The Secret Sits

The Hartford Circus Fire

June 23, 2022 John W. Dodson Season 2 Episode 14
The Secret Sits
The Hartford Circus Fire
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Show Notes Transcript

This week on The Secret Sits we are covering the Hartford Circus Fire.  This was the greatest tragedy in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.  168 people lost their lives during this terrible fire.

We are looking for hometown True Crime stories for future episodes.  Please send your stories to us at: TheSecretSitsPodcast@gmail.com

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#HartfordCircusFire #Circus #Fire #RinglingBros #Barnum #HughJackman #TheGreatestShowman #FredBradna #FlyingWallendas #EmmettKelly #Clown #LifeMagazine #CharlesNelsonReilly #1944 #RobertSegee #arson #LittleMiss1565 #WearyWillie #Sarasota #Florida
 

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Life is a circus ring, with some moments more spectacular than others.

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Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson.  Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases.  You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.  And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.

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At one time, traveling circuses dotted the landscape of the American experience.  Big tent shows traveled to towns by stage coach and by train to bring their unique brand of entertainment to the masses.  In Delavan, Wisconsin two circus men by the names Dan Castello and William Cameron Coup started Dan Castello’s Great Circus & Egyptian Caravan, this was in 1867.  This caravan consisted of 8 camels, which belonged to the United State’s Army’s Camel Corps, and yes, you heard that right.  It was not long before these two men met up with P.T. Barnum and convinced the impresario to join them in their adventure.  After convincing Barnum to join the two men in their entertainment endeavor the traveling show took on a new name, P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Hippodrome.  Quite a name to be sure. Barnum, by this time was already 60-years-old and he was one of the most famous men in the United States.

Barnum had already owned and given up his American Museum in New York City, which you can see highly fictionalized in The Greatest Showman, Hugh Jackman’s movie musical based on P.T. Barnum.  Coup’s highest contribution to the circus business was as an engineer, having designed a railcar and method of end-loading that increased the efficiency of circus travel by railroad.  I could explain all of the nuances about how this system worked, but it’s kind of boring and that is not what we are here to talk about today.  By 1872 the Barnum circus had been branded its moniker of “The Greatest Show on Earth” and in 1875 Barnum parted ways with Coup and Castello.

On a parallel track, in the early 1870’s another man by the name James A Bailey became a partner became the principal partner in a different traveling circus, Bailey and Company’s Great International Circus.  This circus was traveling around Australia, South America and Great Britain.  As they traveled back to the US they enveloped two other companies into their fold, the Great London Circus and Sanger’s Royal British Menagerie.  This newly formed super circus was at odds with Barnum’s circus and in 1880, the two traveling companies decided to join forces and adopted the name, Barnum and Bailey Circus, a name most people in the US instantly recognize even to this day.

In 1882, while in London, P.T. Barnum purchased Jumbo the elephant, Jumbo was billed as a larger-than-average sized elephant and he had been a huge draw to the London Zoo.  Barnum had Jumbo shipped to the United States where this enormous pachyderm became the star attraction in Barnum’s circus.  In May of 1884 the newly constructed Brooklyn Bridge was completed, P.T. Barnum, in an attempt to prove the new bridge’s structural integrity, and as a publicity stunt, marched Jumbo along with 20 other elephants and 17 camels across the bridge.  Not long after this, in 1891, the consummate showman and entrepreneur P.T. Barnum died of a stroke at his home.  Barnum’s widow, who had been 40 years his junior, sold her interest in the circus to Bailey. 

Also, at this time five siblings of German-French heritage had begun their own adventure into the circus arena, the Rüngeling brothers; Albert, Otto, Alfred, Charles and John would later be known as the Ringling Brothers.  Theirs was a small circus, but after acquiring their first elephant in 1888, their audiences grew.   The Ringling Brothers were the top competitors set against the Barnum and Bailey Circus, but after Bailey died in 1906 the Ringlings purchased the Barnum & Bailey Circus for $400,000, and continued to run each circus independently from one another.  In 1919, the Ringling Brothers joined their two circuses together to form the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.  This traveling show consisted of over 1,100 employees, 735 horses, and an additional 1,000 animals of all kinds.

In 1927 the last living Ringling brother, John, moved to his winter home in Sarasota, Florida.  Two years later he purchased the American Circus Corporation, which owned its own 5 circuses, he paid $1.7 million for this, that would be around $28 million dollars today.  But the great depression was wreaking havoc on the United States and by 1932 all of John Ringling’s holdings fell into the hands of his creditors.  John Ringling was the last of the Ringling brothers to pass away, he met his demise in 1936.  There was a lot of fighting amongst the rest of the Ringling family, each member lobbying for control of the company and its steadfast brand.  Ida Ringling, the only sister in the famous Ringing family had a son called John Ringling North, and he was able to raise the funds necessary to buy back the Circus.  North wanted to make the circus more modern, he wanted to add elements from Broadway and from the motion pictures.

In 1938 North added “Gargantua the Great” to the circus, Gargantua was a 460-pound lowland gorilla and he quickly became the most famous circus animal anywhere in the world during the 20th century and he saved the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus from bankruptcy.

As the United States was entering World War II, many things in the US were restricted by the US military and government, this included use of the railway system which spread throughout the country like a vast nervous system.  President Franklin D Roosevelt recognized the relief and joy the circus brought to the citizen of the United States, especially in these times of war, so he granted special railway privileges to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.  The Circus traveled to Hartford, Connecticut in July of 1944, and that is where our story today, truly begins.  

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was a traveling big top show.  The “Big Top” is an enormous tent made from canvas material which would house almost 9,000 spectators.  The tent was 200 feet wide and 450 feet in length, now just for comparison a football field only measures 360 feet in length, so this is an enormous tent.  The side walls of the tent stood at a towering 15 feet in height and the peak of the tent’s canvas roof measured 48 feet high.  The canvas material for the tent was coated with 1,800 pounds of paraffin wax, which was dissolved in 6,000 gallons of . . . wait for it, gasoline.  This was actually a common method of waterproofing at the time. The field in which the tent was erected had just been freshly mowed and any exposed dirt in the field had been watered down and covered in hay and wood shavings.  As you enter the tent there were three performance rings and two stages with a large 25-foot-wide oval shaped track that separated the performance area from the guest seating area.  The seating in the tent was a combination of bleachers as well as folding chairs.  There was the large main entrance to the tent and then 8 smaller exit points dotted around the tent’s perimeter.  

Even though the circus had special permission from the President to use the railway system, the system was struggling to keep up with its workload.  The Railway workers were stretched very thin and this caused delays.  Because of these delays with the railway, the Ringling Circus was late upon its arrival to Hartford on Wednesday July 5th, 1944 and they were forced to cancel their scheduled matinee performance on this day.  According to Circus lore, it is considered bad luck to have to cancel a performance, but the team needed the time to construct the Circus site for their performances.  The scheduled performance that evening still took place, with no incidence.  

The second day of performances arrived on the following day, Thursday July 6th, 1944, with the matinee show scheduled to start at 2:15pm.  On this day, the matinee performance had sold between 6 to 8 thousand seats inside of the tent.  It is hard to determine an exact number of people present inside of the tent, because it was also common for youngsters to sneak into the circus tent without paying for a ticket and many spectators came to the circus grounds simply to see the exotic animals in their holding cages as well as the side shows taking place outside of the tent.

It was an extremely hot and sunny day in Hartford, Connecticut and many of the locals had come to the circus for a distraction from the war and the heat, a majority of the audience members consisted of women and children, many of the men were away fighting in the war.  For some unknown reason, the performance was slightly delayed and the matinee did not get underway until 2:23pm, 8 minutes after their scheduled start time.  As the tiny clown car entered the tent and began the spectacle, which is the circus, everyone was overcome with excitement.  The car stopped and way too many clowns began emerging from the small and comically ridiculous car. The clowns’ performance opening the show came to an end and Ringmaster Fred Bradna introduced the French lion tamer, Alfred Court.  Court’s animal program consisted of three simultaneous cage acts, one cage held trainers Joseph Walsh and May Kovar, the other held trainer Fritz Shulz and the center area was run by Alfred Court, himself.  To move these dangerous animals from their holding cages outside of the tent to inside the tent for the show, there were a series of wire runs constructed, these runs connected the holding cages outside of the tent to the large caged performance spaces inside of the tent.  As the lion taming act came to a close, the animals were shepherded into their runs to return to their holding cages.  The next act introduced by Ringmaster Fred Bradna were the world-famous Great Wallendas, a trapeze and tight rope walking act which was comprised of the Wallenda family, later, as the 1940’s wore on the press would continually refer to this famous act as, The Flying Wallendas, and the group eventually adopted this new name.

The ropes and trapeze were set, even as the lions were still making their way from the show tent back to their holding cages, and the high wire act began, the audience was approximately 20 minutes into the show now and that is when the Circus’ bandleader Merle Evans spotted flames.  It was just a small flame at first on the southwest sidewall of the tent.  Merle Evans immediately directed the band to begin playing, The Stars and Stripes Forever, a rousing patriotic song to be sure, but what the audience was unaware of was that, The Stars and Stripes Forever, is actually a sort of secret code, when the Circus band plays this song, it alerts every person who works for the Circus that something is a foot, there is danger, it is a distress call to all of the circus personnel. 

Ringmaster Fred Bradna urged the audience to remain calm and exit the tent in an orderly fashion, but his words fell on deaf ears as the audience now began to see the flames and everything descended into chaos.  The fire almost immediately cut off the power to the Ringmaster’s microphone and once that happened, no one could hear the man’s desperate instructions.   The last of the big cats were just leaving the tent when the fire started, these were the cats being tamed by May Kovar and Joseph Walsh, they ushered the cats through their wire run as quickly as possible, a couple of the cats suffered minor burns after pieces of the burning canvas tent began to rain down on the frenzied crowd.  The Ringmaster and the circus ushers tried to maintain order, but it was an impossible task, and so they then attempted to douse the flames with buckets and jugs of water, but this was not working, the fire was climbing up the sides of the tent and once the flames reached the tent’s roof, which was covered in paraffin wax and gasoline, it would all be over quickly.  The men then changed tactics and began trying to pull down the canvas walls that were ablaze, but their attempts to simply stop the fire were futile, so they turned their attention to helping everyone evacuate the tent as quickly and safely as possible.

Circus performer Emmett Kelly, who had been with the circus for 2 years at this point, was a clown and his clown persona was known as Weary Willie, Willie was a classic tramp style clown, this type of clown in always down-and-out, Emmett Kelly describes his character as follows, “Weary Willie is a melancholy little hobo who always gets the short end of the stick and never has any luck, but he never loses hope and keeps on trying.”  Willie was dressed in a dirty derby, with threadbare clothing, Willie’s face has a permanent 5 o’clock shadow and a white face paint lines his down turned mouth, Willie is always a bit sad and his nose is red, perhaps from constantly blowing his nose, which runs because he is gloomy.  Weary Willie would go on to become one of the most famous circus clowns in history, Loren MacIver painted a famous portrait of Willie and this painting ended up on the cover of Life magazine in 1947.

It is not totally clear where Emmette Kelly was when the fire first started; one account says that he was in his dressing room drinking a beer, another story says that he was touching up his make-up and yet another story says that he was waiting just outside of the big top to make his entrance in the Great Wallendas’ portion of the show, you see, while the daredevil family performed their netless highwire acts, Willie would enter the rings beneath the performing family and he would spread out his handkerchief to catch the performers if they were to fall, what great circus fun, you can’t catch a falling person with a handkerchief, those silly clowns.

No matter where Emmette Kelly actually was when the fire began, he soon heard the screams of Fire! Coming from inside of the tent and Emmette was quick to act, he grabbed the bucket of water he used to remove his make-up and he headed to help put out the fire.  As Weary Willie, in full costume, made his way through the mounting chaos, a circus attendee by the name Ralph Emerson snapped a quick photo, in this photo, we see Weary Willie, looking extremely stressed, but walking in full stride, with his bucket in his right hand, his left hand is in the air and it obscures a portion of the performer’s face.  As Willie reached the fire, he knew that his small bucket of water had little chance of being any help dosing the flames.  Because of this, Emmette decided to pivot and instead of trying to put out the flames, he pulled the canvas side wall of the tent up from the ground and he ushered as many audience members as he could out of the building inferno.  Some of the people escaped the flaming tent and then once they were out, they realized that they could not locate their loved ones and they would turnaround and run back into the tent.  Emmette Kelly yelled at the people to not re-enter the tent, but he could not stop them.

The desperate circus goers were attempting to escape anyway that they could and that also meant that some of the audience members ran to any and every exit they could see, the problem with this was that some exits to the tent were being used for the wire cage runs for the big cats, which were still exiting the performance space and when people ran into these exits, they suddenly found themselves trapped inside of the wire runs, with the lions and tigers who had just performed.  As more people piled into these same exits and found themselves trapped by the wire runs, the surging crowd pushed those who had been first to enter the wire runs hard against the metal wires and they began to crush and trample their fellow audience members.  One wire run broke and some of the lions and tigers were able to jump out and they began roaming the circus grounds freely, panicked, just as much as their human counterparts involved in this sudden disaster.  

Circus personnel continued in their attempt to clear the big top of audience members and as they frantically moved people through the massive tent to safety, they noticed some audience members had simply not moved from their seats.  Some of the audience members seemed to be in shock and they just did not move, they sat in their seats, waiting to be told what to do, or waiting to be assisted by the circus personnel. The fire was raging close to the tent’s main entrance, which is where all of the audience members had entered the tent, something I learned in my psychology classes in college was that human beings, during an emergency will always attempt to exit where they entered, it is familiar to them and they know that it is a means of escape.  The down side to this is that everyone in the same situation will attempt to get out of the same entrance or exit doors.  Because of this, my husband and I have a long-standing tradition, when we go anywhere in public; say the movie theatre, or a concert, or even a restaurant, I will look at Gabriel after we have sat down and say, which way are we going?  We pick our emergency exit and it is almost never an emergency exit.  If we are in a theatre for instance and there is a fire or shooting or any of the things, we have to constantly deal with in our world today, Gabriel and I are going over the stage to the backstage area and out of the stage door in the back of the theatre, we are not going anywhere close to the entrance doors everyone else in the building will be running towards.  That is just a bit of advice from me to you.  This human psychological habit is what froze some people to their seats, if they wanted to attempt to flee the flames, however, they looked at the main entrance and that is where the fire was raging the hardest, their brains in this panicked moment could not come up with anywhere else for them to go so they just sat there.

The entire incident, from the time bandleader Merle Evans noticed the flames, until the entire tent was burned to the ground lasted less than 10 minutes, less than 10 minutes for almost 8,000 people to escape, and sadly many did not.  I am now going to tell you a few personal accounts from this day, I just want you to know that everything I am going to talk about next happened at the exact same time, it all took place in the less than 10 minutes it took for the gasoline-soaked tent to burn to the ground.

Rich Jakowski explains his experience of this day as follows:

I was at the Ringling Bros. circus in Hartford on July 6, 1944 when I was 4 years old. We lived on Elmer St at the time and my father, who worked the night shift at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft took me, while my mother staid home. We walked to the circus grounds since we lived less than a mile away. We never entered the tent to see the show, but I can still remember feeding the elephants and seeing a sword swallower, fire eater and fat lady in the side show. I remember hearing some yelling and looking up to see the top of the tent on fire. My father and I quickly left the grounds and went across Barber St to a house where my dad called my mother to let her know what was happening and that we were OK. On our way out of the grounds I remember seeing a little girl close to my age who was injured when her mom threw her from the bleachers in order to escape.

Larry Mucci survived the events on this day and attributes it to his father’s quick thinking: My dad and mom took me, along with a doctor friend’s wife Dolly and her son. We had reserved seating and were sitting in the folding chairs towards the end where the fire started. I was 4 ½ years old and remember looking back and seeing the flames burning up the sides of the tent and my dad very calmly leading us to the opposite end of the tent because the exits next to us were blocked. I remember a large man with red or blonde hair with a large pail of popcorn and large drink under his arm came falling out of his folding seat with the popcorn flying everywhere. My dad knew we needed to go to the opposite end of the area of the fire due to the chaos. He saved our lives with his quick thinking.

David Elovitz recalls his experience this day: I survived the circus fire, thanks to probably the same good Samaritan that lifted Father Payne over the animal cage tunnel -- He lifted me over also and I was able to escape. I was told later that he was a reporter from The Hartford Times, and that, after helping literally hundreds to safety over that barrier, he died in the fire.

Edmund Hall Hindle’s recounting of his experience is as follows:  I went to the circus with my mother Mary Hindle and my grandmother Ada Hall Hindle. Ada was supposed to go home to Norwich Connecticut but stayed an extra day to take me to the circus. She turned out to be a victim. I was 6 years old and will never forget that day or the days that followed.

We were watching the trapeze act and the lion and tigers who were in center ring when the fire broke out. The wild animals were rushed out so the array of cages could be removed. The trapeze group were down on the ground very quickly. People started going down the bleachers throwing chairs left and right as they went when I got my leg caught and someone fell on me. My mother had turned around and grabbed and pulled me to safety. We had lost track of Ada who was taken to the hospital. My mother and I made it to the street and tried to get on a bus. A police officer directed us to an ambulance which took us to a hospital. The heat inside the tent was so severe that although we were not exposed to flames, we were burnt all over our bodies.

Dennis Sullivan gave a dramatic retelling of his experience: When the fire broke out, dad put me on his back and leapfrogged chairs. At the stairs over the animal chutes in a crazed crowd, Dad slipped and fell with me. A man assisting folks in trouble picked us both up and threw us over the chute to safety. As I hit the ground, I remember looking back and seeing a big flaming tent pole come crashing down not far from where we had just left. Over the years, I've always wondered whether that man survived because I probably owe him my life. We got up and continued out the rear entrance, then making our way around to the front looking for family. My sister and cousin Jerome were thrown down from the top of the stands and successfully caught. Vincent was allowed to forge ahead of everyone because my mom and aunts thought he was grown up enough to get out on his own. No one could guess how vicious the fight for survival would be. My cousin Jerome once told me he had his arm get caught somehow in the animal chute and how he pried it loose just in time and of course we know now how dangerous a location that was to have a problem in.

 

As we fled the tent, in all my boyhood naiveté I remember begging my father to let me get to a fire box and sound the alarm, this with fire engines already pulling up outside. In front, a gruesome scene of blackened, smoking bodies on the grass was already unfolding. After a few minutes, police forced us out of the area. We soon encountered a little boy like me and his mom who was distraught. My dad examined a small burn on the boy's hand and coldly dismissed it as slight, telling her to get him to a doctor's office. After what we had just seen moments before, who could blame him. In a short while, we found my mother lying in an overgrown lot near where we left our car, crying hysterically. "Everyone's o.k., but we can't find Vincent," she wailed. Later that evening we would find out that my first cousin Vincent, the boy who took me to Vine Street School every day, had been trampled to death. He was such a lovely boy. Sometimes, he’d bend over so I could climb onto his back for the walk to school.

Famous actor Charles Nelson Reilly was also in attendance at this fateful performance, at the time he was just 13-years-of-age, and he recounted his harrowing experience of this day during his one man show, during his show he told this story: Charles had a friend named Donny Bagish, his father owned a local bakery, back then if you owned a storefront with windows, traveling entertainment companies like the Circus would ask to place posters in your store windows, as compensation, they would give free tickets to their events.  This is exactly what happened when the Circus rolled into town and Donny had two tickets to the July 6th matinee performance.  Charles agreed to go with him.  When Charles ran home to tell his mother, she forbids him to go with Donny because Charles’ father was already taking him to the circus that evening.  So, boys being boys, Charles and Donny snuck out of the house to go anyway, but Charles’ mother saw them sneaking off in the distance and she shouted after the boys, I hope it burns to the ground! The boys arrived at the circus and they went to their general admission seats.  They climbed to the very tip top of the bleachers to watch.  They watched the clowns and the animal acts, then came the Great Wallendas, the greatest circus act in the world.  And as Charles watched, transfixed by the amazing tight rope walking family, suddenly Donny yelled Fire! Both of the boys jumped from the bleachers and ran out of the tent, by the time they had ran to the parking lot and turned around, the entire tent was ablaze.

After being in this incident Charles Nelson Reilly was afraid to sit in an audience ever again. Because of the event's trauma, he rarely attended theater, stating that the large crowds reminded him of what happened that day. As he often stated on The Tonight Show and other such venues, that even as the director of a play or stage production he preferred to sit at the back of the house or the back of a balcony near the exits to preview his work, including one time where his leading lady's costume caught fire.

Frieda Pushnik performed in the circus and was billed as the “Armless and Legless Wonder”, and this was true Frieda did not have arms nor legs and she had no way to escape the fire, a minstrel show performer rushed onto her stage and picked up Frieda in her chair and carried her out of the tent.  Frieda Pushnik continued performing in the circus for the next 11 years following this incident.  A triage unit was set up in one of the empty fields surrounding the circus tent and victims were treated there if they could not immediately be transported to the hospital or a local doctor’s office.

In the space of just under 10 minutes many people were burned to death, trampled by the stampeding crowd, or succumbed to other various injuries.  While investigating this case I found various articles which listed the death toll at 167, 168 or 169, but what is most commonly accepted is a death toll of 168, this figure comes from official tallies that also included a random collection of body parts stored together and listed as one victim.  Over 700 audience members and Circus performers were treated for injuries, but everyone believes that the number actually injured far exceeds this number, so many people simply panicked and left the Circus grounds to go home, many treated their minor injuries after getting back to their own homes and coming back to reality.  Most of the dead were found in piles, up to three bodies deep, many had asphyxiated due to the many people stacked on top of them, but there were people saved from underneath these piles as well, the diseased bodies piled on top of them acted as a shield against the flames and the foot falls of the crowd. One survivor of this fire included Eunice Groark, who would go on to be the first female lieutenant governor of Connecticut.

The investigation into the cause of the fire immediately began and it was believed that the fire was caused by someone carelessly disposing of a lit cigarette, although others suspected that an arsonist had set the fire.  That following Friday, July 7, 1944, five circus officials were arrested at the circus grounds and charged with involuntary manslaughter; James A. Haley, 45, Sarasota, FL was the current Vice-President of the circus, his bond was set at $15,000.  George W. Smith, 51, Sarasota, FL, the General Manager of the circus had his bond set at $15,000. Leonard Aylesworth, 52, Sarasota, FL, was a Circus Executive his bond was set at $10,000. Edward Versteeg, 44, Baldwin Park, CA, the Chief Electrician of the circus had bond set at $10,000. And David W. Blanchfield, 57, no home, was the Chief Wagon Man he also had bond set at $10,000.  After these men were arrested, circus officials reached an agreement with the Hartford officials and they accepted full financial responsibility for this incident and agreed to pay whatever amount of money the city requested in damages.  Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus ended up paying almost $5,000,000 to the 600 victims and families who filed claims against them by 1954. This would be the equivalent of $73.8 million dollars today.  All circus profits for the next ten years would be used to pay off these claims.

The circus was forced to remain on the Hartford circus grounds until the morning of Saturday, July 15, 1944 when the circus trains finally left for Sarasota, Florida. Only the equipment that was immediately involved with the fire investigation was left behind, as well as approximately 33 employees who are still to be questioned by the state's attorney.

Even though the Circus took all financial responsibility for the fire, it did not accept responsibility for the actual fire.  The five circus employees who were charges went to trial and four of these men were convicted and given a prison sentence, however; the court allowed the men to leave town with the circus so they could assist the traveling troupe with setting up in their next destination, which was Sarasota, Florida.  While the men were away and before they could return to begin serving their prison terms, they were all pardoned entirely.  One of these men, James Haley would go on to serve in the US House of Representatives for 24 years.

In 1950 a man by the name Robert Dale Segee was being investigated for arson and during this investigation Segee admitted that he was the person who started the Hartford, Connecticut Circus fire.  Robert Segee was from Circleville, Ohio, yes, the same Circleville, Ohio that the Circleville letters case is from, if you are not familiar with that case, you should look it up, after you finish this episode.  Robert Segee told police that he was responsible for setting the Hartford Circus fire, 6 years earlier.  Along with this confession, Segee also admitted to a series of other fires as well as several murders, he claims to have committed dating back to his youth.  Segee had worked for the circus when he was 16-years-of-age as a roustabout, if you are unfamiliar with the term, a roustabout was a day laborer with no specific skills, they would be used to help get the fields ready for the circus and then they would help the circus personnel set up the circus on the grounds once they arrived.  Segee held this position with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus from June 30th to July 14th, 1944.  Robert Segee told the police that he had been having nightmares in which a Native American Indian riding atop a flaming horse told him that he had to set fires, when this nightmare ended, Segee claims that his mind went blank, like he was in an abyss and when he came too, the circus fire had been lit.  The Life magazine from 1950, the one where the cover featured our heroic clown Weary Willie, also contained Segee’s sketches of his outlandish dream as well as images he drew of his supposed murders.  

During that November, a court convicted Robert Segee of arson, for charges not relating to the circus fire and he was sentenced to 44 years in prison.  The investigators of the Hartford Circus Fire had their doubts in regards to Segee’s confession relating to the Circus fire, you see, Segee had a history of mental illness and no one could even prove that he had been in the state of Connecticut when the Circus fire took place. After landing in prison Segee recanted his confession about the Circus fire and he maintained his innocence, as it pertained to the Circus fire until he died in 1997.

I want to tell you now about one somewhat famous victim of this fire, and I am not talking about famous like Charles Nelson Reilley, I am speaking about one particular little girl who was killed in the fire and then not identified.  This was a very young girl with blond hair, wearing a white dress and she became know as Little Miss 1565, this nickname was given to the unidentified girl because this was the number assigned to her little body as it laid in the city’s improvised morgue.  Little Miss 1565’s body was very well preserved, even after the fire had taken her life, and her face would become one of the most recognizable victims of the Hartford Circus fire.  Sargent Thomas Barber and Sargent Edward Lowe, both police investigators took the little girl’s fingerprints as well as her foot prints, they photographed her well preserved face and made dental impressions of her teeth.  The girl’s photograph was published in the newspaper, hoping that someone, anyone would reach out to law enforcement to identify the girl, but despite the publicity around the fire and Little Miss 1565’s photograph being show all around the country, no one ever showed up or called to claim the small girl.  The city of Hartford ended up burying the girl without ever finding out her name, she was interred at the Harford Northwood Cemetery.  This will also be the location of a future Hartford Circus Fire Victims’ memorial. 

By 1981, Police Sargent Lowe had passed away and his widow told the public that her late husband had identified Little Miss 1565 before his death and that he had contact her family, but the girl’s family had asked to remain out of the lime light.  In 1991, the identity of Little Miss 1565 was declared to be that of 8-year-old Eleanor Emily Cook.  Eleanor’s aunt and uncle had been brought in to the morgue to identify the body and they said that it was not their niece, later it was believed that these family members were shown the wrong victim’s body when they went to identify the girl.  The Connecticut State Police forensics unit compared some hair samples and they think that they had a match, because of this Little Miss 1565, now know as Eleanor Cook was exhumed and reburied next to her brother, Edward, who also perished in the fire.  There is still a lot of debate about the identity of this girl and in arson investigator Rick Davey’s book, A Matter of Degree: The Hartford Circus Fire and Mystery of Little Miss 1565, he claims the girl is Eleanor Emily Cook.  But author Stewart O’Nan disagrees.  In O’Nan’s book, The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy, O’Nan points out several interesting facts; one, Little Miss 1565 has blond hair, while Eleanor Cook had brunette hair.  The shape of Little Miss 1565’s face and the shape of Eleanor Cook’s face are not similar at all and the two girls were dramatically different in heights and ages.  The most interesting portion of this debate is that when Eleanor’s mother, Mildred Corintha Parsons Cook was shown the photo of Little Miss 1565, she immediately said that the girl in the photo was not her daughter, Mildred had been severely injured during the blazing inferno and she had lost both her children in the fire. Mildred maintained this claim until her death in 1997 at the age of 91.

Many of the audience members from the Hartford Circus Fire, understandably, developed a deep-seated phobia of large events with large audiences and most have avoided attending the circus ever since this event took place.  One such person was Dorothy Carvey, but in 2004 Dorothy was given free passes for her entire family to attend the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, she chose to face her fears and that year she attended the circus for the first time since 1944.  

In 2002, the Harford Circus Fire Memorial Foundation was established and they worked to build a permanent memorial, dedicated to the victims of this great tragedy.  On July 6th, 2004, exactly 60 years to the day of the fire, ground was broken for the memorial, it was built on the exact site where the fire had occurred.  After operating for 146 years, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus shuttered its doors in 2017, they performed their final performance in Hartford, Connecticut, a final bow, taken at the site of the company’s greatest tragedy.  

Emmette Kelly who performed as the clown Weary Willie was 45-years-old on the day of this fire and he remained at the circus for another decade afterwards.  Emmette died of a heart attack in 1979 when he was 80-years-old, he was walking his garbage out to the curb at his Sarasota, Florida home.  Emmette Kelly said that the Hartford Circus Fire was like a movie forever playing in his mind, a movie that he could not turn off.