Proposal: Ohio State Penitentiary Newspaper Coverage
Walter Beazley
The proposed research paper will focus on newspaper coverage regarding the Ohio State Penitentiary fire that occurred on April 21, 1930. It will address the immediate coverage of the fire and how the difference in portrayal of the prison workers versus the inmates were conveyed to the public within the US. Researching this specific event allows for insight on how information on prison roles and tragedies were presented to the public during this time.
America’s most horrific prison fire consumed the entire building, spreading throughout each chamber and cell. The prison was overpopulated and guards refused to release inmates during the fire, trapping hundreds of people in their cells; 322 people died. The fire was given little attention or sympathy, due to the victims being categorized as criminals by the public.
The bulk of primary sources that will be in the proposed project are US newspapers posted days after the event. The lack of newspaper coverage in Ohio necessitates a broader search for newspaper sources within the US. This will give insight on how the prison workers and the inmates were immediately presented to the public on a national level. Newspaper coverage is one of the main focuses of the proposed project because they allow for an in-depth analysis and closer examination of what was immediately shown to the public days after the fire. This examination will include headlines, photos, information, tone, and the overall coverage of the prison workers and the inmates within these newspapers. The newspaper, 319 Killed in Prison Fire, 150 Dying, provides stories of the guards and the actions they took during the fire. This source is one of the newspapers that will be used to show how the guards were portrayed compared to the inmate victims. Another newspaper, Convicts Describes Cell Tier Inferno,provides quotes from the inmates who survived the fire. It will be used in the proposed project to show how the inmates were represented in the newspapers. One of the examples, State Prison in Ohio Again Trouble Scene, which talks about the methods used by the guards to hold back inmates from escaping. This will be used to show the general narrative that was conveyed to the public. The proposed project will include these three newspapers and more dealing with the fire. All these newspapers will be formatted in a summarized collection of paragraphs. That will explain the general themes and perpetual concepts shown to the public, regarding prison workers and the inmates.
The proposed project will also utilize the book, Fire in The Big House: America’s Deadliest Prison Disaster, by Mitchel P. Roth. This book will be used to give background info on the fire and facts about the victim’s deaths. It also includes pictures, maps, descriptions of reactions, and the aftermath of the fire, which will be used to give more context and clarity. The proposed project will include evidence based on certain chapters of the book. Some of the most important chapters that will be covered are “The Warden”, “The Keepers”, “The Convicts”, and “Aftermath”. These chapters provide insight on the people within the prison, as well as what happened to them. They will be used to elaborate further on the information and stories that weren’t presented in the 1930 newspapers, such as the deaths, the conditions, and the actions of the guards and inmates. The proposed project will also utilize the peer reviewed article, The Cruel Optimism of International Prison Regulation Prison Ontologies and Carceral Harms, by Kemp, Tom, and Philippa Tomczak. It will be used as another source of information on prison roles and regulations to add more context to the proposed project. In addition, this proposed project will include information from the book, A Night of Horror; 1930 Ohio Penitentiary Fire, by Rose, Donald. This will also be used to add background on information regarding the people involved in the fire.
This proposed project will address the US newspaper coverage on the Ohio State Penitentiary fire. It will focus on how the prison workers and the inmates were portrayed throughout the newspapers days after the incident. This is an important topic because the coverage painted the victims as just criminals and not real people who lost their lives. Covering this topic allows for insight on perspective of inmates versus guards and how they were addressed in coverage.
Research Paper: Ohio State Penitentiary Fire Newspaper Coverage
Walter Beazley
In America’s forgotten fire, more than three hundred people were left to burn alive. On April 21, 1930, one of the worst building fires in America’s history occurred. The Ohio State Penitentiary fire was a raging inferno that consumed the entire building, spreading throughout each chamber and cell, killing 322 people. Newspapers played a significant role in the coverage anomaly regarding the victim’s deaths. There are small number of newspapers in the US that covered this fire. The most active reporting on this fire came from newspapers in Washington DC, Alaska, and Indiana. The state of Ohio was not as active in reporting the fire despite the fire taking place in an Ohio prison. These states were the main contributors to the spread of information regarding the fire to the public during the 1930s. The newspaper coverage in these states during the 1930s gave little sympathy or attention to the tragedy due to the majority of the victims being criminals.
Most of the 1930s newspapers from those states showcased unfair representation of the inmates involved in the fire. These newspaper stories consisted of brief summaries, stories of the guards, and numbers of the deceased. There was a sheer lack of sympathy or empathy for the victims, especially the inmates. A Daily Alaska Empire newspaper posted on April 29, 1930, just a couple days after the fire, showcases the lack of attention given to the victims.On the front page of the Daily Alaska Empire Newspaper Revolting Convicts Attempt to Break Prison, it had only one column dedicated to the fire despite the title of the newspaper. The column repeatedly states that the convicts tried to escape the prison and fight back against the guards. The column mentions how the officers defended the entrance and contained the revolting prisoners, but the column only ever mentions the actual fire once. The Daily Alaska Empire refers to the victims’ attempts to escape as acts of revolting rather than cries for help. These newspapers presented the victims as violent criminals, not actual people who lost their lives. “The convicts held several guards as prisoners for a short time but released them when National Guard officers threatened to enter and rescue them.”[1] This newspaper highlights the fact that some guards were held hostage during the fire. Following this passage are more stories from the guards protecting and defending. There was a trend of favoring the guards over the inmates throughout these 1930s newspapers.
In the case of another US newspaper titled, Screams of Burning Convicts Added to Panic of 5,000 Men, primarily talks about how the fire started. This Washington Times newspaper article was posted on April 22, one day after the fire occurred, it primarily describes the inmates adding to the fire. It mentions how the convicts attacked the firemen and delayed their rescue attempts. It also states that the prisoners cut the hose lines when the firemen were trying to help. The blame is placed upon the inmates, while ignoring all responsibilities held by the guards. This newspaper article describes the inmates as “cursing convicts” and “rebelling convicts”, and uses words like “herding” when addressing a larger group of inmates going back into their cells.[2] Another trend seen throughout these newspapers is the amount of attention spent praising the guards. Other newspapers also focused their blame on the inmates. In the newspaper article “Report to Blame Convicts for Fire,” the inmates are blamed for the cause of the fire but also the deaths of their former inmates.[3] Meanwhile the guards faced little backlash on the topic. The inmate’s deaths are shadowed by their criminal status.
Most of these newspapers did not convey accurate information regarding the fire, instead they were filled with bias and favoritism towards the guards. This fire has only one major book published. In Mitchel P. Roth’s book on the Ohio State Penitentiary fire, Fire in The Big House: America’s Deadliest Prison Disaster, discusses what happened to inhabitants of the prison on April 21, 1930. This book gives background information on the fire and facts about the victim’s deaths. Mitchel P. Roth, a professor of criminology and criminal justice, is one of the few people to provide accurate information on the Ohio Penitentiary fire and its victims. The book reveals the hidden reality behind the events that took place during and after the fire. Despite the guards and the warden praised in the newspapers, they were actually one of the leading causes of death on that horrific night. The warden of the penitentiary, Preston Thomas, was regarded by his fellow prison staff as an amazing leader and worker throughout his time in the penitentiary. He was extremely dedicated to keeping the prisoners locked in their cells. Under no circumstances were the convicts allowed to roam freely without supervision, “Warden Thomas gave the order that in the event that convicts tried to use him to force to open the gate, the guards should let them cut my throat…but never open the gate.’” [4] During the fire outbreak, Thomas decided to position himself outside of the prison to ensure no prisoners were able to escape. Leaving the prison without a leader and the guards without orders.
Some of the guards were in question for not returning the keys to the administrative offices, some held onto keys simply out of convenience. During the spread of the fire, some guards freed convicts, or at the very least attempted too. Some of their rescue attempts were slow and unorganized because of their sheer panic. On the other hand, a decent number of guards refused to release the inmates from their cells. Most of the guards did not want to be held responsible for releasing any of the inmates.
In Roth’s book, it describes the tragic stories of the inmates. The inmates were begging to be freed and praying for mercy and when they realized they were being abandoned, some even wished for death. They cried for the guards to shoot them before the flames reached them. The guards refused since it went against the prison regulations. As for the inmates left in their melting cells, they had to take action to survive as long as they could. The iron bars and the cell locks became scorching hot and melted beyond recognition. Due to the intense heat and melting, some of the locks were unusable, trapping even more inmates in their cells. These cells were overcrowded. Four convicts occupied the G through H cells according to the book and these cells held most of the industrious inmates. In total there were 204 G through H cells overflowing with new inmates every other day.[5] One of the biggest issues was the lack of fire emergency drills and preparedness. The guard’s hesitation also played a significant role in the loss of life that day. Many of the guards could not decide whether to save the inmates or not. During the fire, some inmates chose to drench themselves in water from their sinks and toilets, while others hung wet blankets to block the smoke from entering. Trapped inmates tried to use makeshift ropes to escape out of windows. One of the inmates had reportedly slipped and accidentally hung himself while trying to escape the raging inferno. Only 13 out of 262 prisoners that were housed in the top tiers survived that day.
The majority of the newspapers never acknowledge the guard’s lack of safety precautions and mercy towards the victims. The inhumane actions were hardly mentioned, and the lack of drills and preparedness were absent from most of these newspapers. The prison had a record of horrible living conditions, such as beatings, hard labor, poor medical treatment, exposure to diseases, overpopulation, and executions. As seen in Dona M. Reaser’s dissertation “Profit and Penitence: An Administrative History of the Ohio Penitentiary From 1815 to 1885,” on the prison. In the 1840s, there was a pandemic outbreak known as the Cholera Epidemic in Columbus. Some guards fled the scene while it spread throughout the prison, killing 116 prisoners.[6] The early newspaper coverage during the 1930s excludes crucial details that surround this tragedy. Most of the public would never know of the full story till much later, because of the poor newspaper coverage and the other recent fires, this tragedy was quickly overlooked. After a couple weeks, the fire was already forgotten. Within a few years there were more fires such as the Coconut Grove Nightclub fire (November 28, 1942) and the Hartford, Ringling Brothers Circus fire (July 6, 1944) that quickly became the focus of fire disasters in the 1900s.[7] The Ohio Penitentiary fire was not properly reported compared to the more famous tragedies in America’s history. In Roth’s book on the fire, he states, “Contemporary newspaper editors pointed out that other tragic fires had been followed by vastly improved fire safety initiatives, claiming that “it took the Iroquois theaters” and “the Collinwood school fire to make American school buildings safe for children. The disaster at the Ohio pen, let us hope, will result in a similar advance for our prisons.’” [8]
The prisoners written about in the newspapers were labeled as dangerous and never stated that some were there for minor crimes. Some of the crimes that were committed include, fraudulent checks, forgery, robbery, larceny, non-support, auto stealing, and attempted burglary. Judging from the date of birth records in the Fire in The Big House appendix, the youngest people who died in this fire were around twenty-three years old. The majority of newspapers failed to capture the magnitude of this situation regarding the loss of life. In the newspaper “Grave Charges Made Fire in Columbus Prison,” the summary highlights the warden’s story and the fire’s repercussions on future policy. It failed to recognize the prisoners as people and victims and never mentions how the fire impacted them.
The convicts were represented harshly throughout the first couple of years following the fire, but occasionally there were some newspapers that did indeed stand up for the inmates and their heroism. The coverage in Alaska and Ohio do not give the prisoners a voice, in contrast the coverage fromIndiana called the convicts heroes. An Indianapolis Times newspaper posted two days after the fire on April 23, described two inmates saving more than 50 other their fellow men from burning alive in their cell blocks.[9] Another Indianapolis Times newspaper titled 319 Killed in Prison Fire, 150 Dying, posted a day after the fire on April 22, included a lengthy article titled “Prisoners Heroic in Rescue Feats.” Unlike the majority of the Alaska newspaper coverage, the Indiana newspapers thoroughly represented the inmate’s stories.
Some newspapers represented both the prison workers and inmates involved with the fire. A Washington Times newspaper article titled “Who Killed those 317 Men,” posted on April 26 just a few days after the fire started, mentioned, “Why were those 317 men burned to death in their cells in the Ohio penitentiary? Because of the stupid attitude of fanatics and demagogues toward crime and lawbreakers and prisons.” [10] The point of this newspaper article was to prove it was not the inmates nor the guards fault, but rather society’s norms on what makes someone a criminal worthy of jail time. This newspaper article addressed biases and opinions on the fire. It mentions how the warden chose to let them die because he knew he would be punished for freeing criminals. The newspaper also talks about how society is the reason courts and prisons are overflowing, how the society itself exposed regular people to crimes and law breaking. “But the American penal system is a greater crime still, because it is a crime against humanity and the finer instincts of the American people.” [11] Sadly, this is one of, if not the only, US newspaper brave enough to say something so humane and impactful to the public during this time.
More than half of the newspaper coverage from Washington DC, Alaska, Indiana, and Ohio favored the guards over the inmates. When comparing these findings many trends start to appear. The coverage was miniscule, short texts pushed to the side or to the very bottom. There were small amounts of photographs regarding the fire, and huge unrelated advertisements that were bigger than the text regarding the victims of the prison fire. Another common trend was the use of “convicts” or “prisoners”, rather than referring to the victims as people. Even in some of the newspapers favoring the inmates, the inmates are still dehumanized and categorized. Guards leaving convicts to burn seemed uncontroversial during this time based on these newspaper findings. The guards, described as heroes and the inmates, described as convicts trying to escape. The newspapers held the officers and guards in high regards when referring to the weapons and methods of containment. The newspaper had less coverage on the memorials, remembrances, and the aftermath on the victims in the 1930s.
The Ohio State Penitentiary fire, one of the most tragic fires in America’s history, was forgotten about due to the demographic of victims. Despite this fire being the third worst building fire in US history, excluding 9/11, it is hardly talked about. Only a few states were active in covering this enormous tragedy, such as Washington DC, Alaska, and Indiana. The state of Ohio hardly addressed the fire when it originally occurred. Poor coverage of the fire during the 1930s is most likely what led to this fire being forgotten by the majority of the public. This fire has only one major book and a few newspapers that covered it. The newspaper coverage during the 1930s was primarily biased towards the guards, and unfaithful to the inmate sufferings. The victim’s deaths were invalidated during this time simply because they were criminals. This tragedy and its victims have been overlooked and poorly represented throughout the decades, dating all the way back to April 21, 1930.
Bibliography
Associated Press. “317 Perish in Prison Fire; Guards Delayed Rescue, Ohio Inquiry Indicates.” Evening Star (Washington, DC),April 22, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1930-04-22/ed-1/seq-1/.
Associated Press. “Convict Describes Cell Tier Inferno.” Evening Star (Washington, DC),April 23, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1930-04-23/ed-1/seq-3/.
Associated Press. “Daughter of Ohio Warden Is Heroine of Holocaust.” Evening Star (Washington, DC),April 23, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1930-04-23/ed-1/seq-3/.
Daily Alaska Empire. “State Prison in Ohio Again Trouble Scene.” April 29, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045499/1930-04-29/ed-1/seq-1/.
Indianapolis Times. “319 Killed in Prison Fire, 150 Dying.” April 22, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015313/1930-04-22/ed-1/seq-1/.
Kemp, Tom, and Philippa Tomczak. “The Cruel Optimism of International Prison Regulation: Prison Ontologies and Carceral Harms.” Law & Social Inquiry 49, no. 3 (2024): 1683-1714, https://doi.org/10.1017/lsi.2023.63.
Reaser, Dona Mae. “Profit and Penitence: An Administrative History of the Ohio Penitentiary From 1815 to 1885.” PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 1998. ProQuest (9822359).
Rose, Donald. A Night of Horror; 1930 Ohio Penitentiary Fire. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.
Roth, Mitchel P. Fire in the Big House: America’s Deadliest Prison Disaster. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019.
Seward Daily Gateway. “Grave Charges Made Fire in Columbus Prison.”April 30, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87062169/1930-04-30/ed-1/seq-2/.
The Evening Star. “Report to Blame Convicts for Fire.” December 5, 1930, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1930-12-05/ed-1/seq-64/.
The Indianapolis Times. “Where 320 Perished in Flames.” April 23, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015313/1930-04-23/ed-1/seq-11/.
Washington Times. “317 Convicts Dead in Prison Fire Horror.” April 22, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1930-04-22/ed-1/seq-1/.
Washington Times. “Prisoners in Yard Fire Woolen Mills.”April 22, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1930-04-22/ed-1/seq-2/.
Washington Times. “Who Killed those 317 Men?” April 26, 1930. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1930-04-26/ed-1/seq-22/.
Zurcher, Neil. Ten Ohio Disasters: Stories of Tragedy and Courage that Should Not be Forgotten. Gray & Company, 2022.
[1] “State Prison in Ohio Again Trouble Scene,” Daily Alaska Empire, April 29, 1930, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014519/1930-04-25/ed-1/seq-28/.
[2] Washington Times. “Prisoners in Yard Fire Woolen Mills.”April 22, 1930, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1930-04-22/ed-1/seq-2/.
[3] “Report to Blame Convicts for Fire,” Evening Star, December 5, 1930, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1930-12-05/ed-1/seq-64/.
[4] Mitchel Roth, Fire in the Big House (Ohio University Press Athens: Swallow Press, 2019), 102.
[5] Roth, Fire in the Big House, 80.
[6] Dona Mae Reaser, “Profit and Penitence: An Administrative History of the Ohio Penitentiary From 1815 to 1885” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 1998), 77, ProQuest (9822359).
[7] Roth, Fire in the Big House, 2.
[8] Roth, Fire in the Big House, 205.
[9] “Where 320 Perished in Flames,” Indianapolis Times, April 23, 1930,
[10] “Who Killed Those 317 Men,” Washington Times, April 26, 1930, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1930-04-26/ed-1/seq-22/.
[11] “Who Killed Those 317 Men.”