by Tom McCarthy
It was known that people were coming to Galveston by the score, that many of them had no business there, and that the city had enough to do to watch the lawless element of Galveston without being burdened with the care of outsiders.
All deputy sheriffs wearing the badge issued by the sheriff carried arms thereafter and made arrests and were not interfered with in any way by the military guards.
On Thursday, September 13, trainload after trainload of provisions, clothing, disinfectants, and medicines were lined up at Texas City, six miles from Galveston, all sent to the suffering survivors of the storm-swept city. Across the bay were thousands of people, friends of the dead and living, waiting for news of the missing ones and an opportunity to help, but only a meager amount of relief had at that time reached the stricken town. Two telegraph wires had been put up and partial communication restored to let the outside world know that conditions there were far more horrible than was at first supposed. That was about all. It was not that which was needed; it was a more practicable connection with the mainland. True, more boats had been pressed into service to carry succor to the suffering and the suffering to succor, but they were few and small, and although working diligently night and day, the service was inadequate in the extreme. And the people were still suffering—the sick dying for want of medicine and care, the well growing desperate and in many cases gradually losing their reason.
While there were many who could not be provided for because the necessary articles for them could not be carried in, there were hundreds who were being benefited. Those supplies which had arrived had been of great assistance, but they were far from ample to provide for even a small percentage of the sufferers, estimated at thirty thousand. Even the rich were hungry. An effort was being made on the part of the authorities to provide for those in the greatest need, but this was found to be difficult work, so many were there in sad condition. A rigid system of issuing supplies was established, and the regular soldiers and a number of citizens were sworn in as policemen. These attended to the issuing of rations as soon as the boats arrived.
Every effort was put forth to reach the dying first, but all sorts of obstacles were encountered because many of them were so badly maimed and wounded that they were unable to apply to the relief committees, and the latter were so burdened by the great number of direct applications that they were unable to send out messengers.
The situation grew worse every minute; everything was needed for man and beast—disinfectants, prepared foods, hay, grain, and especially water and ice. Scores more of people died that day as a result of inattention, and many more were on the verge of dissolution, for at best it was to be many days before a train could be run into the city, and the only hope was the arrival of more boats to transport the goods.
The relief committee held a meeting and decided that armed men were needed to assist in burying the dead and clear the wreckage, and arrangements were made to fill this demand. There were plenty of volunteers for this work but an insufficiency of arms. The proposition of trying to pay for work was rejected by the committee, and it was decided to go ahead impressing men into service, issuing orders for rations only to those who worked or were unable to work.
Word was received that refugees would be carried from the city to Houston free of charge. An effort was made to induce all who are able to leave to go because the danger of pestilence was frightfully apparent.
There was any number willing to depart, and each outgoing boat, after having unloaded its provisions, was filled with people. The safety of the living was a paramount consideration, and the action of the railroads in offering to carry refugees free of charge greatly relieved the situation. The workers had their hands full in any event, and the nurses and physicians also, for neglect, although unavoidable, often resulted in the death of many.
It was estimated $2,500,000 would be needed for the relief work. The banks of Galveston subscribed $10,000, but personal losses of the citizens of Galveston had been so large that very few were able to subscribe anything. The confiscation of all foodstuffs held by wholesale grocers and others was decided upon early in the day by the relief committee. Starvation would inevitably ensue unless the supply was dealt out with great care. All kerosene oil was gone, and the gas works and electric lights were destroyed. The committee asked for a shipload of kerosene oil; a shipload of drinking water; and tons of disinfectants, such as lime and formaldehyde, for immediate use; and money and food next. Not a tallow candle could be bought for gold or light of any kind procured.
No baker was making bread, and milk was remembered as a past luxury only. What was there to do with? Everything was gone in the way of ovens and utensils.
It was absolutely necessary to let the outside world know the true state of things. The city was unable to help itself. In fact, a great part of the mighty, noble state of Texas was prostrate. Even the country at large was paralyzed at the sense of the magnitude of the disaster and was, for the time being, powerless to do anything. The entire world was thrilled with alarm, it being instinctively felt that the worst had not yet been made known. Twenty-five thousand people had to be clothed and fed for many weeks and many thousands supplied with household goods, as well. Much money was required to make their residences even fit to live in.
During the first few days after the disaster, it was almost beyond possibility to make any estimate of the amount of money necessary to even temporarily relieve the sufferings of the unfortunate people.
As a means of enlightenment, Major R. G. Lowe, business manager of the Galveston News, was asked to send out a statement to the Associated Press for dissemination throughout the globe, and he accordingly dispatched the following to Colonel Charles S. Diehl, general manager of the Associated Press at the headquarters in Chicago:
Galveston, Texas, September 12—Charles S. Diehl, general manager the Associated Press, Chicago: A summary of the conditions prevailing at Galveston is more than human intellect can master. Briefly stated, the damage to property is anywhere between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000. The loss of life cannot be computed. No lists could be kept, and all is simply guesswork. Those thrown out to sea and buried on the ground wherever found will reach the horrible total of at least three thousand souls.
My estimate of the loss on the island of the city of Galveston and the immediate surrounding district is between four thousand and five thousand deaths. I do not make this statement in fright or excitement. The whole story will never be told because it cannot be told. The necessities of those living are total. Not a single individual escaped property loss. The property on the island is wrecked, fully one-half totally swept out of existence. What our needs are can be computed by the world at large by the statement herewith submitted much better than I could possibly summarize them. The help must be immediate.
R. G. LOWE,
Manager, Galveston News
Thursday evening at the Tremont Hotel in Galveston occurred a wedding that was not attended with music and flowers and a gathering of merrymaking friends and relatives. On the contrary, it was peculiarly sad. Mrs. Brice Roberts expected some day to marry Earnest Mayo; the storm which desolated so many homes deprived her of almost everything on earth—father, mother, sister, and brother. She was left destitute. Her sweetheart, too, was a sufferer. He lost much of his possessions in Dickinson, but he stepped bravely forward and took his sweetheart to his home.
Galveston began, September 14, to emerge from the valley of the shadow of death into which she had been plunged for nearly a week, and on that day, for the first time, actual progress was made toward clearing up the city. The bodies of those killed and drowned in the storm had for the most part been disposed of. A large number was found when the debris was removed from wrecked buildings, but on that date there were no corpses to be seen, save those occasionally cast up by the sea. As far as sight at least was concerned, the city was cleared of its dead.
They had been burned, thrown in
to the water, buried—anything to get them quickly out of sight. The chief danger of pestilence was due almost entirely to the large number of unburied cattle lying upon the island, whose decomposing carcasses polluted the air to an almost unbearable extent. This, however, was not in the city proper but was a condition prevailing on the outskirts of Galveston. One great trouble heretofore had been the inability to organize gangs of laborers for the purpose of clearing the streets.
The situation in the stricken city on Wednesday, September 12, was horrible indeed. Men, women, and children were dying for want of food, and scores went insane from the terrible strain to which they had been subjected.
In his appeal to the country for aid, issued on Tuesday, September 11, Mayor Walter J. Jones said fully five thousand people had lost their lives during the hurricane, this estimate being based upon personal information. Captain Charles Clarke, a vessel owner of Galveston and a reliable man, said the death list would be even greater than that, and he was backed in his opinion by several other conservative men who had no desire to exaggerate the losses but felt that they are justified in letting the country know the full extent of the disaster in order that the necessary relief might be supplied. It was the general opinion that to hide any of the facts would be criminal.
Captain Clarke was not a sensationalist, but he well knew that the truth was what the people of the United States wanted at that time. If the people of the country at large felt they were being deceived in anything, they would be apt to close their pocketbooks and refuse to give anything. If told the truth, they would respond to the appeal for aid generously.
When relief finally began to pour in, it was remarkable how soon the women of the city plucked up courage and went to work with the men. They had suffered frightfully, but they refused to give up hope. Many called upon the mayor and offered their services as nurses. Others prepared bandages for the wounded and aided the physicians in procuring medicines for the sick. They went among the men who were engaged in burying and otherwise disposing of the dead and cheered them with bright faces and soothing words. They were everywhere, and their presence was as rays of sunshine after the black clouds of the storm.
A regular fleet of steamers and barges was plying between Galveston and Texas City, only six miles distant, and which had railway communication with all parts of the United States. As the railroad line to Texas City had been repaired, trains were sent in there as close together as possible, but this did not prevent many hundreds in Galveston from dying of starvation and lack of medical attendance.
A leading city official of Galveston gave the following version of the Reign of Terror, as the regime of the thugs and ghouls was called:
Galveston suffered in every conceivable way since the catastrophe of Saturday. Hurricane and flood came first, then famine, and then vandalism. Scores of reckless criminals flocked to the city by the first boats that landed there and were unchecked in their work of robbery of the helpless dead Monday and Tuesday.
Wednesday, however, Captain Rafferty, commanding the regulars at the beach barracks, sent seventy men of an artillery company there to do guard duty in the streets and, being ordered to promptly shoot all those found looting, carried out their instructions to the letter.
Over one hundred ghouls were shot Wednesday afternoon and evening, and no mercy was shown vandals. If they were not killed at the first volley, the troops—regulars of the United States Army and those of the Texas National Guard—saw that the coup de grace was administered.
Not only had these fiends robbed the dead, but they mutilated the bodies as well, in many instances fingers and ears of dead women being amputated in order to secure the jewelry. Some of the business organizations of the city also furnished guards to assist in patrolling the streets, and fully one thousand men are now on duty.
Wednesday evening the regulars shot forty-nine ghouls after they had been tried by court-martial, having found them in possession of large quantities of plunder. The vandals begged for mercy, but none was shown them, and they were speedily put out of the way. The bandits, as a rule, obtained transportation to the city by representing themselves as having been engaged to do relief work and to aid in burying the dead. Shortly after the first bunch of thieves was executed, another party of twenty was shot. The outlaws were afterward put out of the way by twos and threes, it being their habit to travel in gangs and never alone. In every instance the pockets of these bandits were found filled with plunder.
More than two thousand bodies had been thrown into the sea up to Wednesday night, this having been decided upon by the authorities as the only way of preventing a visitation of pestilence, which, they felt, should not be added to the horrors the city had already experienced. Tuesday evening, shortly before darkness set in, three barges containing seven hundred bodies were sent out to sea, the corpses being thrown into the water after being heavily weighted to prevent the possibility of their afterward coming to the surface. As there were few volunteers for this ghastly work, troops and police officers were sent out to impress men for the service, but while these unwilling laborers, after being filled with liquor, agreed to handle the bodies. Finally city firemen came forward and attended to the disposal of the corpses of the colored victims. These were badly decomposed, and it was absolutely necessary to get them out of the way to prevent infection.
No attempt had been made so far to gather up the dead at night because the gas and electric light plants were so badly damaged that they could furnish no illumination whatever. By Thursday night, however, some of the arc lights were ready for use. Since Wednesday morning no efforts at identification were made by the searchers after the dead, it being imperative that the bodies be disposed of as soon as possible. While the barges containing the bodies were on their way out to sea, lists were made, but that was the only care taken in regard to the victims, many of whom were among the most prominent people of the city. Of the hundreds buried at Virginia Point and other places along the coast, not 10 percent were identified, the stakes at the heads of the hastily dug graves simply being marked, “White woman, aged thirty,” “White man, aged forty-five,” or “Male” or “Female child.”
Ninety-six bodies were buried at Texas City, all but eight of which floated to that place from Galveston. Some were identified, but the great majority were not. State troops were stationed at Texas City and Virginia Point to prevent those who could not give a satisfactory account of themselves from boarding boats bound for Galveston. In burying the dead along the shore of the gulf, no coffins were used, the supply being exhausted. There was no time to knock even an ordinary pine box together. Cases were known where people have buried their dead in their yards.
As soon as possible, the work of cremating the bodies of the dead began. Vast funeral pyres were erected and the corpses placed thereon, the incineration being under the supervision of the fire department. Matters had come to such a pass that even the casting of bodies into the sea was not only dangerous to those who handled them, but there was the utmost danger in carrying the decomposed, putrefying masses of human flesh through the streets to the barges on the beach. The cemeteries were not fit for burial purposes, and no attempt whatever was made to reach them until the ground was thoroughly dried out. Then the bodies of those buried in private grounds, yards, and in the sands along the beach, not only on Galveston Island, but at Virginia Point and Texas City, were removed to the public places of interment, where suitable memorials were set up to mark their last resting places. It might have been deemed unfeeling and even brutal, but the fact was that the bodies of the unidentified victims received small consideration, being handled roughly by the workmen and thrown into the temporary graves along the beach as though they were animals and not the remains of human beings. No prayers were uttered, save in isolated instances, and the poor mangled bodies were consigned to the trench as hurriedly as possible. The burying parties had no time for sentiment, and so accustomed had the workers in the “dead gan
gs,” as they were named, become to their gruesome task that they even laughed and joked when laying away the corpses.
Special attention was given the wounded. Physicians were on duty all the time, some of them not having been to bed since Friday night longer than an hour at a time. Victims not badly hurt were put aside for those suffering and actually requiring the services of surgeons. There were thousands of them. There were few in Galveston who did not bear the marks of wounds of some sort.
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Coulter, John. “Horror in Galveston.” In The Complete Story of the Galveston Horror. New York: United Publishers of America, 1900.
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