“I saw man after man shot down by the troops.
Most of these were ghouls. One man made the trooper
believe that one of the dead bodies lying on a pile
of rocks was his mother, and he was permitted to go
up to the body. Apparently overcome by grief,
he threw himself across the corpse. In another
instant the soldiers discovered that he was chewing
the diamond earrings from the ears of the dead woman.
’Here is where you get what is coming to you,’
said one of the soldiers, and with that he put a bullet
through the ghoul. The diamonds were found in
the man’s mouth afterward.”
Others were shot to save them from the horror of being
burned alive. Max Fast, a garment worker, tells
of such an instance. He says:
“When the fire caught the Windsor Hotel at Fifth
and Market Streets there were three men on the roof,
and it was impossible to get them down. Rather
than see the crazed men fall in with the roof and be
roasted alive the military officer directed his men
to shoot them, which they did in the presence of 5,000
people.”
He further states: “At Jefferson Square
I saw a fatal clash between the military and the police.
A policeman ordered a soldier to take up a dead body
to put it in the wagon, and the soldier ordered the
policeman to do it. Words followed, and the soldier
shot the policeman dead.”
Among the many stories of this character on record
is that of a concerted effort to break into and rob
the Mint, which led to the death of fourteen men,
who were shot down by the guard in charge. They
had disregarded the command of the officer in charge
to desist. They disobeyed, and the death of nearly
the whole of them followed.
As may well be imagined, the privilege given to fire
at will was very likely to lead to examples of unjustifiable
haste in the use of the rifle. Such haste is
not charged against the United States troops, but
the militia and volunteer guards showed less judgment
in the use of their weapons. Thus we are told
that one man was shot for the minor offense of washing
his hands in drinking water which had been brought
with great trouble for the thirsty people gathered
in Columbia Park. It is also said that a bank
clerk, searching the ruins of his bank under orders,
was killed by a soldier who thought he was looting.
More than one seems to have been shot as looters for
entering their own homes.
Among the reports there is one that two men were shot
through the windows of their houses because they disobeyed
the general orders and lit candles, and one woman
because she lighted a fire in her cook stove.
Yet, if such unwarranted acts existed, there were others
better deserved. It is said that three men were
lined up and shot before ten thousand people.
One was caught taking the rings from a woman who had
fainted, another had stolen a piece of bread from a
hungry child, and the third, little more than a boy,
was found in the act of robbing tents. One thief
who escaped the bullet richly deserved it. He
came upon a Miss Logan when lying unconscious on the
floor of the St. Francis Hotel after the earthquake,
and, rather than take the time to wrench some valuable
rings from her hand, cut off the finger bearing them,
and left her to the horrors of the coming fire.
