The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City

by Margaret Creighton

  Inside the tight, black space, trying to take in the pumped air, Annie Taylor couldn’t breathe well. The air seemed thick. She wanted to try the breathing tube over her head. She needed to know that it worked. If she wasn’t found fast enough, she would have to have more air. If Maud Willard ever haunted anyone after her grim, suffocated death, it was right now. Taylor did not want the Whirlpool.

  She opened the cork. Water came through, not air, and she gulped it in. This wasn’t right. Just then, though, she heard the rapping. Truesdale’s oar banged on the barrel. She had been cut loose.

  “There is water coming in here,” she tried to yell.

  The men heard her—a small voice now, deep inside the wood. But they were done with fixing.

  They let her go. Even then, they barely had enough time to save themselves. “For a moment or so,” recalled a witness, “the boat swung along in the current, moving faster [downstream] than the barrel, and then Truesdale and Holleran took up their oars.” They got away.

  It was four o’clock.

  Along the Niagara River, and at every precipice and island and fence and overhang, people crowded the shore. A few of them had raced from Port Day in order to see both the beginning and the end. They watched from Goat Island, Three Sisters Island, Terrapin Point, and Table Rock. Some had been there with their binoculars for hours. Some had been there the day before.

  The watchers saw the barrel drift steadily toward the breakers, hit the whitewater, get pitched and tossed, disappear from sight, then reappear. It shot into the air. It looked like it was hitting spray around rocks, but it made headway, spinning and bouncing through the rocky terraces, going lower, still intact.

  Bit by bit, the barrel moved toward the brink. Suddenly it caught, as the anvil lodged against a rock. The crowd gasped. Just as suddenly, it loosened and careened onward. Mrs. Taylor’s death, it seemed, would be fast and soon.

  As the barrel inched closer to the edge of the falls, it followed the curve of the shore and entered the smooth water—a gliding sheet of green. Niagara green. The honored color of the summer. It was a beautiful sight—the inexorable, unstoppable power, and the clear, verdant color.

  As the barrel approached the edge, onlookers began to work feverishly at their cameras. They tried to point their lenses, but the dark shape moved fast.

  Mrs. Taylor reached the precipice. And tumbled over. The cask fell bottom first, straight down.

  “She is over!” shouted the watchers, in unison.

  Then the barrel disappeared.

  Below Horseshoe Falls, Richard Carter, captain of Maid of the Mist, circled in the froth. He wasn’t sure what to look for: pieces of wood, a barrel, or, just as likely, if the force of the falls had sucked the cask into its lowest vortex, nothing at all.

  Then, there it was, in the current along the Canadian shore.

  He blasted his whistle.

  A rescue party, including the ubiquitous Carlisle Graham, stood on a rock ready to help. The barrel moved into Bass Rock eddy, about a quarter of a mile from the falls, and then edged closer to shore. A man stripped down to his trunks, seized the barrel’s handle, and, with help, pulled it to safety.

  Up above and along the banks of the gorge, people cheered.

  Others knew it was too soon to cheer. The lid had to be opened first.

  Three men worked to unscrew the lid and then slid off the oval top.

  They looked in.

  A white, water-soaked face. A blue hand.

  The hand extended through the opening.

  And waved.15

  9.

  The Escape of the Doll Lady

  I

  BRAIN FEVER

  Annie Taylor was still alive—that much was certain. Soon enough, though, it became apparent that she was stuck in the barrel. Waterlogged, cold, and weak, she couldn’t edge herself out, and nobody else could either. The thick oak that had shielded her from the blows of a thousand rocks now encased her like a form-fitting coffin. It was unclear how long she could last, or what shape she was in.

  The men sent for a saw. With that in hand, they cut their way through the oak, took off the top of the cask, and, with a mighty tug, pulled her out. She had a bleeding laceration behind her ear and she looked shipwrecked. But, with help, she stood up and spoke.

  “Have I gone over the falls?”

  Annie Taylor’s mind was muddled, but her limbs were intact. She walked upright along the rocks and climbed across a plank to a boat. Photographers captured the moment—her hair in a bedraggled topknot, her dress disheveled, her hand outstretched for help. Within an hour, she was back at her boardinghouse, sipping coffee and brandy and thawing out with the help of a stack of blankets, hot-water bottles, and a coal fire.

  When she felt well enough, she spoke about what she remembered. As she plunged through the rapids, she said, she thought she was suffocating. But worse, she recalled, was the noise that came rumbling through the barrel’s thick walls. It was the deadly roar of the falls, and it grew to a thunder.

  She felt a short drop. Rocks, she imagined. Still the rapids.

  Annie Taylor, dazed and triumphant.

  Then came the “terrible nightmare.” She couldn’t say whether the barrel had stalled, or risen up, or lurched. But all at once she felt hollow, and her stomach flew into her throat. “Something,” she said, “had given out from under me.”

  The next thing she knew was that she hit a rock, slamming into it so hard that her barrel broke and cold water struck her face. Later, of course, she realized that it wasn’t a rock at all, just the impact, 158 feet down. Her barrel hadn’t broken, either, just leaked. The water, she remembered, felt “so cold.”

  She thanked people, like Captain Billy Johnson, who had urged her to install arm straps. He had helped her avoid “having my brains beaten out.” And she thanked God. “I owe a debt of great gratitude to Him,” she declared.

  Asked whether she would ever do it again, she had a quick reply: “I’d sooner be shot by a cannon or lose a million dollars than do it again. I will never do it again. But I am not sorry I did it, if it will help me financially.”

  Tussie Russell was already at work on that score. Annie Taylor was receiving offers of marriage, paid interviews, and appearances. Most urgently, there were offers from the Pan-American Exposition, and he was trying to hold out for a lot of money. He also had his hands full with the barrel itself. Even before the night was over, souvenir hunters had broken up the hatch, cut the harness to pieces, and hustled them away. Maybe they wanted a part of history, but, more likely, they hoped to sell it.

  There was one hitch in the plans, however. Annie’s stunt began to catch up with her. Bruises had begun to mottle her body, and she felt shaky—even “hysterical.” The next day, when she still felt unwell, a doctor did an examination. He saw the signs of a frightening illness—brain fever.1

  II

  THE BLIND SPOT

  While Taylor lay sick and Russell fretted, another press agent, on a different account, stepped up his sales pitch. In the third week of October, Captain Jack Maitland released a storm of stories. Time was running out, he said, to go to one of the most remarkable performances in the whole United States. No one should miss Jack Bonavita’s twenty-seven lions, or Madame Morelli’s jaguars, or the “funny clown elephants.” There was a new show, too, just for “windup week.” Madame Hindoo was in town, with her serpent charmer Princess Brandea and their deadly cobras.

  The publicist also let it be known that Frank Bostock was being honored. “New laurels have been added to Frank C. Bostock’s reputation,” Maitland asserted. The agent did not specify what laurels had been awarded or by whom. And he ignored the fact that in an end-of-the-fair contest for Mayor of the Midway, four concession heads had been nominated: Frederick Cummins of the Indian Congress, Frederick Thompson of “A Trip to the Moon,” Gaston Akoun of “The Streets of Cairo,” and Fritz Mueller of “Pabst in the Midway.” Bostock, despite his spectacular profile—or perhaps because of
it—was not in the running.

  Captain Maitland also made a final push for the Doll Lady. Chiquita, he announced, had been a stupendous success, and the parlors of the Exposition mascot had been thronged with visitors. No one should pass up the chance to meet the refined little person who had mingled in the highest society. Taking the public into his confidence, Maitland even whispered a little secret about the human sensation. Chiquita, he disclosed, needed a lot of sleep. “She rests ten hours at a stretch.”

  Alice Cenda probably disliked having her personal habits shared with the public, but this might have been an exception. In just a few days, she would use this information as a cover. She and Tony, in their fleeting meetings, through go-betweens and in notes, had worked out a plan. On the second-to-last night of the fair, she would pretend to go to bed. Hours later, after her attendant and Bostock himself had retired, Tony would help her break out of her prison.

  They thought they had worked out a good escape route. The Animal King bolted Chiquita in her rooms every night, and he had done a good job of securing her windows and doors. But he had missed something. Below Chiquita’s ticket window, customers had left a depression in the ground. This depression, if deepened, could provide an opening.

  The performer bided her time. She did her best to please her manager, and, just as she had for months, she carried out her act seamlessly. She showed off her languages, signed autographs with her small, round script, and greeted hundreds of curious visitors. Back in the summer, she had had to cancel her show because shaking hands had hurt her. Now she allowed visitors to squeeze her small palm, minute after minute, all day long, without complaint.2

  III

  RICH PEOPLE, POOR PEOPLE

  The last days of October at the Pan-American Exposition, just before the grand finale, hummed with purpose. It was a time for dismantling and packing and making unashamed efforts to squeeze the last pennies from fairgoers. Salesmen marketed everything from portable souvenirs to big buildings and their contents. It was a time of giving gifts for jobs well done. Concessionaires handed their director, Frederick Taylor, a gold-headed cane; garden workers gave their chief a silver punch bowl; and the electrical engineers presented their head with an inscribed gold watch. Not to be outdone, the Exposition Hospital staff honored their superintendent, Adele Walters, with a silver-topped umbrella and gave the long-suffering Exposition physicians new instrument cases.

  It was a time, too, for hearsay. Stories coursed through Buffalo and the fairgrounds. Everybody agreed that the Exposition cost a lot more than expected and attendance was a lot less than they wanted, but what did this mean? Who would be out of luck? Who might not be paid? And, above all, could the fair do better? Seven and a half million tickets had been sold so far. Was there hope for more?

  Buffalo businesses were urged to let their employees have one last look at Rainbow City, and bring up its numbers. Any day in the next six days would do, promoters said, just—please—boost the attendance at the “greatest enterprise ever planned and carried out by Buffalo.” If nothing else, they said, go on Farewell Day, Saturday, November second. And, as though they couldn’t help it, they pulled out their timeworn tactic: Shame people with the White City. “It should be the aim of everyone to swell the Farewell Day crowd, to make it reach the 200,000 mark,” wrote the Buffalo Commercial. “At Chicago a daily attendance of 300,000 was not uncommon toward the last of the exposition season.”3

  Pan-American directors advertised energetically these last days, but they didn’t want just any visitors; they wanted paying customers. It was brought to their attention, however, that some people in western New York hadn’t been able to afford the Exposition. The parents of some local schoolchildren had found it a challenge to scrape together the round-trip streetcar fare of six cents, much less the discounted admission ticket of fifteen cents.

  Learning of this, Buffalo philanthropists rose to the occasion and bought trolley and admission tickets for six thousand children. Impoverished adults were a different matter. A rooming-house owner sent an appeal to the press, explaining that three of her lodgers had never been inside the fairgrounds, though “how much they would like to go” she couldn’t begin to say. And why had they missed out? “For the simple reason that they cannot afford it.” One, she said, was a woman and her young daughter, who both worked hard. The mother washed and cleaned houses, and some days she could hardly crawl home. But “they do not have one penny to spend—hardly enough to buy clothing.” Another was a woman with a baby whose husband had left her, and the third was just dirt poor. “Why not,” she pleaded, “let the poor people of Buffalo . . . see a sight of their lifetime?” Why not let them have “one day of recreation in which to forget their poverty?”

  The answer, not surprisingly, was no. For an exposition company that could not at that moment pay its contractors and builders—not to mention mortgage holders—generosity, or justice, was out of the question.

  To paying visitors, Pan-American promoters offered an unforgettable final day. First of all, fairgoers would be able to leave a legacy. They could drop their names and addresses into boxes on the grounds, and a record of their attendance would be stored in the fireproof archives of the Buffalo Historical Society, where it would be kept for “all time.” (It wasn’t.)

  In addition, the fair’s famous Indian warriors would kill Custer once and for all, and then attack a wagon train. The United States Cavalry would then avenge Custer. Indian women would be making food, the men would be resting, and suddenly the soldiers would strike. It wouldn’t be the usual “harmless” battle, either. The 150 Indian fighters, being real soldiers, and 300 Indians, being real Indians, meant that the “shooting and dying and scalping will be done in truly a realistic way.”

  This fight, one newspaper said, would sum up the story of the fair. “Pitted against each other,” the Commercial explained, “will be the representatives of the forces that have met in deadly conflict for over two centuries in the New World—one protecting the advance of civilization, the other virtually courting extermination in its efforts to retain a continent for primitive savagery.” Since the nineteenth century had seen the triumph of civilization, and the Pan-American Exposition had celebrated that triumph, it was only fitting that at the end of the fair these two groups should engage in final, “friendly” conflict.

  The popular sham battle between the Indian Congress and United States soldiers, in the Exposition stadium.

  If this reporter had paid some attention to the news items his colleagues had produced over the Exposition season, he would have realized his summary left a few gaps. True, the local press had devoted countless inches to describing the backwardness of the Exposition’s indigenous peoples. But, intentionally or not, it had added nuance to the picture. It had described how Geronimo, for instance, had been a tireless entrepreneur, promoting the sale of crafts and negotiating contracts. It had recounted the ways he had defied Exposition visitors and unapologetically endorsed the dog feasts. It had depicted other Native performers laughing at white audiences, turning the tables publicly and secretly, in ways modern and not modern, embracing “progressive” and “primitive” both. And it had revealed the ways that the Native performers had established dynamic Exposition communities. The fair served as a great intertribal powwow, with dances and feasts that cemented alliances and showcased resilience.

  The Indian Congress show would lead off the events on Farewell Day, but there would be other big acts. “Brawny” Irishmen would oppose each other in a hurling match, and on the Midway, cakewalkers, pie-eaters, and spielers would vie for prizes. The committee for Farewell Day would bring in special celebrities, too. Carrie Nation would draw crowds with her inflammatory temperance talk, and word had it that barrel rider Annie Edson Taylor had (mostly) recovered from her descent over Niagara Falls, and would be willing—perhaps even eager—to receive visitors at the Exposition.4

  IV

  DEADLY FORCE

  As they had done for most of the fall,
fair directors and city leaders stirred up excitement for the Exposition even as they beat back memories of September. They had even, begrudgingly, worked assassination scenes into tourist itineraries. The Temple of Music, the Exposition Hospital, the Roosevelt inauguration site, and the Milburn house had become must-see locations.

  On October 29, though, the painful drama of early autumn once again took over the news. It was the day designated for Leon Czolgosz’s electrocution at the state prison in Auburn—four days ahead of the fair’s grand finale. The papers were full of the event, and no matter what dazzling shows had been conjured up for the close of the fair, this story was impossible to ignore.

  Among the men invited to witness the electrocution was Charles R. Skinner, who had served in Congress with William McKinley and was now an official with the New York legislature. He was pleased to be at Auburn. He had been unable to attend the execution of Charles Guiteau—President Garfield’s assassin—because of a daughter’s illness, and he did not want to miss this one. He arrived in Auburn the night of the October 28, visited with friends, and ordered a wake-up call for six in the morning.

  Inside the prison, meanwhile, two physicians made a final examination of Czolgosz, and again convinced themselves of his sanity. They were so impressed by his mental faculties, in fact, that one asserted that he seemed “exceptionally intelligent for one in his walk of life.”

  The next day, a Tuesday, was cloudy. The weather was just right, Skinner felt, for what was to come. In the early morning, he presented his “invitation” to the prison warden and gathered with thirteen other witnesses in the warden’s office. They were led down a corridor to the death chamber.

  Except for witness chairs and the prisoner’s oak seat, the room was bare. There were windows, but they were too high to allow anyone to look in or to offer the condemned a glance outside. At the back of one wall stood a small enclosed area—the “executioner’s box.” Inside, modern technology was manifest: electric lights, electric wires, an electric bell to inform the occupant when to pull the switch. The switch itself was brass, with an insulated handle. The man who closed the electrical circuit could not see the prisoner. Nor could the prisoner see him.