In 1919, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. claimed, in his decision in Schenck v. United States, that the First Amendment right was not allowable if it hindered larger national strategic operations, but his particular phrasing of this verdict is notable for its idiosyncratic turn of phrase: he claimed that the right to free speech does not excuse “falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing panic.” This is a highly curious reference to make in a case entirely unrelated to panic (or fire) of any kind. Indeed, this case referred to Joseph Schenck’s being tried for printing and disseminating materials encouraging men to boycott the current wartime draft. The verdict was that Schenck’s arrest in fact upheld the Espionage Act of 1917, which principally sought to prevent non-authorized individuals from interfering with larger military-related situations or ventures.
During this period, theater fires were frequent occurrences, and had been for quite some time. Moreover, due to overcrowding and packed audiences, poor safety practices, and rudimentary electrical equipment, the risks were vastly greater in the nineteenth-century, than in previous eras. At its simplest, Holmes’s locution confirms theater fires as common cultural knowledge. Holmes’s phrasing also equates unconstitutional behavior with unmitigated danger, thereby frightening possible dissenters. More importantly, however, in this respect, is that he specifically equates inappropriately free speech with deliberately and falsely drumming up panic. To Holmes, the theater fires connote confusion: public hysteria which principally results from authority or authoritative-seeming presence muddling together what is real, and what is not.
Theater fires were a national fascination, a spectacle of their own. There were sensationalistic accounts published about real-life and recent theater fires, which emphasized gruesome details in order to sell copies. For example, less than a year after the deadly Iroquois Theater fire, a writer named Marshall Everett compiled an account of the fire, entitled The Great Chicago Theater Disaster, which featured the following subheadings: “Presenting a Vivid Picture, both by Pen and Camera, of One of the Greatest Fire Horrors of Modern Times,” “Embracing a Flash-Light Sketch of the Holocaust, Detailed Narratives by Participants in the Horror, Heroic Work of Rescuers, Reports of Building Experts as to the Responsibility for the Wholesale Slaughter of Women and Children, Memorable Fires of the Past, etc., etc.,” and “Profusely Illustrated with Views of the Scene of Death Before, During and After the Fire.” Then again, there were well-meaning reports that co-opted this sensational, inflammatory rhetoric to muckrake, announcing disasters with gripping phrases, to call attention to public safety lapses.
In February 1875 (thirty years before Chicago’s deadly Iroquois Theater Fire), the Chicago Times ran an enormous front-page spread about a local theater fire, with shocking subheads entitled “Burned Alive,” Hundreds of Charred and Distorted Corpses,” and horrifying details about both patrons’ struggles to escape, and their gruesome deaths. The article proved to be a fake – but it was much more than a hoax. It was a cautionary tale, printed by the newspaper in hopes of raising awareness about poor fire safety measures in public places, particularly entertainment venues, which packed audiences in, night after night. The article’s rhetoric matches the bombastic vernacular surrounding such extremely frequent, real-life disasters, as well as directly engages with the increased concern about the promotion and implementation of fire safety policies and technologies.
In this era of journalism, many incidents, from quotidian events gone awry to large-scale horrors, were represented in the news with exaggerated, shocking headlines and gory details. The overblown and graphic headings and subheadings of many such articles, argues Paulette D. Kilmer, do much more than rhetorically inflate the tragedies at hand to capture the attention of readers (although they certainly do this); the goal of some news outlets, especially The New York Times, was to scare its readers through the inclusion of horrifying and memorable details, by drawing attention to, and representing the disaster that can result from poorly constructed structures, corrupt institutions, dangerous products, or simply, everyday ignorance, mismanagement, irresponsibility and carelessness.
To Justice Holmes, “shouting fire in a crowded theater,” as his words have come to be phrased idiomatically, refers to the moment that panic overtakes the crowd, overruns the show. A cry like this dissolves the boundaries and the authority of the theater space, leaving the people subject to their own whims, wits, wills, and feelings. Holmes notes that the governing principles of the theater are abandoned as soon as someone( anyone) announces a disaster loudly enough, just as the promulgation of anti-draft materials by an invested interloper might destabilize domestic war preparation plans, by displacing the rules in favor of the clashing feelings of an un-unified or disinterested mass.
