The Burning of Chelsea by Walter Merriam Pratt

As night approached the problem of protecting the seventeen thousand refugees and their goods confronted those in authority, and it was realized that it was too great for the local artillery company and the detail from the Marine Corps to handle. The State was called upon for more military assistance and eight companies of the Coast Artillery, four of the Fifth Infantry, six of the Eighth Infantry, and four of the First Corps of Cadets were rushed to the scene, making twelve hundred troops on duty before morning. At ten thirty the city was declared under martial law, and no one was allowed in or out until morning. Seven hundred tents and seven hundred and fifty blankets were ordered down from the barracks at South Framingham, and a special train with Battalion Adjutant Kendall in charge brought them through in record time, arriving shortly after midnight. All trains on the Boston and Maine, and all electric cars on the Boston and Northern and the Boston Elevated had been stopped. The Chelsea Ferry was commanded to cease its trips and a cordon of soldiers was thrown entirely about the city. At the principal approaches it is estimated that one hundred thousand curious people were turned back. The telephone exchange had been burned and of course the service was useless. Early in the day the electric power plant was shut down to prevent death by live wires, and the streets outside the burned district would have been dark, but for the glow which was reflected from the sky and the moon, which dimly beamed through the pall of smoke. At the Court House, where scores of injured were taken in ambulances, doctors and nurses, under charge of Dr. J. A. Johnson, worked as best they could by the light of lanterns.

In the court room were homeless women huddled in gray despairing heaps on the hard benches. At the back of the room rows of rubber-coated men leaned back on their hard benches, their inflamed eyes completely hidden by squares of soft absorbent cotton, soaked with ointments, which showed up with startling effect against their blackened faces. In the center of the room, under the sickly ray of a red lantern, stood the big court table piled high with thick square loaves of bread, big four-gallon cans of milk, and fifty-gallon cans of coffee. At either end of this table were well-dressed women, their faces pale and haggard, one cutting slices of bread and others pouring coffee. Men ate in huge gulps and drank from thick white mugs and quart dippers, then rushed out to the fire, taking handfuls of food to those who could not leave their engines. The difference between the room, with its misery and confusion, and the orderly hall of justice for which it had served up to that day, was as marked a contrast as could readily be imagined.