The Circus Fire (41 page)

Neither report charged James Haley with any specific act of criminal negligence. Tacitly, as the ranking member of the circus on the lot that day, he was held liable for the actions of his employees and the policies of the corporation.

For Mayor Mortensen, the case boiled down not to law but moral obligation. That it was not his administration's fault never crossed his mind. Like George W. Smith, he could have made changes, assigned responsibilities. He hadn't. He recalled: "One woman who lost her daughter called me up every night for almost a year afterwards and she would review the thing so often, but I never dared to tell her that I couldn't take any more of her calls."

Meanwhile, Edward Rogin had been busy keeping up his end: 451 survivors had signed the arbitration agreement, 105 representing death

cases, putting it into effect. In early February, the board heard their first case, the estate of William Curlee.

The maximum accidental death benefit in Connecticut was $15,000. In the eyes of the board, few of the dead were worth it. They came up with a formula to determine the correct figure of each individual settlement. The
Courant
explained: "The life expectancy of the victim was figured according to regular mortality tables. Next, his financial condition and earning power were examined. And in the case of women, matters of education and social responsibility, such as her assistance to her husband in business, for example, were given an economic value. In the case of children, a more arbitrary basis was employed, with a minimum, for children 3 to 7 years old, set at $6,500."

Not only was this formula patently absurd and insulting, it was calculated almost as if to minimize the circus' liability. There were few men of working age who died in the fire; the victims were overwhelmingly women and children. Bill Curlee's widow would receive the full $15,000, since he was young, healthy, educated and well employed, while the estate of Lithuanian tobacco worker Charles Tomalonis would collect only $6,650. Children almost always brought $6,500, some—like Billy Dineen—slightly more for hospital or funeral expenses. Likewise, the elderly went cheap; being both aged and female, sixty-nine-year-old Margaret Garrison's life was worth only $5,000, seventy-five-year-old Mary Bergin's $4,000.

The awards included the missing and presumed dead. John Cleary accepted $9,000 for Grace Fifield's estate, Judy Norris' estate the standard $6,500, Raymond Erickson's the same. Mildred Cook got $7,000 for Eleanor and $6,500 for Edward, compared to $30,000 for her own burns.

The board reserved the larger awards for the severely injured. Former dancer {Catherine Martin of West Hartford received the largest, $100,000, with Patty Murphy right behind her at $90,000, Jerry LeVasseur at $80,000, and Donald Gale at $75,000. All four were still in the hospital.

The hearing process ate up months, the last death claims to be arbitrated Maurice and Muriel Goff 's—the only African Americans confirmed to have died in the fire. The settlements themselves took the circus years to pay off.

As the arbitration hearings dragged on, the criminal trial began. Each

of the six defendants faced ten counts of involuntary manslaughter. The lawyers for the circus threw their clients on the mercy of the court, pleading nolo contendere. Show people of the time spoke of a gentlemen's agreement, balancing the freedom of the accused against the willingness of the circus to bear complete liability for the fire. It may have seemed a fair trade. The city, co-defendant in so many of the civil suits resolved under the arbitration agreement, would not pay a single penny.

State's Attorney Alcorn, who prosecuted the case, had obviously not heard of the deal. Neither had the judge. The defense said they'd entered a no-contest plea not because they expected dismissal but because a long trial would keep these key men from preparing the circus for the start of the season. Whatever the reasoning behind the tactic, it backfired. After hearing the evidence, the judge found all six guilty and fined the show $10,000 for the hazard of the tent. He sentenced Blanchfield to six months in jail, Caley and Versteeg to one year, then gave Haley one to five years and Smith and Aylesworth two to seven in the state prison. The court granted a stay of execution until April 6th so the accused could get the show on the road. Only Caley declined the stay, choosing to begin his time right away.

The sentences stunned the men, and a good part of Hartford. The issue of criminal negligence had never been clear to the public; many still believed Robert Ringling's original claim that the circus had wanted to fireproof the big top but couldn't without military priority. The fire was an accident, letters to the editor cried; it was unfair to punish the circus for it. Two men who had lost their wives and children in the fire wrote to the
Times,
asking why the city, being equally guilty, wasn't held equally accountable.

In all the commotion, as if admitting the city's culpability, Mayor Mortensen announced that he'd accepted Chief Hallissey's resignation. Privately, the mayor offered him a sweet deal to move on, and Hallissey was smart enough to take it. In a move that surprised no one, Mortensen named Deputy Chief Michael Godfrey as his replacement.

"The show will go on," Robert Ringling declared, but, groping for any leverage he could get, said the prison terms could endanger their moneymaking ability. As the Florida state house debated a formal letter expressing their concern, two ex-governors made a public plea for the judge to overturn the convictions. Circus attorneys filed a motion to withdraw

the nolo contendere plea, saying it had been a hasty and ill-considered measure only meant to save that year's show—for the benefit of the claimants, they implied. The motion also disputed the Portland and Providence fires, and the dozen fires on the sidewall; first, there was no official record of them, and second, the pinholes were not technically fires at all. It was here that the attorneys for the first time brought up three other fires—one each in Portland, Providence and Philadelphia, and all in either straw or grass, none of which threatened any tents.

The judge agreed to listen to arguments before executing sentence— not on the fire itself (since the new information seemed off the point and unverifiable) but on the nolo plea and whether the convicted men were truly irreplaceable. His decision brought Robert Ringling and John Ringling North to the stand, the two enemies once again facing off with the future of the circus at stake. To make the drama even sweeter, that week the show was opening in Madison Square Garden. With their men looking at jail time, Sarasota chose a route that skipped not just Hartford but Connecticut altogether, breaking a fifty-year-old tradition.

There would have been no place to play anyway. The same week, with little fanfare, the city turned the Barbour Street lot over to the War Garden Committee. A Parks Department tractor plowed the grounds, adding another one hundred plots to the forty-five behind the snow fence. A spokesman for the garden committee described the soil as excellent for raising vegetables.

As the trial reconvened, Robert Ringling testified that imprisonment of the five would affect the show's ongoing management. It "would not be impossible but would be desperately jeopardized." Circus historians believe that Robert didn't come on strong enough here, and paid for it later. Rather than fight for Haley, he merely said of his vice president, "He was a great help to me." The only passion he showed came the morning of his cousin's testimony. In the hall outside the courtroom a deputy sheriff attempted to serve him with papers naming him a co-defendant in several suits stemming from the fire. Robert dashed the papers to the marble floor and stalked away.

John Ringling North could not be lukewarm. He swore he'd warned the show not to go out last year, and that he was contemplating a suit against the present executives for mismanagement. None of the accused

were irreplaceable, he claimed, and went on to name able seconds for each of them—Arthur Concello for George Smith, William Curtis for Leonard Aylesworth. Not only that, but Robert Ringling himself had assured North that the circus would tour regardless of what happened in Hartford. The defense attacked North, hoping to paint him as unfriendly to Robert's administration. North deftly took their argument away by flatly admitting that he was, and that it was hardly a secret. When asked if he had wanted to "wash out" the claims of the survivors by putting the circus into bankruptcy, North denied it, conceding only that, as one of the vested directors of the show, he'd voted against the arbitration agreement, finding it unsatisfactory on several counts.

After hearing the accused themselves, the judge reduced the sentences of Haley, Smith and Aylesworth to a year and a day minimum, five years maximum. Under this arrangement, they'd be eligible for parole in eight to ten months. Blanchfield, who testified that he was not indispensable to the circus, impressed the judge so much that he revoked his sentence altogether. Once again, he suspended the sentences of Smith and Aylesworth, this time till June 7th, so they could return to Sarasota and prepare the canvas setup before the show opened under the new Hooper Fire Chiefed big top in Washington, D.C. Haley and Versteeg started their sentences the next day, reporting to Wethersfield State Prison.

Two days later, Monday noon, the circus delighted New York with an old-fashioned mile-long street parade through Times Square, complete with elephants and plumed Percherons drawing the classic Five Graces wagon, menagerie cages and fantastic floats from the season's new spec, Alice in Circus Wonderland. Ostensibly in support of the Seventh War

Loan, the parade effectively erased the general public's memory of the fire, showing the troupers' can-do spirit and celebrating the allies' imminent victory in Europe. It was just the first of many publicity stunts that season designed to engender goodwill; the next involved a special morning show at the Garden for fifteen thousand blind and disabled children—"a must performance," Karl Wallenda piously informed reporters.

In Mansfield Center, near the University of Connecticut, one survivor honored his wife by planting a tree in her memory on Arbor Day. Another couple had a different kind of reminder—a daughter, born exactly nine months after the fire. "I guess my mother was happy my dad was alive."

Of the children in Municipal Hospital, only Patty Murphy remained. One doctor remembered her vividly. "She was a cute little redhead with curls. She reminded me of Shirley Temple, she was a little doll. She had nobody but her grandparents and an aunt and uncle. She was in the hospital for many months. There was a custody battle to see who would get the child. I used to take her out occasionally to see a movie. Her hands were all scarred. She had burns on her face and chest. I don't know whatever happened to her."

On April 22nd, more than nine months after the fire, Patty Murphy left the hospital to live with her aunt and uncle in Plainville. A boy remembered her walking down Henry Street for exercise, the scars on her legs pink.

In New York, the circus was having an excellent opening run until the evening show of May 9th. Above the center ring, Victoria and Torrence were finishing their spinning act, descending from the peak of the rigging. Frank Torrence hung from a rope above him by one hand while Victoria lay horizontally across his spread feet—her head pillowed on one, her ankles clasping the other. In front of a crowd often thousand, Victoria slipped and fell seventy-five feet to the sawdust, spinning half over and landing on her face. Merle Evans cued the band, bringing on the next act. An ambulance rushed Victoria to a nearby hospital, but her head and chest were crushed. She never regained consciousness. The accident served as a reminder of last year's tragedy, exactly what the circus didn't need. The circus chaplain came down from Boston to do the service. No one talked about Hartford—it was taboo—but everyone thought it.

Decoration Day, Northwood was busy, the Parks Department plant-

ing flags on all the graves. Thomas Barber and Ed Lowe came out to make sure the six unidentified weren't forgotten, bringing flowers again for Little Miss 1565.

A few days later the circus opened under canvas in Washington, D.C., the local fire marshal performing a burn test on the canvas first with a candle and then a match. Inside the menagerie tent, he climbed atop a cage wagon to check the roof. It passed too.

A more stringent test was that of public opinion. The circus aced it with the help of General George Marshall, recently victorious chief of staff in the European theater. Like Eisenhower, Marshall had the reputation of being a cautious, hardworking leader. The circus invited him to be their guest, and he accepted, showing up in full uniform with his grandson. A picture of Emmett Kelly shaking the boy's hand as he sat on his grandfather's lap made papers across the country.

Quietly, two days later, George Smith and Leonard Aylesworth entered Wethersfield State Prison.

In Hartford, no one had forgotten. As the school year ended and temperatures rose, residents naturally cast back to last July. The anniversary was also the deadline for any claims against the circus. In the last weeks, Edward Rogin processed dozens. The injuries weren't always physical. Julius Schatz's clients included a child with a "morbid fear of fire and noises caused by oil burner at home"; and women with "psychoneuroses due to psychic trauma, insomnia, nightmares, spells of melancholy, fear of crowds and closed places, spells of panic, much pain, suffering and mental anguish and a severe traumatic shock to her nervous system all of which are permanent in nature"; "fainting spells"; "headaches, dizziness"; and one woman whom the fire rendered "hysterical, panicky, tearful and insomnic so that her confinement was necessary to Norwich State Hospital."