Penloom History · The stories they left out
Calumet, Michigan, 24 December 1913
Someone shouted 'Fire!' at a strikers' Christmas party in 1913. There was no fire. Seventy-three people died on the stairs.
In the fifth month of a bitter copper strike, the miners' union women's auxiliary held a Christmas Eve party for strikers' families on the second floor of the Italian Hall. Someone shouted "Fire!" There was no fire. Seventy-three people were crushed to death on the stairway down — most of them children.
Disputed — the coroner's inquest ran for days and named no cause. The man who shouted was never identified. Witnesses said he wore the button of the anti-union Citizens' Alliance; that was never proven and is argued about still, as is the claim that the doors were held shut from the street. A Congressional subcommittee took testimony in 1914 and the question is open.
The hall was demolished in 1984. Its sandstone arch stands alone in a memorial park, and you can walk through it.
Part of this story is labelled DISPUTED above, in the paragraph it belongs to. We label rather than cut: a claim the record does not carry is still part of how the story was told, and you are entitled to know which part is which.
Penloom History — dark history you can trust. Every claim traced to a named archive, monograph, report or paper, and everything the record does not carry labelled where it sits. How we check a history fact before we repeat it →