The Calumet Christmas Catastrophe

True Crime Historian

Pulpular Media

True Crime

4.5 • 720 Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2016

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Panic at the Italian Hall
This episode comes from the request of a listener in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who wanted to know more about the panic disaster that took place at the Calumet Italian Hall in 1913.
We just took nice camping trip to the Keneewah Peninsula, Michigan's upper Upper Peninsula. You'd be hard pressed to find a more beautiful place in the world. The weather was sublime and Lake Superior is one of my favorite bodies of water--crystal clear, unsalted and shark-free. My girlfriend wants to move up there, at least for the summers, and I'm not opposed.
While we were there, we took the time to stop at Calumet and visited the memorial to the the Italian Hall. I'm usually a pretty cynical person, but I was truly moved to tears thinking about how horrible a person it took to instigate this tragedy, especially when most of the victims were little children. I took some pictures of the memorial and that evening, dug Episode 67 out of the vault, made a few edits, enhanced some of the audio, and while listening to it, found myself with the sniffles all over again.
It’s a sad story, folks, but I think it’s an important one to remember because it’s all about what happens when we lose our civility.
Theme music by Dave Sams Some incidental music via musopen.org Creative Commons license

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Calumet, Michigan, the Copper Country of the Upper Peninsula.
0:07.0	December 25th. Calumet, Michigan, the copper country of the Upper Peninsula.
0:22.6	December 25th, 1913.
0:26.6	Christmas was a day of sorrow, bitterness, and desolation in Calumet.
0:32.6	54 homes are grief-stricken.
0:35.6	72 bodies await burial. And the worst storm of the season
0:40.3	is raging, adding to the misery, and officials of the Western Federation of Miners and the
0:47.3	Citizens Alliance are at swords points regarding arrangements for the funerals of the victims
0:53.3	of last night's tragedy.
0:56.0	There were pitiful scenes in the homes of the stricken miners today.
1:01.0	Many of the families are too poor to buy fuel and their homes are cold and cheerless,
1:06.0	for they have been living on strike benefits of from $3 to $7 a week since the strike began on July 23rd.
1:15.7	Many of the families number as high as 13 persons.
1:20.1	The strike of the copper miners has been underway for months.
1:24.4	That means for weeks the specter of starvation has stalked the streets and gifts for the children have been few.
1:31.3	So for days this Christmas celebration has been looked forward to.
1:35.3	It was to be one bright spot in a series of many dark and gloomy days.
1:41.3	Therefore, when the women and children assembled last night in the Italian hall, joy was the watchword.
1:48.6	Around a mammoth Christmas tree were piled hundreds of gifts, mostly handmade, from the toys
1:54.5	for the babies to bats and balls for the older boys and sewing kits for the girls. The torment, the bitter anger, the strife and the hunger of the past months was momentarily forgotten.
2:08.9	All was swallowed up in Christmas gladness.
2:12.4	The Christmas carols had been sung and Santa Claus was distributing gifts when like a thunderbolt came the cry.
	...

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