Daily Herald
D. Robert Carter
A series of bedazzling blazes flared through the chambers of Springville's Boyer Hotel in August 1891. Some townspeople thought the flames sprang from supernatural origins, while others said the fires started from the spontaneous combustion of a strange chemical that had been spread throughout the hotel. In truth, nothing more mysterious than matchsticks in the hands of a flaming young pyromaniac, Nicolena Erickson, kindled the fires.
This sequence of small fires in the hotel was both costly and comical. The flames destroyed carpets, clothing, curtains, wallpaper and dishtowels. The small blazes carried the potential of escalating into an inferno that could have consumed the whole hotel and caused loss of life -- but that did not happen.
Since there was neither extensive damage done to the hotel nor any fatalities as a result of the small fires there, some people, who possessed a droll sense of humor, felt amused by the recent happenings in Springville. Rational inhabitants of Utah found it humorous when Springvillians so rapidly ascribed the causes of the fires to the presence in town of the "magnetic girl" or other equally ridiculous occult causes.
William G. and Lulu Boyer Alexander stayed in the hotel during the 1891 fires, and they witnessed those exciting days firsthand, with no ill effects. Twelve years later, however, they encountered another blaze that resulted in extreme personal misfortune.
At an early age, Lulu, the oldest child of Philip and Sarah Ann Boyer, chose acting as her career. Her decision was, perhaps, influenced to some degree by the acting troupes who temporarily lived in the Boyer Hotel and often filled its rooms with an aura of glamour and excitement.
Don Carlos Johnson's Brief History of Springville states that James E. Hall and D.C. Johnson & Bros. built a new theater on Springville's Main Street in 1882. The building, which cost $10,00 and seated 500 people, gained distinction as Utah Territory's second largest show house. Its commodious stage made it possible to put on almost any type of play, and the theater attracted some first-class, acting companies.
According to Springville photographer and author, Rell G. Francis, Lulu joined the local Johnson Brothers Dramatic company. As a member of this troupe, Francis said Lulu "traveled widely throughout the West and Canada."
During the summer of 1888, the young Thespian traveled with a dramatic troupe while playing the leading role in the drama, Enoch Arden. On August 22, Mrs. Clara Hall gave a garden party in Springville in honor of the rising actress's success. A Salt Lake Daily Herald correspondent who attended the affair, reported that Miss Boyer possessed "considerable dramatic ability." As part of the entertainment, Lulu, who also possessed a beautiful singing voice, sang "The Bobolink" and "The Last Rose of Summer."
It was likely sometime during her early acting career that Lulu met Professor William G. Alexander, a talented, traveling phrenologist from Canada who made his living lecturing and analyzing character by studying the shape and form of a person's skull.
During a week-long stand in Provo's new opera house, Alexander read skulls and lectured on a wide variety of subjects. The day after he gave a lecture entitled "National Benefactors, and How to Read Character," the Salt Lake Daily Herald playfully reported, " Professor Alexander. . . has succeeded in creating considerable of interest in the phrenological developments of our neighbors, that is, we are becoming masters of the science so that we can read the character and point out faults of our neighbors at a single glance, but fail to see our own."
After the completion of a lecture entitled, "Love, Courtship, Marriage and Jealousy," Alexander asked two unmarried female volunteers from the audience to come up on the stage. After examining their skulls, the professor canvassed the audience, scrutinizing the skulls of eligible bachelors in an effort to find compatible mates for the two young ladies.
Alexander's lectures were customarily free, but at the conclusion of his program, the phrenologist passed a receptacle and asked for contributions. The audience did not always limit their contributions to money. Toward the end of the professor's run in Provo, the Herald informed its subscribers, "Professor Alexander said, since the previous night he had carefully examined all his clothes and did not think he was in need of any buttons, and he asked as a favor that no one would be so generous as to contribute either buttons or pool tickets, for he had no use for them. He was willing to accept cash."
Professor Alexander must have found something in the shape of Lulu Boyer's skull that he admired. The clever, articulate phrenologist proposed marriage, and the young actress accepted. A short time later, her uncle, Springville Justice of the Peace John S. Boyer, married the happy couple in the Boyer Hotel. After being lawfully united, the newlyweds received a reception in their honor at the hotel.
A week later, the couple left on the first lecture tour they would take together. It included stops in Utah, Colorado and Texas. The couple stayed on the lecture circuit for years. The professor did well economically and also earned an enviable reputation. During their tours in the east, the phrenologist attracted a great deal of interest from the press in large cities. In 1895, the year the couple's first child, a daughter, was born, the Salt Lake Tribune paid Alexander a high compliment when it wrote, "It is generally conceded that he is the ablest phrenologist who has ever been before the public of this country."
Lulu gave birth to her second child, a boy, in 1899, while the family resided in Springville. Provo's Utah County Democrat commented at the time of the boy's birth, "If he is a 'chip off the old block,' the boy ought to be a 'headreader' of note, as Mr. Alexander is a well known phrenologist."
Shortly after the turn of the century, Prof. Alexander decided to become a medical doctor and expand his field of interest from the cranium to the whole body. The family moved to Chicago, where Alexander attended medical school. In September 1903, he completed his requirements early and waited in Chicago to receive permission to practice. After he became a doctor, the Alexanders intended to return to Utah to make their home.
During the Christmas holidays that year, Dr. Alexander went on a lecture tour to eastern Canada. While he was there, he visited with relatives. When he returned to Chicago, he found his two children anxious to attend a matinee of the play, Mr. Bluebeard. Melba, his eight-year-old daughter, felt a special interest in the story.
Mr. Bluebeard was the first play produced in the recently completed Iroquois Theater, a large French Renaissance style building with the giant stone head of an Indian extending over the grand entrance. The large structure, Chicago's newest and biggest theater, contained a total of 1,724 chairs in its upper and lower balconies and on its main floor. Considerable standing room increased the theater's capacity to about 2,000.
Lulu Alexander decided against attending the matinee on December 30, and Dr. Alexander tried to persuade the children not to go. However, Melba and her four-year-old brother, Boyer, expressed such adamant interest in attending the play that Mrs. Alexander finally agreed to take them.
Dr. Alexander was scheduled to assist with an operation just before the play began. The procedure ended so late in the afternoon that Alexander decided not to attend the production. He reasoned it would be too difficult to get tickets by that time.
The first act ended successfully before an appreciative capacity crowd of about 300 men, 900 women and 900 children. Midway through the second act, the house darkened for a moonlight song. In the flies toward the top of the 100-foot-high proscenium arch framing the stage, a hot and inadequately protected flood light came into contact with a linen curtain. A small flame sprang up.
William McMullen, the operator of that spotlight, tried to put out the fire with his hands, but his frantic efforts failed. The theater company noticed the fire, and some of the actors calmed the audience, most of whom stayed in their seats. Those who left the theater at this point were the lucky ones.
After McMullen realized he could not put out the fire, he called for the help of the house firemen and ordered stage hands to lower the asbestos fire curtain. When lowered between the front of the stage and the audience, this fire-retardant curtain would, in theory, protect the audience from fires burning on the stage.
John Dougherty, an iron worker who was hired during the matinee as an extra on the fly floor, heard the call to lower the fire curtain. He ran from the back to the front of the flies and tried to lower the asbestos shield alone. Dougherty found the curtain heavy and hard to manage. When somebody jostled him, his hand caught in the ropes. The regular curtain men finally arrived, relieved some of the tension off the rope and released his hand.
Someone shoved Dougherty out of the way and continued lowering the curtain. Unfortunately, it caught on the planking of a strip light scaffold that was standing too near the proscenium arch. Joseph Bruce later testified the curtain stuck about 15 feet from the floor on the north side of the stage, and its bottom edge sloped down to within five feet of the floor on the south side of the stage. The partially closed curtain saved the large theater company from almost certain death by not confining the fire to the stage area where they worked., but it also doomed hundreds of people in the audience.
At this point, flames ravaged the area behind the curtain only, and there were no fire hoses on the stage with which to douse the flames. McMullen jumped from the scaffold that held the lights and helped people evacuate the area behind the curtain.
Apparently, nobody thought to open the sky lights above the stage. The resulting updraft would have funneled the flames upward and helped keep them from reaching the audience.
Several other omissions later proved to be catastrophic. Nobody turned up the house lights, and many of the exits were draped, making them difficult to see in the eerie, flickering light thrown off by the flames. Also, only one of the three lobby doors was unlocked.
About 10 minutes after the fire started, most of the people in the balconies still remained in their seats, showing little inclination to stampede. Many people also remained seated on the main level. Theatergoers in the front rows sat only 50 feet from the burning stage. They did not remain in their seats much longer.
To be continued
D. Robert Carter is a historian from Springville. He can be reached at 489-8256.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B2.
Source: http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/175418/4/
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