The Hammond Circus Train Disaster of 1918 | Episode 84 - Doomsday: History's Most Dangerous Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you know the difference between your guts and balloon animals, Well,
your guts are ever so slightly less flammable. Hello and

(00:21):
welcome to Doomsday Histories Most Dangerous Podcast. Together, we are
going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and
on inspiring but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from
their out human history and around the world. On today's episode,
you'll learn how to squeeze every penny out of a

(00:42):
beloved animal corpse. I'll accidentally teach you why fire is
the best way to get rid of leaves or bubble
tax records or the body. And you'll learn the surprisingly
simple thing that you should do if you ever found
yourself full body or a go meat into debris. And
if you were listening to this on Patreon, you would

(01:03):
also learn about two warm up disasters that led directly
to this one. You learn how close medicine cabinets used
to be, two narcotic liquor cabinets. You would learn the
incredible fallout of trying to kill people on twinkies, and
you would learn the story of high falutin Wild West
rodeo war hero Buffalo Bill Cody. This is not the

(01:23):
show you play around kids, or while eating, or even
in mixed company. But as long as you find yourself
a little more historically engaged and learn something that could
potentially save your life, our work is done. So all
that said, shoot the kids out of the room, put
on your headphones and safety glasses, and let's begin. I

(01:44):
make no secret to the fact that I don't like
episodes where animals or children get hurt or killed, and
thankfully none of that is going to happen on today's episode.
Will with a few rare exceptions. Case in point, let
me begin today's story by telling you about an elephant
that was run over by a train and the self

(02:04):
promoting a moral industrial strength garbage bag who was there
to sell souvenirs. In eighteen eighty five, Jumbo the elephant
was billed as the biggest elephant in the world. He
stood about fourteen feet tall and clocked in around six
and a half tons that's about two Dodge caravans worth
of elephant. They called him the largest animal in the world.

(02:29):
He wasn't actually the biggest elephant ever, but he was
reportedly the largest in captivity at the time, and that's
where he spent his life. In captivity after being captured
at a very young age, presumably from Ethiopia, and from
there he moved to Paris before eventually settling into a nice,
quiet life giving children free rides at the London Zoological

(02:52):
Gardens in England, and he became a bit of a celebrity.
He did even royalty and impresarios like Winston Churchill and
Queen Victoria rode on his back. Of course, that was
before he was eventually sold to the P. T. Barnum Circus,
where instead of interacting playfully with his loving public, he

(03:13):
was regularly filled with hard liquor to keep him quiet. P. T.
Barnum was a guy who loved exploiting and exhibiting animals
and even human beings with disabilities and deformities. He was
also one who preached fear and pain as the best
ways to control animals and lesser beings than he'd go

(03:35):
on and make up some elaborate backstories, you know, anything
to get the public to part with their nichols. This
was a man who thought so little of people that
he used to taxidermy fish and monkeys into diy mermaids.
He once owned a black slave who he billed as
George Washington's one hundred and sixty one year old nurse.

(03:56):
He also had a black man who he named Zip
the Pinhead, with which sounds undignified until you find out
that he also called him the missing link between humans
and apes. And I don't care how much you love
the Greatest Showman movie. P. T. Barnum had the integrity
of a diaper and all of the compassion of a
vending machine, and Jumbo received the full P. T. Barnum experience,

(04:19):
which I would not wish on anyone. That was until
the fateful day on September the fifteenth, eighteen eighty five,
at a circus stop in Saint Thomas, Ontario, that's about
two hours southwest of Toronto. And let me assure you,
Jumbo did not explode like a bag of super nothing.
He simply could not suffer the internal injuries of stopping

(04:41):
a train with your face. And he passed quite peacefully
looking and surrounded by well wishers, while they weren't so
much well wishers as ass hats who wanted souvenir photos
or prints or a lock of hair or a patch
of skin from the big dead guy. A big dead
guy surrounded by mystery see, his death was not so

(05:04):
clear cut. Barnum maintained in his version that Jumbo saw
the train coming and sacrificed himself to save another elephant,
a dwarf elephant by the name of Tom Thumb, who
was with him at the time, and he saved his
friend by picking him up with his trunk and throwing
him to safety before turning to charge the train head on,

(05:24):
knocking it off the tracks. Now, others had thought that
Jumbo had been suffering from tuberculosis for some time, and
the rumors were that an arrangement had been made to
have him quote meet the train so to speak, you know,
for the sake of public publicity. And back in January
of nineteen seventy three, National Lampoon magazine featured a cover

(05:44):
with a dog with a gun to its head and
the headline, if you do not buy this magazine, we
will kill this dog. And I tell you that because
this was done to honor P. T. Barnum. And if
you're still not convinced he was capable of such consciousless behavior,
let me inform you that following Jumbo's death, Barnum had
his skeleton mounted and his body separately Taxidermede so that

(06:06):
the two could tour separately at the same time. He
generated two revenue streams from one corpse. Well fast forward
and Jumbo's body was destroyed in a fire almost one
hundred years later in nineteen seventy five, and his skeleton
remains off display at the Museum of Natural History in
New York City. Thankfully for US P. T. Barnum died

(06:30):
in eighteen ninety one, strangled to death in his home
by a bearded lady at eighty one years of age.
And he can't hurt anyone any more. And thankfully not
all circuses were run like an open face pit mine,
extracting every penny of value. Some just like to pay
their bills while entertaining the public, and they have been

(06:53):
doing this for thousands of years. They used to hold
circuses all the way back in ancient Roman times, where
animals and acrobats and chariot races thrilled city wide massive crowds.
It was all done to distract the public from the
fact that Rome had become a politically corruptill with an
over extended economy because of some fairly unusual trade wars

(07:17):
going on against all of their strongest allies and it worked,
not the tariffs, I mean the entertainment. The public ate
it up and they generally didn't notice that everything was
going to hell until Roman society finally collapsed all together.
And this was about twenty five hundred years ago. So
good thing for all of us that we don't do

(07:38):
this kind of thing anymore. Today we are going to
be spending our time with the Hagenback Wallace Traveling Circus.
You might not know the name, but in the early
nineteen hundreds it was one of the most prominent traveling
shows on the road. At its peak it was only
second to the Wringling Brothers and Barnaby and Bailey Circus.

(08:01):
By nineteen eighteen, the company employed over two hundred and
fifty performers, acrobats, clowns, equestrians, animal tamers, I mean, you
name it. And the origin of this circus all began
when Benjamin Wallace purchased the Carl Hagenbach Circus back in
nineteen oh seven, And that was a circus that began
as the Carl Hagenbach Trained Animal Show all the way

(08:24):
back in eighteen forty four. For reference, the first telegraph
message was sent in eighteen forty four, and quite awesomely,
I've always loved this fact. The message was what hath
god wrought. Hagenbach had started out as an animal trainer
who is best remembered for pioneering the art of restrained
animal training. You know how you train your dog by

(08:46):
rewarding good behavior instead of breaking a chair over its
head for bad behavior, Well, he came up with that.
It was all the brainchild of Benjamin Wallace, a former
Civil War vet and horse stable magnate from Indiana. By
the time eighteen eighty two rolled around, he'd gotten a
little tired of horse farts and post traumatic recollections of

(09:06):
all of his friends being turned into bloody parts, so
he made a change. When the WC. Coop circus went bankrupt,
he scraped together every penny he had so he could
repo their gear and create the Great Wallace Show in
eighteen eighty four, which is a little like when your
cell phone repair kiosk looks like it maybe used to
be a pizza hut. But it worked, and Wallace did

(09:29):
all right for himself. By nineteen oh seven, he was
looking to hungry, hungry hippo up some new assets. When
he bought the Carl Hagenbach Menagerie and Circus, which he
merged with his own to create the Hagenbach Wallace Circus.
Hagabac was all, well, enjoy your circus, but Wallace was all,
yeah about that, I'm keeping your name for the recognition value.

(09:52):
Hagabac was a little pissed and sued to keep his
name out of this episode, but they kept his name anyways,
and Wallace grew that show into a million dollar extravaganza
that thrilled and amazed visitors from coast to coast with
all those people, not even counting the animals and costumes
and stands and tents and poles and everything else that

(10:14):
you can imagine goes into putting on a circus show,
and all of it had to come with them from
city to city, which took two entire trains, each with
twenty eight cars. So yeah, very long trains were needed
just to transport it all. Back at the time, traveling
entertainment would not have survived very long trudging slowly across

(10:34):
the land in caravans of trucks and cars. Railways were
a thousand times more efficient than road travel, and by
the early twentieth century, nearly a hundred circuses were regularly
crisscrossing the United States by rail. It was a different time.
And when the circus came to town, man, make sure
you're near your fainting coach when you get that flyer,

(10:55):
because this would have been something to see. It would
have been like imagine a jumbo jet landing on the
main street of your little town, and outdoors celebrities and
elephants and jugglers and fire breathers, and you've never seen
anything like it. And yes, this is the kind of
thing that you are going to want to have mentioned
in your obituary one day. Businesses and schools would sometimes

(11:19):
close just so people could watch. However, traveling by rail
did come with some risks. So today, about ten thousand
people are injured by trains in a year. I'll point
out less than a thousand of those are actually killed,
and the wild majority of these are trespassers. At track level.
You always see people stalling out cars and trucks on

(11:41):
train tracks. And how this ever happens, is completely beyond me. Now,
back in nineteen nineteen, more than ten thousand people were
killed every year by trains, and over two hundred thousand
were injured. Of course, most of those were railroad workers,
but like I said, it wasn't entirely safe. Story takes
place July the twenty second, nineteen eighteen. Our story begins

(12:05):
in Michigan City, Indiana, pretty much on the shore of
Lake Michigan. The circus had just completed two sold out
performances and were now on their way, headed west about
forty miles or sixty five kilometers to Hammond, Illinois, just
southeast of Chicago. Yeah, the life of a circus performer
was a busy one. At the end of a stretch,

(12:26):
it's all hands on deck to repack everything and get
it all on the train cars to send to the
next town. And there were two trains, like we said,
And these trains were made up of Pullman carriages m
Pullman carriages if you do not know about them. They
were designed by a man named George Mortimer Pullman to
offer a more luxurious and comfortable experience than the loud,

(12:49):
dirty discomfort of typical railcars with their cramp seats and
hardwooden benches. Pullman had a better vision. He wanted plush,
cushioned seating that coned into beds at night and privacy
curtains and gas lighting. These cars were designed with ornate
wooden paneling and brass fittings and carpeting, which made them

(13:09):
feel more like hotel rooms than the esthetic of normal railcars,
which I will describe as being closer to the manger
that Jesus was born in. These cars became so synonymous
with luxury that people just called them pullman cars, the
same way that you would say Kleenex instead of tissue,
or xerox instead of photocopy. These were largely older cars

(13:32):
that had been retrofitted for the unique needs of a
traveling circus. But let's just say that they had been
starting from a fairly luxurious place. The first of the
two trains had already arrived in Hammond. These are ones
that carried workers and animals and gear. The second train
carried most of the performers and the crew. However, it

(13:53):
had been forced to stop it was having a mechanical issue.
There was an overheated axle bearing, which doesn't sound like
a big deal. Well, I mean, this is the kind
of thing that can lead to a derailmentt but for
the purposes of our story, it just means that the
axle bearing probably wasn't lubricated enough, which led to friction
that created a dangerous amount of heat. So yeah, at

(14:17):
worst it could lead to a fire which consumed the
entire train. And then I end up telling you about
Patreon and Global medic and then give you a hint
about our next episode. But no, let me assure you
everything is going to be okay. This was all happening
around four in the morning. The second train car had

(14:37):
pulled off onto a sidetrack so the engineers on board
could work on the issue without having to wake everybody up.
The thing is, well, they didn't quite fit onto the sidetrack,
Like I said, very long cars, and while the performer slept,
the last five cars, four of which were wooden sleeper cars,
were still poking out onto the main track. Now, of course,

(15:01):
you don't really worry about that kind of thing. You
don't get a lot of train traffic at four in
the morning. And as the men toiled under and around
the axle, they began to feel a vibration in the track,
and then they noticed a light growing in the distance.
This was something that they could feel and sense before
they could hear. It was at this point in our

(15:21):
story when they realized without warning that they appeared to
be sharing track with a train that was barreling down
on them at full speed. The estimates were that it
was traveling at speeds as high as sixty miles or
almost eight hundred kilometers an hour, and it was a
big one, a Michigan Central Railroad train used to transport
soldiers to the East Coast to ship them off to

(15:43):
the trenches of Europe, and now it had come barreling
down the main track. The circus engineers frantically waved their
lamps and screamed as loud as they could to try
to get the driver's attention, which their hope for was
dwindling as they desperately watched the oncoming train blow through
several stops signs, scream and protest as they like nothing

(16:03):
was slowing it down. Now, imagine that you're asleep mining
your own business and I don't know, maybe flying or
pulling out your own teeth, or you're back at school
in your underwear. I don't know what weird things you
guys dream about. Imagine that's happening, and then suddenly and
immediately you are jolted into consciousness. No buildup of noise,
no distant rumble, just an instantaneous, deafening explosion, and let

(16:28):
slow that down. So as soon as the sound breaks
for an instant the gravity beneath you drops out as
the train, well your part of it, is lifted up
and away from the tracks. Thousands of pounds of steel
framed troop trains slam into your train with katastrophic force,
and everything not tied down, that is to say, everything

(16:49):
flies in every direction and the space is filled with
splintering wood and twisted metal. This would have felt like
somebody had set off a cannon blasting through the car,
and the train itself would have felt like it was
folding in on itself, and you would struggle to hear
the groans of fellow passengers and the shifting wreckage through
ringing ears filled with blood there becomes thick with a

(17:11):
kind of a woody, greasy, metallic, bloody aroma. But don't worry,
it's not all yours. There is plenty of people's blood
to be had, And you and most everyone you know
look like demo models out of the contortionist handbook. But
at least you are still with us. So you're taking
the train from point A to point B. But somewhere

(17:32):
in between you find your shoes blown off and now
you're covering your eyes with your feet. Would you know
what to do? Well? If you have the chance to
revisit our last episode, we offered up some pretty sound
advice around increasing your piece by calming yourself down. But
if you suffer an atlanto occipital dislocation and now your

(17:52):
skull is facing the wrong way, maybe your feelings can
take a minute. Now. For the most part, you really
wouldn't need a dog to tell you that something was
going wrong with your head, or your neck or your spine.
That said, there are a lot more internal injuries that
you can achieve than you could count on two severed hands.
You ever hear of hyper extension or portional or hyperflexion injuries,

(18:17):
All that basically describes extreme bending of the body, and
that bending can do so much. Your vertebrae can fracture
or dislocate, and severe twisting of the torso can cause
the pelvis to fracture in multiple places. Think of it
like the flail ribs we described in a previous episode,
where most of your ribs become detached and just sort

(18:38):
of float in your chest. It's like that, but for
your spine, and the ligaments in your spine can sever,
but you'd never know because the skin and the muscles
look so deceptively intact. I don't have to tell you
that a limb could be caught on a fixed object
while you continue moving, and of course that thing is
going to tear off at the joint. But you might
not have known that if your leg was trapped while

(18:59):
your upper body he continued moving, the bones can actually
break in a spiral pattern. Obviously, heavy debris like oh,
I don't know, train parts could easily crush your chest
and results in all kinds of organ rupture or suffocation.
But did you know that in a shearing injury like this,
your organs can actually rip free. And I'm including your

(19:21):
heart and your brain in that list. Now, most of
you are still listening, so I'm going ahead and guessing
that you don't have anything like that going on. But
for those few of you who are, all, well, what
about me? If you found yourself trapped but you can
still move your arms or your legs, I'm gonna go
ahead and ask you to gently try to free yourself,

(19:41):
as long as you know you're not putting too much
strain on your body. There are times when even a
slight shift in position can relieve enormous pressure and pain.
Of course, in a slightly different situation, it could lead
to paralysis. So here's what I'm gonna say. If you
can reach your phone, call a mergence services immediately and

(20:01):
just explain your situation so that you know. I literally
dialed nine one one using my tongue on a cell phone,
so now you know that you can too. Of course,
if you can't reach it, I'm going to ask you
to make noise. Yell, bang, make some noise. Just do
whatever it is that you feel comfortable doing to try
to bring attention to yourself. If you still have the

(20:22):
use of your arms in your hands, obviously using those
to create a little pocket to make breathing easier, Yeah,
definitely do that. But if you are stuck in a
position where you simply can't move, conserve your energy and
focus on remaining as still and comfortable as possible. See
this is one of those weird safety segments where I'm
largely going to tell you if you're holding your phone

(20:43):
with your remaining teeth and dialing it with your toes,
just stop doing anything because remember all those internal injuries
I told you about, Well that was only a few.
There are so many things that can go wrong beneath
the surface. So if you found yourself pinned by debris,
your tetrist into an impossible situation. This is one of
those hunger down and weight kind of situations. Because sometimes

(21:06):
the best course of action is no course of action.
If you have a piece of debris sticking out of
your chest, don't even touch it. Leave it. You are
not qualified to diagnose what's going on around you, so
leave this one to the professionals. But since you're going
to be waiting a while again see our last episode.
And secondly, let me quickly tell you about your natural painkillers.

(21:28):
You've obviously all heard of adrenaline and endorphins kicking in,
and those help you ignore the otherwise stellar pain of
your situation. Ankavalins and dinorphans can also get secreted in
terrible situations, and those help reduce the pain signals that
your body makes before they reach your brain. You might
not know this, but you also naturally produce and dough cannabinoids.

(21:50):
It's the same stuff that you find in THHC. And
I will tell you Cannabis does not eliminate pain. It
just has the potential to change the way that you
process or think of it pain. And even though there
is a very old saying about smoking them, if you've
got them, this is not the situation where I'm going
to be telling you to light up a spliff. Just
rely on your natural painkillers. Sometimes they can lead to

(22:13):
you feeling little or no pain at all immediately following
your injury, even in extreme cases like an amputation. However,
once all that wears off, that pain is going to
return twofold. So just try to stay comfortable and warm
until rescue personnel can pull you free and shoot you
up with something a little less natural. Somewhere nearby, someone

(22:36):
groans in pain while others appear oddly still. You're probably
already scared out of your mind. And if not, allow
me to quickly remedy. That the wooden train cars of
the time were lit with oil lamps. Maybe you first
realize it when you notice a muffled, crackling sound rising
up from behind you. Kerosene had splashed everywhere inside the

(23:00):
wooden cars, which had been reduced to the consistency of
kindling which fire certainly appreciates, Yes, that is fire. It
spread quickly throughout the wooden debris, and the breathable air
was quickly replaced with billowing smoke, which makes every breath
a struggle. The sound of the impact had woken people
for miles, who by now had rushed to the scene.

(23:23):
You might be able to see them through the gaps
in the wreckage, but for all the good that did see,
they couldn't actually help. The fire had been growing along
with the ambient temperature. It was too hot for people
to approach the train, let alone board it. And detetrius
you out of your situation. Henry Miller, not the controversial author.
He had been sleeping in the last coach next to

(23:44):
the caboose. He heard the splintering wood and crashing noises
growing as the train buckled in on itself, and the
next thing he knew he had been thrown from the train.
He said, it looked like it had parted in the center,
as though it had been sliced clean through with a
giant knife. Those not thrown from the train were forced
to claw their way out of the debris. Imagine kneading

(24:06):
out of a place so bad that you willingly leave
your finger nails behind. Survivors risked their lives to pull
friends and family free, in spite of the fact that
they would burn for their effort. Eugeniinos found himself pinned
beneath some wooden beams. And you know those stories of
an adrenalized coffee field mom lifting a car off a baby,

(24:26):
Well that's what his wife Mary did. Some nearby clowns
tried to help her, but she was all very smash
and she did it all by herself. They pulled them
clear just as the flames were licking his clothes, and
he only received thermal burns. But not everyone was so lucky.
They were held against their will, pinned and twisted into
the debris, and unable to pull themselves free. Many called

(24:50):
for help before, only to be overwhelmed as the fire
spread and took them each one by one. The flames
moved quickly, passing from car a car with surprising speed.
It must have been at least a twenty alarm fire,
because fire departments from as far as Gary and Hammond
arrived quickly. Of course, the problem with trains compared to say, buildings,

(25:13):
is their mobile so when they crash or break down,
they don't always do it near life saving amenities like
fire hydrants. I don't know what your experience with firefighters is,
but they have a great enthusiasm for water. In this case,
the only freely available water came from a shallow nearby marsh,

(25:34):
not even deep enough to draw up for the hoses,
certainly not enough to roll the train around in. A
lot of people and equipment were brought in to try
to help, and a crane was brought in to lift
debris and help dig people out, but the heat from
the fire was so intense that no one could operate it.
By the time the roar of the fire had been
reduced to the heavy tinkle of cooling metal, eighty six

(25:57):
people were dead and twenty seven and others were injured. Sadly,
the task of identifying the dead was almost hopeless. Practically
everyone who remained on the train had been reduced to
little more than charred remnants earned beyond recognition from the fire.
In my very first episode, before I describe the injuries,

(26:19):
I took a moment to say, Hey, if you are
not great with gory detail, maybe you might want to
skip a few minutes, and I would like to re
extend that courtesy Now, okay, still here, good, Here we go.
When exposed to extreme heat, the human body undergoes a
gruesome transformation. In the beginning, all the moisture in your

(26:40):
body will evaporate, leaving the skin to blister and blacken
and contract and split open, allowing the underlying muscle and
tissue to play a little peekaboo. The fat beneath the
skin liquefies and then ignites, which fuels the fire like
a man sized candle. The intense heat causes tissues to
shrink and muscles to tighten contract, which sometimes forces the

(27:02):
body into a kind of an old timey boxer's pose,
you know, like a gentleman pugilist with the arms and
the legs all curled inward. And as the flames continue
their awful work, the soft tissues, including the facial features,
are burned away, erasing the defining characteristics like the nose
and ears and lips and eyes. People have it in

(27:22):
their heads that teeth always survive a fire, but it's
not like they can absorb infinite heat. You cook them
long enough, and with enough thermal expansion, they will crack
or shatter, and in the right slash, wrong circumstances, a
skull can fracture or even explode from the pressure of
steam build up, and after enough time, with enough fire,

(27:43):
the bones will calcify and become brittle before they eventually
crumble into ash. Bodies have gone through fires where dental
records are meaningless, where DNA itself becomes unreadable, where all
you have left are fragments of bone and maybe an
artificial implant if your investigators were so lucky. And in
cases of extreme incineration, the human body is reduced to

(28:08):
a delicate, powdery residue, leaving behind zero trace of the
individual who it once was. The bodies here had become
blackened and brittle and fused with the scorched wreckage, with
their features having been fully erased. So what happened, Well,
let's get right to it. Engineer Alonzo Sergeant was at

(28:32):
the controls of the approaching train that night. He had
been piloting a K eight R four six two Pacific
type locomotive, which doesn't say much. Let me simply tell
you this is an absolute beast of a train. If
you can picture in your head the largest, old timiest
steam spitting train engine of all time, this would be
one of those, and that's not including any of the cars.

(28:55):
Just the engine and the tender could weigh as much
as one hundred and thirty ton. That is heavier than
thirty Dodge caravans, just for reference. And you describe its
appearances robust. It was a cylindrical monster that measured about
eighty feet long and weighed in at over three hundred
thousand pounds, and that again is without any of the

(29:18):
cars in tow. This was locomotive number eighty four eighty five,
a steam locomotive. Now, I don't know if it was
the soothing hum that lulled his brain into a relaxed state,
or maybe the gentle vibrations that soothed him like a baby,
but this guy was out. Despite his years of experience,
he had fallen asleep at the controls. This guy, he

(29:41):
had a known history of doing this, and I mean,
who could blame him? The soft sway of a train,
it basically becomes a kind of a lullaby. The rhythmic
click clacking of steel wheels on iron rails sets a
very nice tempo for unconsciousness. And Alonzo sergeant snore through
the stop signals. He snored past the men waving frantically

(30:03):
as he passed, and he snoozed right into the back
of the other train. The train would have and I
am guessing here based on weight and pliability of the
thing that it hit and extrapolating how the force would
peter out over time and distance, this train would have
impacted with about one point eight millaneutons of force. And okay,

(30:25):
I tried to create analogies for that level of impact,
and the best one that I could imagine is that
it would be like playing catch with ninety Dodge caravans
falling out of the sky. It is at this point
I would also like to tell you Alonzo Sergeant survived.
It's a real testament to how well built and powerful
this vehicle was. The best explanation after the fact, because

(30:47):
he did live, was that he had not slept in
the previous twenty four hours. He was too busy mowing
down on several heavily carved up meals. And I'm not
making that up. He would later go on to admit that, yes,
he had fallen asleep at the throttle, and he confessed
that he had done it after taking kidney pills. I
myself don't like kidney so I guess pills would be

(31:09):
the best way to eat it, But I don't know
how much you understand what pills were like. Back in
the early nineteen hundreds, one of the most popular patent
medicines was Warner's Safe Kidney and Liver Cure, which was
basically a cocktail of alcohol, opiates, and sedative herbs. A
lot of kidney and bladder tonics were made out of
opium or morphine, or codeine or phenobarbitol, and just about

(31:33):
anything you could knock your ass out. Back in the day,
it wasn't that easy to tell the difference between your
medicine cabinet and your liquor cabinet, and pharmacists were just
like bartenders with diplomas, sort of. One of the eleven
worst things about the tragedy was that the circus train
was mostly wooden, while the troop train was made of
much sterner stuff. The wooden circus cars shattered and collapsed,

(31:57):
trapping passengers inside, and a massive fire around did almost immediately,
the Interstate Commerce Commission released a statement to the Chicago
Daily Tribune saying we do everything we can to discourage
the use of wooden cars on passenger trains and urge
the substitution of steel ones. But they then went on
to say that making that suggestion was all that they

(32:17):
could do, and that brings us into the blame game,
and blame was widely debated, which is a problem with
these disasters. Someone at Company X is held accountable, but
then walks away with the lightest slap on the wrist possible.
When blame gets spread around, it just prolongs all this
was the railway company responsible for allowing two trains on

(32:39):
the same track. Was the circus management liable for breaking
down in the first place. The guy catching Z's behind
the throttle of a million pound missile, damn well earned
some scrutiny. Heads we're going to roll, and everyone even
remotely connected to rail travel all competed to shout not
it as quick as possible. Sergeant was arrested and charged

(33:00):
with manslaughter by federal transportation officials. Not even the cops
didn't even know they could do that, And to all appearances,
it was a pretty slam down case. All the prosecution
had to do was hold up a photo of the
disaster and point to sergeant right. So what actually happened
was Sergeant's defense attorney argued that Sergeant, a veteran engineer

(33:22):
with sixteen years of experience under his belt, only fell
asleep because, well, yes, he got gooned on opiates and booze.
But they argued it happened because he was chronically exhausted,
exactly as planned. They said, sergeant had no intention to
cause harm. Fatigue was normal and common amongst engineers at
the time. He just worked long hours, as did all

(33:43):
conductors and train jockeys. From a legal point of view,
it reminds me of a messed up story of a
guy claiming diminished capacity in a murder because he had
eaten too many twinkies. He was just depressed, and today
we all know that eating twinkies is just a symptom
of a deteriorating men state. The prevailing attitude at the
time was whaw, you're all tired at work. What are

(34:06):
you going to do? Crash about it? Well, yes, and
then the jury felt bad about it. Long story short,
they acquitted him. They didn't just buy him lunch and
him and the keys to another train. He was acquitted
because the jury had deadlocked. He was let go and
the proceedings were declared a mistrial. This all happened in
February nineteen nineteen, less than four months after the crash.

(34:29):
In February, a month the shortest of all the month.
That's fast. No, well no, it actually only took a
few days for the jury to get from let's fry
this guy to go get some sleep, you exhausted and
misunderstood man. Prosecutors hummed and hawed over retrying the case,
but they eventually decided against it, and there was no

(34:52):
circus riot. If you were new to the show, we
did a circus riot episode. I'm not kidding. All the
charges against engineer sergeant were dropped by the following June,
and so now on paper it appears that no one
did anything wrong. Despite the tragedy, the show went on, which,
as phrases go, was actually born in the circus Ringmasters

(35:15):
would yell the show must go on, to assure audience that,
even if they had just watched an elephant repeatedly stomping
its trainer on the way in, the performance would continue.
And it worked both ways. You broke a leg barfing
up a rib, and now you're supposed to be up next, Well,
no one cares. Show goes on out you go no
matter what happened behind the curtains, the audience was never

(35:37):
to know. And amazingly, in the wake of this immense
and unbelievable tragedy, the Hogenbach Wallace Circus only missed two
show dates. They were performing in Beloit, Wisconsin within days.
And I tell people, it's a responsibility to tell these
stories like this and an honor to share tales of
the truly selfless. So it is now my honor to

(35:59):
tell you they were only able to accomplish this remarkable
feat of resilience because other circuses donated performers and equipment
and crew and even animals to help. And I mean
rivals like the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circuses.
This is the kind of generosity that could bring a
tear to the eye. I could not tell you another

(36:19):
industry with that level of kinship. There had been a
piece of legislation on the books since nineteen o seven
called the Hours of Service Act. It regulated rest requirements
for train crews, and this crash reminded people that legislation
without any kind of enforcement is pointless. And on that note,

(36:40):
the railroad industry accelerated the shift to steal passenger cars,
which yes, can still oro agami you into a blood fountain,
but were generally way more structurally sound and fire resistant.
The wreck also highlighted the need for improved signaling systems
and automated stopping systems to prevent rear end collisions. Five

(37:00):
days after the disaster, fifty three of the deceased performers
were interred at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.
If you think a funeral for twins is beyond sad,
imagine a funeral for fifty three people. More than fifteen
hundred mourners gathered to pay their respects. Hoffins re lined
row by row and laid to rest in a section

(37:22):
of the cemetery reserved for performers known as the Showman's Rest. Sadly,
many of the headstones simply read unknown male or unknown female. Amazingly,
almost preciently, only months earlier, the cemetery had been purchased
by the Showman's League of America. If you'd never heard
of them, the Showman's League of America was less of

(37:44):
a union than a fraternal order of traveling show people, workers, performers,
sideshow acts, everybody. It really helped create a sense of
community for those whose lives were spent on the road,
And as you can see here, how effective and important
it was and how much good it was able to
accomplish having never been tasked this hard before. The Michigan

(38:05):
Central Railroad, which owned and operated the Troop Train, was
found at fault and took financial responsibility for the accident.
But in the year before, in nineteen seventeen, there was
this little thing called World War One going on, and
you ever hear of the War Measures Act. Basically in
America in times of war, they suspend habeas corpus, which,

(38:28):
if you don't know, is the right to affair trial
before they throw you in prison. They impose strict censorship laws.
They heavily restrict newspapers, They banned strikes. They in turn
or jail thousands of quote enemy aliens or anyone who
poses the draft. And that's all just a beginning. One
of the thousands of other things was that the United

(38:49):
States Railroad Administration took over railroads to ensure wartime efficiency,
and as part of this, they imposed some pretty strict
caps on railroad profits. Wait for me here, this is
going somewhere. They controlled everything from scheduling to profits to
apparently how much victims families could receive after an accident.

(39:09):
This also meant the circus could not sue the government
to recoup their losses, and the law was iron clad,
which basically forced them to go kick rocks. And I
am unable to find any record of how much victims
families were paid, which says to me it was handled
very quietly because it was not very much. As time

(39:30):
went on, many circuses did start to rely more on
trucks than trains, and they started insuring their performers. Because
of the severity of the fire, only five of the
victims had marked graves and the rest had been burned
beyond recognition. Like we said today, those graves are marked
by a stone elephant with a drooping trunk, which remains

(39:52):
a somber memorial to all those who were lost. Now
here's where it starts to get a little spooky. See.
Over the years, myths and ghost stories have surrounded Showman's rest.
Rumors about hearing the moaning and whales of dead circus
performers and animals was a real thing. People claimed to
hear the eerie moaning and whales of dead circus performers

(40:14):
and the cries of circus animals at night, and they did.
In fact, a documentary film crew investigated at once, and
with all of their equipment and expertise in investigating the paranormal,
they found that the noises were coming from a nearby zoo.
The sound of animals carrying on the wind only served
to remind people that they were surrounded by the spirits

(40:37):
of so many who had dedicated their time in this
world to entertaining people. The amazing thing is this was
not the only disaster for this circus. I told my
patreons about two separate train accidents in eighteen ninety two
and nineteen oh three that led to death and fire
and animals escaping and half of an entire town being

(40:57):
eaten in a single evening. It wasn't just train wrecks,
I know. We have briefly touched on the Great Flood
of nineteen thirteen on the show before Well. The Hogabag
Wallace Circus was wintering in Peru, Indiana, near the Wabash
River in nineteen thirteen. When the river overflowed, the circus's
headquarters and animal enclosures were submerged. They lost a lot

(41:19):
of animals, including eight elephants, twenty one lions and tigers,
and eight performing horses, wagons, costumes, equipment, all of it
just destroyed by the floodwaters. And historian Stuart O'Nan believes
that tragedies like this support the view that the circus
is a dangerous and slap dash workplace, populated by shady

(41:41):
transients and naturally prone to disaster. Wallace passed away on
April seventh, nineteen twenty one, in Rochester, Minnesota, after a
botch surgery, and today he is buried in the Mount
Hope Cemetery in Peru, Indiana, where the Great flood of
nineteen thirteen nearly tried to kill his dream. But Wills's

(42:01):
legacy wasn't hey, kids, how many people will the circus
kill on the way to your town? No. His legacy
influenced the ongoing development and popularity of traveling shows across
the United States. By the nineteen thirties, economic struggles and
the rise of motion pictures and radio shrank the number
of touring circuses, but for the first three decades of

(42:22):
the twentieth century, it would be common for ten to
twenty circuses to be crisscrossing the country by train on
any given day. Due to the sheer volume of circus trains,
accidents became unfortunately common. All those outdated breaking systems and
heavy scheduling and human error really caught up. Between nineteen
hundred and nineteen thirty, at least ten to fifteen major

(42:45):
circus train wrecks occurred, with dozens of minor accidents also reported.
Some were fatal, others just led to financial ruin, and today,
over one hundred years later, the ham and Circus train
disaster remains the deadliest circus related train accident in human history.

(43:09):
When I was really young, my parents took me to
the circus well once. At some point an elephant reared up,
scaring the living hell out of everyone on that side
of the arena, including my dad, who, if I knew him,
was probably figuring out how to best hoist my mom
and I under his arm as he sprint tackled his
way out of the arena. The elephant stopped as preamble

(43:30):
for his deadly swath across the stands, and instead uncorked
a plug made of straw and feces, which flew like
a cannon shot and was followed by a fart like
a tuba blast from its bowels. On the way out,
my dad bought me a super noisy ray gun, which
even at that ginger age, I recognized was completely off
brand for a circus, but I loved it anyways, and

(43:50):
we never went to another circus again. And they never
explained where my sister's name came from, but the elephant
that day was named Diane. You have sibling experiences that
act as cautionary tales in your adult life, why not
celebrate our shared heritage by considering becoming a supporter of
the show. It really helped fulfill my dream of doing

(44:11):
this full time, and if you and a few thousand
of your friends could spare a buck or two, you
would really help keep the show and frankly me going.
Before I tell you about Patreon, if you are into
it but not looking for a whole relationship, you can
visit buy me a coffee dot com slash doomsday to
make a one time donation. And those of you who do,
I appreciate you from a deep place. I think getting

(44:34):
episodes a little early, with no sponsor interruptions and with
additionally ridiculously interesting material in each new episode is worth it,
and if you agree, you can find out more at
patreon dot com slash Funeral Kazoo, quick and heartfelt shoutout
to Brent Mayfield, Jeff Mackee, Sarah Campbell and Chambers, Christine Dresler, Henley,

(44:55):
David Brooks, Cynthia Engelbreck, Philippe Labatt, Ross Rodgers, Sarah Tafts,
Quid and Grin Brenn, Liz Abbott, Alina Yakamenko, Christine Andrews Moreek.
I think I got that wrong, Christine. I'm sorry. It's
faster to drive Megan McDonald doctors, which I may also
have already called out previously, and simply do not care
because I appreciate you all for helping support me on Patreon. Again,

(45:19):
there is no show without you, guys, so those who
do pat yourself on the back. I also want to say,
at the time of writing this, this was a good
week for our listeners, at least most of them. I
learned of a listener who lost a battle with mental illness,
and I have said pretty much since the beginning of
this show that we need to keep as many listeners
alive and safe as we can, and a lot of

(45:42):
times that just means talking. If you or someone you
know is struggling, please don't hesitate to reach out. There
are people ready to help. In Canada, you can call
one eight three three four five six four five six six,
available twenty four hours a day, seven days a week,
or you can text four five six four five or
visit Crisis Servicecanada dot CAA. For youth and young adults,

(46:05):
there's also Kids Help Phone at one eight hundred six
eight eight six eight six eight, or just text connect
to six eight six eight six eight. In the United States,
you can call the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Just dial nine eight eight. It's available all day, every day,
or you can just text home to seven four one
seven four one. Now. I actually don't know what the

(46:28):
status of those lines are. This is not a political show. However,
A certain leader of the free world has recently decided
to discontinue the National Suicide Hotline, which also incorporates the
Veterans Suicide Hotline. If you are currently going through it
and you live in a country where you are not
assured that you can actually receive the kind of help
that you need. For I don't know, random budget cuts.

(46:50):
I'm going to tell you to call nine one one,
or just go directly into the nearest emergency room, and
if that's not working, rewind us a few seconds. We
don't care where you're calling from. This is not political.
We just want to help. I have no idea what
the next three years and ten months are going to
be like. But if you are living in America and
you can hear the sound of my voice and you
trust me because I sound calm, or I have made

(47:13):
you feel less alone at some point, to show how
sincere I'm being about this, I am recording this part
with a plane overhead, a car ami driveway, someone at
my door, and three dogs barking downstairs and one bird.
What I want to tell you is you can reach
out to me Twitter, Instagram, on my phone goes off Facebook,
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(47:34):
an email to doomsdaypod at gmail dot com. I am
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you need. Good Lord, where were we? Older episodes could
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are there, please leave us a review and tell your friends,

(47:54):
and I thank all my Patreon listeners new and old
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consider making a no donation to Global Medic. It is
real quick, because these people are noisy. Global Medic is
a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around
the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises,
and they are often the first and sometimes the only
team to get critical intervention to people in threatening situations,

(48:17):
and to date they have helped over three point six
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I wanted to tell my listeners. In the UK, support
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(48:39):
All right, oh my lord, where were we? Okay? On
the next episode. I don't normally point fingers before telling
you what the next episode is about, but this one
is all San Andrea's fault. By popular request. It is
the Loma Prieta earthquake of nineteen eighty nine. We'll talk soon,

(48:59):
say to goggles off, and thanks for listening.

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The Hammond Circus Train Disaster of 1918 | Episode 84

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Hammond Circus Train Disaster of 1918 | Episode 84