The victims of the Hammond Circus Train Wreck were in many cases so badly burned by the fire that spread through the wreckage that their bodies could not be formally identified. However, the identities of those missing included some of the circus’ star performers — Millie Jewel, the “Girl Without Fear” who worked with animals; aerialist Jennie Ward Todd; and Arthur and Joseph Dericks, brothers who performed in the circus as strongmen. Joseph Coyle, the circus’ leading clown, also lost his wife and two children in the disaster.

The recovered bodies were taken to Chicago’s Woodlawn Cemetery. There, the bodies were interred in a large plot secured by the Showmen’s League, a community of showpeople founded five years earlier to provide scholarships, financial aid, and memorials for performers in the amusement industry. Fifty-three bodies were buried in the plot, but sadly only five were identifiable by name. A stone elephant marks the site, which can still be visited today.

Alonzo Sargent was charged with manslaughter, but a mistrial ultimately saw him walk free. In the wake of the disaster, little was done to identify what systems were to blame for the mass deaths, or whether the circus itself was in any way liable. Instead, circuses and other traveling troupes were urged to switch to steel carriages for the safety of their passengers. A month later, another train wreck involving two passenger trains in Nashville, Tennessee took the lives of more than 100 people, prompting greater safety checks across the board and the gradual phasing out of wooden carriages.

[Featured image by 6th Happiness via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 3.0]