December 8, 2014 • 28 mins
In 1903, Chicago's newly-opened Iroquois Theater burned, killing at least 600 people. The horrible, incredibly tragic incident was the result of multiple code violations and wrongdoings.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Wilson and i'm today we have a listener
request by everyone. It certainly seems that way, it feels
(00:22):
that way. It's something people have been asking us through
an episode on since we joined the podcast, and then
last week I asked on our Facebook page for events
specifically that people would like to hear about because our
listener ideas list is about people. Uh and Carmen, Carol
and Aisha all asked to hear about this. UM. I
(00:44):
also want to give a special shout out to Ayisha,
and I hope I'm saying your name correctly. Aisha went
through and answered so many people who asked about episodes
that we actually already have after I had like clocked
out for the weekend, came to work on my day morning,
and when I started plowing through that threat again, they
were all these answers that it was great and I
(01:04):
will thank her too because I was away on vacation
at the time, so she covers both of us very kindly.
That was awesome. So if you go to the movies
today anywhere in the developed world, there's going to be
an announcement before the feature reminding you to look for
your nearest exit. Uh. If you like movies at all,
you've probably heard it so many times that you don't
(01:26):
really even think about it anymore. You probably also don't
need to be reminded that it might be behind you.
And you probably also just take for granted that if
there's an emergency, you can push on the door and
it will open. That standard. Yeah, it's pretty movie theater
standard business now. Not so in h three, when Chicago's
(01:50):
Iroquois Theater, which had only been opened for five weeks,
caught fire and killed more than six hundred people, are alert.
This is not a peppy episode. No, And if you
already feel depressed, so many people have asked us to
talk about this, so so, so many so. Uh, if
you're angry at another Dead Women and Children's story, blame them.
(02:15):
I don't know. You can maybe come back to this
one later when you're in a lighter mood, and it
will be quite so impactful on your your well being. Yeah,
and I personally have been trying to stick with more
hopeful stories since we're heading into the holiday season, and
this is oddly even more appropriate because it happens darium
holiday season. Yeah. So, yeah, we'll make great efforts to
(02:39):
do peppier ones in the next the next several episodes
at least, uh so. The Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street
in Chicago was, as Tracy said, just a moment ago
nearly knew when it burned. It opened on November twenty three,
nine three, and it was six stories tall and described
by Eddie Foy, who was on stage for its last performance,
(02:59):
as quote one of the finest that had yet been
built in this country, a palace of marble and plate glass,
plush and mahogany and guilding. Its foyer was immense. It
had these sixty foot ceilings and a grand staircase on
either side, and then the backstage accommodations for the performers
and the orchestra were similarly very well appointed. It was
(03:23):
also supposed to be entirely fireproof, and, as we've talked
about in past episodes, including the one on the Grove
Park in Buyer, was a really huge threat to hotels
and other public buildings. Various architects, planners, and builders tried
their hand at coming up with a way to build
a fireproof building. Theater fires in particular had a huge
(03:44):
potential for catastrophe, so being fireproof was a really big deal.
And in addition to its construction, there was an asbestos
curtain that was supposed to protect the audience from any
kind of fire that started on the stage. Sho Tago's
building commissioner, George Williams and its fire inspector Ed Laughlin
(04:05):
called it quote fireproof beyond all doubts, but not everyone
was so convinced as that. William clendonan editor of Fireproof Magazine,
had inspected the Iroquois Theater that summer before it opened
and actually found it woefully lacking. Among his points, there
was no draft to draw fire up into the loft
(04:27):
instead of allowing it to spread out into the audience.
There were exposed reinforcements around the procenium arch, there was
too much wood trim everywhere. There was also no fire alarm,
no standpipe, and no sprinkler over the stage. So while
the building itself was widely touted as being fireproof, uh
(04:48):
if a fire did start, there was all kinds of
completely flammable stuff inside of it, and a fire was
very likely to spread unchecked without a way to either
summon the fire department from on the property or control
the fire until help arrived. At full capacity, the theater
was supposed to see one thousand, seven hundred and twenty
(05:09):
four people, but December thirty, nineteen o three was a
particularly busy day. School was still out for Christmas break
and the theater had been packed with nineteen hundred people
in a standing room only show, although some reports put
the number even higher than that, and unfortunately nearly all
of them were children and their mothers. The show that
(05:31):
day was a musical and it was called Mr. Blue Beard.
It started vaudeville comedian Eddie Foy in drag as the
role of Sister Anne, and he was backed up with
a troop of five hundred along with a full orchestra.
This play was an adaptation of Grimm's Fairy Tales that
had originally opened on Drewury Lane in London, and it
was touring with all the original props and scenery and
(05:54):
a lot of the original cast. And you may wonder
how a play about blue Beard would be okay for
child drim uh And in this version, all of blue
Beard's murdered wives are restored to life, and like many
musicals at the time, it was mostly a framing device
for a bunch of songs, so it focused less on
the actual story of blue Beard and his murderous freeze.
(06:15):
As you know if you've ever been in a play,
stage lights are really really hot, and in the second act,
eight couples took the stage for a number called In
the Pale Moonlight, and about three fifteen in the afternoon,
one of the painted canvas backdrops caught fire. It was
in the vicinity of a spotlight. There are various explanations
(06:36):
for exactly what happened. One is that the backdrop brushed
against a reflector of the spotlight, which was extremely hot.
Another is that it actually blew blue a fuse. Another
is that just something went wrong and a spark shot out. Uh. Regardless,
this oil paint covered canvas backdrop started to smolder, and
(06:59):
a stage hand named William McMullan saw it happen and
actually tried to put it out with his hands like
you would hit out something small that was smoldering, but
he couldn't reach it from the catwalk where he was standing.
Also on hand was an on site firefighter who tried
to put the fire out with two tubes of a
product called kill Fires. This was, according to an advertisement
(07:23):
in the Los Angeles Herald the following year, quote, a
dry compound in a tin tube and weighs less than
three pounds. So it's primary component was by carbonate of soda,
baking soda. And it probably would have done fine for
the task of putting out a grease fire in a kitchen,
But on the vertical surface of a burning oil paint
covered canvas, it was not sufficient to do the job
(07:44):
at all, and the fire started to spread. Yeah, it's
it was basically meant to smother a fire out, and yeah,
there was literally no way to do that on a vertical,
hanging surface. This so at first the audience didn't know
anything was wrong because the fire, as fire generally does,
(08:05):
climbed upwards, and the first things that really caught were
everything in the fly space above the stage. This was
full of curtains and painted canvas backdrops and other scenery
that was suspended above the stage area. But the audience's
lack of awareness about the situation changed rather quickly as
(08:27):
the various flies and curtains caught fire and started to
fall still burning onto the stage. So things are going
to become pretty horrifying in a minute, and before they do,
let's take a brief word from a sponsor. As soon
as burning scenery started to fall onto the stage, the actors,
i mean some of them, continued on in their roles
(08:49):
and some of them really started to panic. People in
the audience also started to panic, and Eddie Foy, who
had been in his dressing room when the fire started,
ran out to find out what the emotion was. He
had actually brought one of his children, a little boy
named Brian, to the show, and since there weren't any
seat of seats available, he'd let Brian sit in one
(09:09):
of the wings. When Foy saw what was happening, the
first thing that he did was find his son and
give him to a stage hand to try to keep
him safe, and then he ran downstage to try to
calm the audience. He told them not to get too excited,
that everything was under control. It became pretty clear quickly
that it wasn't actually under control, because burning curtains started
(09:31):
following onto the stage at his feet. At this point,
he yelled at the stage manager to drop the asbestos curtain,
but that curtain got snagged on a light fixture and
it jammed part way down its track. Boy stayed on
the stage. He really did his best to calm the audience,
and while the people in front who could see and
(09:52):
hear him, did try or did at least seem to
try to take a more orderly, calm approach for the exit.
At this point, the people in the balconies were already
completely in a panic. The actors and dancers, completely terrified,
fled the theater through the stage door. When they did,
a huge blast of air came in through that door
(10:14):
and forced the flames under the asbestos curtain. So he
had come down part way, and now it was just
sort of being drafted out underneath it into the audience.
Events that should have allowed the n rushing ear to
escape through the roof were nailed shut. These were also
supposed to contain fans to draw the air out, but
those had never been finished. The result of this combination
(10:35):
of fire and air flow was an enormous fireball, and
it spread out over the heads of the people who
were on the first floor of the theater, and according
to reports, that actually brushed the balconies. Everything in the
house that was flammable caught fire and the audience started
to flee for the doors. As the stage literally started
(10:56):
to collapse, Foy looked up and saw that the asbestos
curtain itself was now burning. It was basically too thin
and it wasn't rein forced, so once the fire got
to it, it literally fell apart. Boys actions were really
pretty heroic during all of this. He stayed on stage
as long as he could, trying to encourage people to
calmly steak safety, and so finally the blinding smoke and
(11:20):
terror for the safety of his own son sent him
out the stage door as well, and he was reunited
with his little boy outside. As he left, the cables
holding the last of the flies and curtains and the
loft gave way and the whole burning mass of scenery
fell to the stage, causing a second fireball to erupt
through the house of the theater. The Iroquois Theater did
(11:44):
indeed have a lot of exits, twenty seven of them
in total, although there was one report that said there
were thirty, with twenty seven of them locked, but some
of them were actually obscured by drapes. Others have been
blocked in an effort to keep people from getting into
the show without buying a ticket, and those that could
be opened by the audience used an unfamiliar design and
(12:06):
people did not know how to get them open. They
had kind of a weird, fiddly lever thing that would
have been tricky and even under good circumstances, but by
terrified people in a building filling with smoke, they were
next to impossible. Um Also, just before we came in
here I found a report that the the actual doors
(12:28):
leading from the balcony to those grand staircases had also
been locked to try to keep the people in the
balconies from getting to the better seats in the lower
levels of the theater without paying for them. So as
people tried to push their way out, the situation only
got worse. Smoke filled the theater and no one could see,
(12:48):
and there were also no emergency lights that would have
helped guide people to the exits. Those who made it
to the doors first were actually crushed against them by
the people behind. People who fell while trying to reach
safety were trampled to death. Casualties even continued outside the
theater because the fires spread up the side of the
building under the fire escapes, so people who had been
(13:12):
in the balconies and actually managed to get out onto
the fire escape, saw that it was impassable, and they
tried to jump. A lot of them died when they landed,
and later waves of people who jumped survived only because
they landed on the bodies of the people who had
died in the jump previously. Then that got even worse
because the people jumped after them crushed the people who
(13:34):
had initially survived their descent. And I need a break
from the story. It's it's so awful. It's one of
those things that sounds almost ridiculous in just the levels
of horror that keep kind of layering on top of
one another. It gets worse and worse. Yeah, So we're
(13:54):
going to take another brief pause or a word from
a sponsor, so to get back to the Iroquois Theater fire.
It was all over in about fifteen minutes. Because there
was no fire alarm in the theater, a stage hand
had to run to the nearest fire station to someone help.
Firefighters had the blaze extinguished within about half an hour.
(14:17):
There wasn't really much left for them to do when
they got there because the fire had burned up just
about everything that was flammable by that point that people
who had survived the crushing rush for the exits had
all nearly died of smoke inhalation. Firefighters found piles of
bodies up to ten deep at the exits and clogging
(14:38):
all of the aisles. In total, five hundred and seventy
five people died that day out of the nineteen hundred
that were there, so that equates to about thirty of
the audience. Nearly all of the victims were women and children,
and thirty more people died of their injuries in the
following weeks, and hundreds more were injured by the whole event.
(14:59):
Most of those old had been in the balconies. A
very few people were almost miraculously pulled out from under
the bodies of others, which had protected them from the
smoke and the fire. The whole thing was obviously devastating
to Chicago's family families, with the overwhelming number of victims
being moms and their children. Was the deadliest fire in
(15:23):
Chicago history, far outpacing the Great Chicago Fire, which killed
about two hundred fifty was also the deadliest theater fire
in the United States history, and I think it's still
also the largest single building fire depth holl The cast,
(15:44):
having escaped through the stage door, was almost unscathed. The
only fatality among the performers was a tight rope artist
named Nellie Reid, who was supposed to be part of
a flying ballet and had been in the loft above
the stage when the fire started. She died of her
burns a few days to the incident. When all of
this happened, it was a huge scandal, even though having
(16:06):
twenty seven exits and an asbestos curtain and an onsite
on site firefighter sounds like it's good from a fire
safety standpoint. A whole series of inquests and investigations followed
the tragedy, and every single one of them unearthed all
kinds of problems in terms of safety and oversight. The
(16:28):
Chicago Daily Tribune actually sponsored its own investigation, and it
later published an enormous list of faults and wrongdoing. The
theater itself had actually been in violation of fire code
before its opening, but city officials got complimentary tickets and
they looked the other way. In addition to all the
(16:48):
problems we mentioned earlier, there were no hooks for taking
down burning scenery. There were no fire extinguishers, and there
was no training for the staff about what to do
in the event of an emergency. Had all the proper
cod it's been followed and had basic safety precautions been
in place, many lives would have been saved. Yeah, this
is a tragedy that a lot of times gets a
(17:09):
lot of credit for revolutionizing fire safety, which in some
aspects is true. But in other aspects there were actual
elements of the fire code that would have saved lives
and were not followed, and city inspectors did not do
anything to prevent the theater from opening up before those
(17:31):
faults were fixed. Although the theater manager and several Chicago
public officials were indicted, none of them were ever charged.
The owner of the theater was charged and convicted, but
that charge was later reversed. The only person who ever
did jail time in conjunction with this fire was a
(17:52):
tavern keeper whose business had been used as a temporary morgue,
and he was convicted of stealing from the dead. None
of the victims families received any sort of restitution, apart
from one class action suit whose members each received seven
hundred and fifty dollars. The mayor of Chicago at the
time was Carter H. Harrison, and he was one of
(18:13):
the people who was indicted after the fire. Afterward, he's
shut down more than a hundred and seventy theaters, churches,
and other gathering places to have them reinspected. He also
passed ordinances requiring that all theater doors be clearly marked
and open outward in the direction that traffic would need
(18:33):
to go in an emergency. And as devastating as this
fire was, the building itself was actually mostly unharmed. It
closed down and it reopened a year later as the
Colonial Theater. It was then torn down in to make
room for the Oriental Theater. It is now the Gertrude
cy Ford Center for the Performing Arts. There's also a
(18:56):
memorial to the disaster in Montrose Cemetery in Chicago, and today,
as Tracy mentioned at the top of the episode, just
about everywhere has laws saying that exits have to be
clearly marked and that you have to be able to
see them from the inside, even if you can't get
in from the outside. Because I was working on the
outline for this, I was reminded of the S. S.
(19:17):
Sultana episode Yes and which people ignored safety to make
extra money. I feel like we have had other episodes
also about people ignoring safety to make extra money. I
know there are definitely definitely episodes and the archives about
people ignoring safety to make extra money. I would like
(19:37):
the world to learn a lesson from this history and
stop ignoring safety to make extra money. Yeah. I mean,
it's one of those sort of horrible indicators of you know,
that aspect of human nature that you will prioritize cash
flow over doing the right thing. It's not our finest
(19:57):
hour as people. No, do you have some listener mail
to shift us into a slightly peppier and less depressing gear. Yes.
Before I read it, I do like part of me
wondered as I was finishing this up if all of
the people who have asked us to talk about this
episode already knew how heartbreakingly tragic it was. I feel
(20:20):
like some of them must have, and some of them,
uh probably had sort of heard it in the same
context as like the Triangle shirt waste factory fire, and
it's sort of it was a big fire. I would
like to hear more about that. Hm. Sorry, it's such
a terrible story. Well, and it is important. I mean,
there were a lot of you know, ramifications that we
(20:43):
still feel today, whether or not we knew that this
was the source of some of them, but it is.
It's not not really an uplifting and delightful adventure to
go on. I have a much more uplifting and delightful
listener mail. I love it when it's out. Yes, So
this is from Vanessa sa and Vanessa says, Hi, Tracy
and Holly. I was so happy to stumble onto your
(21:05):
podcast about the Lady Julianna. I'm a regular listener, but
I had that one unplayed in my feed when I
heard you reading listener mail about it. My fourth grade
grandmother Anne arrived in Australia on the Lady Julianna. She
had been convicted for stealing clothes from her employer. I'd
say she was already pretty sassy as at that tender age.
(21:26):
She was already using an alias Hannah and stated in
court quote, I had no more intention of taking the
things than I have of going to Jamaica this minute.
She was tried at the Old Bailey in February sight
and the court transcript still exists, which I think is
just the most amazing thing. She tried to bluff it out,
but it's pretty clear she was guilty of her crime.
(21:47):
She gave her ages nineteen, but she was probably only
fourteen or fifteen. On board the ship, she quickly took
up with a sailor James. I don't know whether they
had strong feelings for each other, if it was exploitation
on his part or pragmatism on hers. I just hope
it made her voyage more comfortable. I have heard the
trip to the colony of New South Wales described as
(22:09):
akin to traveling to the Moon, a prospect which must
have been terrifying at times to a girl so young
when she arrived in New South Wales in June and
was about five months pregnant on the sixth of October
seventeen ninety four months after landing, and married Thomas, who
had arrived in the second fleet on the twenty eighth
(22:29):
of June. See On Board the Neptune. The treatment of
convicts aboard the Neptune has been described as the most
horrific in the history of transportation to Australia. They had
four children over the next six years. Baby James was
baptized in late November se but died the following January.
One of Anne's other children, William, died of a snake
(22:51):
bite when he was eleven. I can't imagine what a
strange and dangerous place Australia must have seen no snakes
in London. I'm gonna pause here and say, I know
I said that this, uh, this letter was uplifting, and
now we have just talked about the transportation of prisoners
and dead children. Just bear with me. I don't I
(23:12):
don't need to laugh at it. I'm laughing at Tracy's
joke that we have to hang in there because I am,
you know, choked up. I have the wet eyes over here. Well,
I'm hanging in there. I'll confess. We had to stop
recording a second ago so because I had to compose myself.
So I have quite a few other convict ancestors too,
and they all did really well in the colony. Two
(23:33):
brothers convicted of highway robbery were later to become the
first sheriff's in a remote area patrolling against bush rangers.
Thomas and husband became a soldier in the New South
Wales Corps and tried his hand at farming on several
different land grants he received. He even ended up putting
notices in the newspaper warning against trespassers onto his land.
(23:54):
I find it really ironic that a former highway robber
would be so precious about his property. But I've always
believe that opportunity and hard work can lift a person
out of the circumstances into which they were born. This
was true for a great many of the colonists who
came to Australia, considered the worst of the worst in England.
They were able to serve their time and then be
given land in civic responsibilities in their new country that
(24:16):
they could never have imagined in England. I like to
hope that as Anne matured, became a wife, had children,
and farmed the land that she and Thomas acquired, that
she was grateful for the circumstances that brought her so far,
no matter how inauspicious they had initially seemed. And died
in eighteen twenty one, and Thomas in eighteen twenty four.
He was murdered by intruders who were not convicted due
(24:39):
to insufficient evidence. Their son and my ancestor, Henry, was
one of the ten men chosen to settle Australia's first
inland city, in eighteen fifteen. The bicentenary celebrations will be
held this year. Convict heritage is considered something to be
very proud of in Australia. I'm fascinated by all of
my ancestors and genealogy is a great passion, but I've
(25:00):
always had a soft spot for Anne and her story.
She was the first of my European ancestors to arrive
in Australia. Thank you for a wonderful episode with such
a special connection high regards Vanessa. So maybe not uplifting
all the way through, but I wanted to read it
because I love the tone of Yes, these circumstances were horrible,
(25:25):
but this led to being a family, and it leads
to being my family. There there are so many nuances
to that story, and so many aspects of uh the
colonization of Australia on the part of of Great Britain
that are are problematic and upsetting in a lot of
(25:45):
ways that when you get to the part of this
is a person in her family and this is her
family's story, like that is the part that is really
really touching to me. And that's the positive part and
why I wanted to read it. Not all the snake
bites and the murders and the being sentenced to be
transported at the age of probably fourteen. Yeah, when I
(26:07):
when we first got that email, the part that got
me choked up, And it's because of Vanessa's she has
a really nice um writing tone. When she mentions that
she hopes that the relationship that her her relatives struck
up with the sailor on the ship made her voyage
more comfortable. I so got a lump in my throat. Yeah,
that's like. We we have had a fair amount of
(26:30):
listener mail talking about the relationships that women had on
the the ship and and how we should talk about them,
and uh, which ones were consensual and which ones definitely
we're not consensual, and this, like this letter is one
of the reasons. But I feel like it's important to
talk about all those things, but also important not to
paint all of them with the same brush. So you
(26:56):
would like to write to us you are angry that
we have this sad, sad episode and then also some
sadness in our listener mail. You can We're at History
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. We're also on
Facebook at Facebook dot com. Slash mt in History and
on Twitter at miss in history, are tumbler is missed
in history dot tumbler dot com, and are on Pinterest
(27:17):
at pinterest dot com slash miss in history. We have
a spreadshirt store if you're looking for some holiday gifts
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dot spreadshirt dot com. UH. You can also learn a
lot more about we talked about today by coming to
our parent company's website putting the word fire in the
search bar, and you will find how fire works. You
(27:40):
can also come to our website, which is miss in
history dot com and find uh episode show notes, and
an archive of all of the episodes, lots of other
interesting stuff. So you can do all that and a
whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or
miss in history dot com for more on this thousands
(28:02):
of other topics because it has to have workstack home
e
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Wilson and i'm today we have a listener
request by everyone. It certainly seems that way, it feels
(00:22):
that way. It's something people have been asking us through
an episode on since we joined the podcast, and then
last week I asked on our Facebook page for events
specifically that people would like to hear about because our
listener ideas list is about people. Uh and Carmen, Carol
and Aisha all asked to hear about this. UM. I
(00:44):
also want to give a special shout out to Ayisha,
and I hope I'm saying your name correctly. Aisha went
through and answered so many people who asked about episodes
that we actually already have after I had like clocked
out for the weekend, came to work on my day morning,
and when I started plowing through that threat again, they
were all these answers that it was great and I
(01:04):
will thank her too because I was away on vacation
at the time, so she covers both of us very kindly.
That was awesome. So if you go to the movies
today anywhere in the developed world, there's going to be
an announcement before the feature reminding you to look for
your nearest exit. Uh. If you like movies at all,
you've probably heard it so many times that you don't
(01:26):
really even think about it anymore. You probably also don't
need to be reminded that it might be behind you.
And you probably also just take for granted that if
there's an emergency, you can push on the door and
it will open. That standard. Yeah, it's pretty movie theater
standard business now. Not so in h three, when Chicago's
(01:50):
Iroquois Theater, which had only been opened for five weeks,
caught fire and killed more than six hundred people, are alert.
This is not a peppy episode. No, And if you
already feel depressed, so many people have asked us to
talk about this, so so, so many so. Uh, if
you're angry at another Dead Women and Children's story, blame them.
(02:15):
I don't know. You can maybe come back to this
one later when you're in a lighter mood, and it
will be quite so impactful on your your well being. Yeah,
and I personally have been trying to stick with more
hopeful stories since we're heading into the holiday season, and
this is oddly even more appropriate because it happens darium
holiday season. Yeah. So, yeah, we'll make great efforts to
(02:39):
do peppier ones in the next the next several episodes
at least, uh so. The Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street
in Chicago was, as Tracy said, just a moment ago
nearly knew when it burned. It opened on November twenty three,
nine three, and it was six stories tall and described
by Eddie Foy, who was on stage for its last performance,
(02:59):
as quote one of the finest that had yet been
built in this country, a palace of marble and plate glass,
plush and mahogany and guilding. Its foyer was immense. It
had these sixty foot ceilings and a grand staircase on
either side, and then the backstage accommodations for the performers
and the orchestra were similarly very well appointed. It was
(03:23):
also supposed to be entirely fireproof, and, as we've talked
about in past episodes, including the one on the Grove
Park in Buyer, was a really huge threat to hotels
and other public buildings. Various architects, planners, and builders tried
their hand at coming up with a way to build
a fireproof building. Theater fires in particular had a huge
(03:44):
potential for catastrophe, so being fireproof was a really big deal.
And in addition to its construction, there was an asbestos
curtain that was supposed to protect the audience from any
kind of fire that started on the stage. Sho Tago's
building commissioner, George Williams and its fire inspector Ed Laughlin
(04:05):
called it quote fireproof beyond all doubts, but not everyone
was so convinced as that. William clendonan editor of Fireproof Magazine,
had inspected the Iroquois Theater that summer before it opened
and actually found it woefully lacking. Among his points, there
was no draft to draw fire up into the loft
(04:27):
instead of allowing it to spread out into the audience.
There were exposed reinforcements around the procenium arch, there was
too much wood trim everywhere. There was also no fire alarm,
no standpipe, and no sprinkler over the stage. So while
the building itself was widely touted as being fireproof, uh
(04:48):
if a fire did start, there was all kinds of
completely flammable stuff inside of it, and a fire was
very likely to spread unchecked without a way to either
summon the fire department from on the property or control
the fire until help arrived. At full capacity, the theater
was supposed to see one thousand, seven hundred and twenty
(05:09):
four people, but December thirty, nineteen o three was a
particularly busy day. School was still out for Christmas break
and the theater had been packed with nineteen hundred people
in a standing room only show, although some reports put
the number even higher than that, and unfortunately nearly all
of them were children and their mothers. The show that
(05:31):
day was a musical and it was called Mr. Blue Beard.
It started vaudeville comedian Eddie Foy in drag as the
role of Sister Anne, and he was backed up with
a troop of five hundred along with a full orchestra.
This play was an adaptation of Grimm's Fairy Tales that
had originally opened on Drewury Lane in London, and it
was touring with all the original props and scenery and
(05:54):
a lot of the original cast. And you may wonder
how a play about blue Beard would be okay for
child drim uh And in this version, all of blue
Beard's murdered wives are restored to life, and like many
musicals at the time, it was mostly a framing device
for a bunch of songs, so it focused less on
the actual story of blue Beard and his murderous freeze.
(06:15):
As you know if you've ever been in a play,
stage lights are really really hot, and in the second act,
eight couples took the stage for a number called In
the Pale Moonlight, and about three fifteen in the afternoon,
one of the painted canvas backdrops caught fire. It was
in the vicinity of a spotlight. There are various explanations
(06:36):
for exactly what happened. One is that the backdrop brushed
against a reflector of the spotlight, which was extremely hot.
Another is that it actually blew blue a fuse. Another
is that just something went wrong and a spark shot out. Uh. Regardless,
this oil paint covered canvas backdrop started to smolder, and
(06:59):
a stage hand named William McMullan saw it happen and
actually tried to put it out with his hands like
you would hit out something small that was smoldering, but
he couldn't reach it from the catwalk where he was standing.
Also on hand was an on site firefighter who tried
to put the fire out with two tubes of a
product called kill Fires. This was, according to an advertisement
(07:23):
in the Los Angeles Herald the following year, quote, a
dry compound in a tin tube and weighs less than
three pounds. So it's primary component was by carbonate of soda,
baking soda. And it probably would have done fine for
the task of putting out a grease fire in a kitchen,
But on the vertical surface of a burning oil paint
covered canvas, it was not sufficient to do the job
(07:44):
at all, and the fire started to spread. Yeah, it's
it was basically meant to smother a fire out, and yeah,
there was literally no way to do that on a vertical,
hanging surface. This so at first the audience didn't know
anything was wrong because the fire, as fire generally does,
(08:05):
climbed upwards, and the first things that really caught were
everything in the fly space above the stage. This was
full of curtains and painted canvas backdrops and other scenery
that was suspended above the stage area. But the audience's
lack of awareness about the situation changed rather quickly as
(08:27):
the various flies and curtains caught fire and started to
fall still burning onto the stage. So things are going
to become pretty horrifying in a minute, and before they do,
let's take a brief word from a sponsor. As soon
as burning scenery started to fall onto the stage, the actors,
i mean some of them, continued on in their roles
(08:49):
and some of them really started to panic. People in
the audience also started to panic, and Eddie Foy, who
had been in his dressing room when the fire started,
ran out to find out what the emotion was. He
had actually brought one of his children, a little boy
named Brian, to the show, and since there weren't any
seat of seats available, he'd let Brian sit in one
(09:09):
of the wings. When Foy saw what was happening, the
first thing that he did was find his son and
give him to a stage hand to try to keep
him safe, and then he ran downstage to try to
calm the audience. He told them not to get too excited,
that everything was under control. It became pretty clear quickly
that it wasn't actually under control, because burning curtains started
(09:31):
following onto the stage at his feet. At this point,
he yelled at the stage manager to drop the asbestos curtain,
but that curtain got snagged on a light fixture and
it jammed part way down its track. Boy stayed on
the stage. He really did his best to calm the audience,
and while the people in front who could see and
(09:52):
hear him, did try or did at least seem to
try to take a more orderly, calm approach for the exit.
At this point, the people in the balconies were already
completely in a panic. The actors and dancers, completely terrified,
fled the theater through the stage door. When they did,
a huge blast of air came in through that door
(10:14):
and forced the flames under the asbestos curtain. So he
had come down part way, and now it was just
sort of being drafted out underneath it into the audience.
Events that should have allowed the n rushing ear to
escape through the roof were nailed shut. These were also
supposed to contain fans to draw the air out, but
those had never been finished. The result of this combination
(10:35):
of fire and air flow was an enormous fireball, and
it spread out over the heads of the people who
were on the first floor of the theater, and according
to reports, that actually brushed the balconies. Everything in the
house that was flammable caught fire and the audience started
to flee for the doors. As the stage literally started
(10:56):
to collapse, Foy looked up and saw that the asbestos
curtain itself was now burning. It was basically too thin
and it wasn't rein forced, so once the fire got
to it, it literally fell apart. Boys actions were really
pretty heroic during all of this. He stayed on stage
as long as he could, trying to encourage people to
calmly steak safety, and so finally the blinding smoke and
(11:20):
terror for the safety of his own son sent him
out the stage door as well, and he was reunited
with his little boy outside. As he left, the cables
holding the last of the flies and curtains and the
loft gave way and the whole burning mass of scenery
fell to the stage, causing a second fireball to erupt
through the house of the theater. The Iroquois Theater did
(11:44):
indeed have a lot of exits, twenty seven of them
in total, although there was one report that said there
were thirty, with twenty seven of them locked, but some
of them were actually obscured by drapes. Others have been
blocked in an effort to keep people from getting into
the show without buying a ticket, and those that could
be opened by the audience used an unfamiliar design and
(12:06):
people did not know how to get them open. They
had kind of a weird, fiddly lever thing that would
have been tricky and even under good circumstances, but by
terrified people in a building filling with smoke, they were
next to impossible. Um Also, just before we came in
here I found a report that the the actual doors
(12:28):
leading from the balcony to those grand staircases had also
been locked to try to keep the people in the
balconies from getting to the better seats in the lower
levels of the theater without paying for them. So as
people tried to push their way out, the situation only
got worse. Smoke filled the theater and no one could see,
(12:48):
and there were also no emergency lights that would have
helped guide people to the exits. Those who made it
to the doors first were actually crushed against them by
the people behind. People who fell while trying to reach
safety were trampled to death. Casualties even continued outside the
theater because the fires spread up the side of the
building under the fire escapes, so people who had been
(13:12):
in the balconies and actually managed to get out onto
the fire escape, saw that it was impassable, and they
tried to jump. A lot of them died when they landed,
and later waves of people who jumped survived only because
they landed on the bodies of the people who had
died in the jump previously. Then that got even worse
because the people jumped after them crushed the people who
(13:34):
had initially survived their descent. And I need a break
from the story. It's it's so awful. It's one of
those things that sounds almost ridiculous in just the levels
of horror that keep kind of layering on top of
one another. It gets worse and worse. Yeah, So we're
(13:54):
going to take another brief pause or a word from
a sponsor, so to get back to the Iroquois Theater fire.
It was all over in about fifteen minutes. Because there
was no fire alarm in the theater, a stage hand
had to run to the nearest fire station to someone help.
Firefighters had the blaze extinguished within about half an hour.
(14:17):
There wasn't really much left for them to do when
they got there because the fire had burned up just
about everything that was flammable by that point that people
who had survived the crushing rush for the exits had
all nearly died of smoke inhalation. Firefighters found piles of
bodies up to ten deep at the exits and clogging
(14:38):
all of the aisles. In total, five hundred and seventy
five people died that day out of the nineteen hundred
that were there, so that equates to about thirty of
the audience. Nearly all of the victims were women and children,
and thirty more people died of their injuries in the
following weeks, and hundreds more were injured by the whole event.
(14:59):
Most of those old had been in the balconies. A
very few people were almost miraculously pulled out from under
the bodies of others, which had protected them from the
smoke and the fire. The whole thing was obviously devastating
to Chicago's family families, with the overwhelming number of victims
being moms and their children. Was the deadliest fire in
(15:23):
Chicago history, far outpacing the Great Chicago Fire, which killed
about two hundred fifty was also the deadliest theater fire
in the United States history, and I think it's still
also the largest single building fire depth holl The cast,
(15:44):
having escaped through the stage door, was almost unscathed. The
only fatality among the performers was a tight rope artist
named Nellie Reid, who was supposed to be part of
a flying ballet and had been in the loft above
the stage when the fire started. She died of her
burns a few days to the incident. When all of
this happened, it was a huge scandal, even though having
(16:06):
twenty seven exits and an asbestos curtain and an onsite
on site firefighter sounds like it's good from a fire
safety standpoint. A whole series of inquests and investigations followed
the tragedy, and every single one of them unearthed all
kinds of problems in terms of safety and oversight. The
(16:28):
Chicago Daily Tribune actually sponsored its own investigation, and it
later published an enormous list of faults and wrongdoing. The
theater itself had actually been in violation of fire code
before its opening, but city officials got complimentary tickets and
they looked the other way. In addition to all the
(16:48):
problems we mentioned earlier, there were no hooks for taking
down burning scenery. There were no fire extinguishers, and there
was no training for the staff about what to do
in the event of an emergency. Had all the proper
cod it's been followed and had basic safety precautions been
in place, many lives would have been saved. Yeah, this
is a tragedy that a lot of times gets a
(17:09):
lot of credit for revolutionizing fire safety, which in some
aspects is true. But in other aspects there were actual
elements of the fire code that would have saved lives
and were not followed, and city inspectors did not do
anything to prevent the theater from opening up before those
(17:31):
faults were fixed. Although the theater manager and several Chicago
public officials were indicted, none of them were ever charged.
The owner of the theater was charged and convicted, but
that charge was later reversed. The only person who ever
did jail time in conjunction with this fire was a
(17:52):
tavern keeper whose business had been used as a temporary morgue,
and he was convicted of stealing from the dead. None
of the victims families received any sort of restitution, apart
from one class action suit whose members each received seven
hundred and fifty dollars. The mayor of Chicago at the
time was Carter H. Harrison, and he was one of
(18:13):
the people who was indicted after the fire. Afterward, he's
shut down more than a hundred and seventy theaters, churches,
and other gathering places to have them reinspected. He also
passed ordinances requiring that all theater doors be clearly marked
and open outward in the direction that traffic would need
(18:33):
to go in an emergency. And as devastating as this
fire was, the building itself was actually mostly unharmed. It
closed down and it reopened a year later as the
Colonial Theater. It was then torn down in to make
room for the Oriental Theater. It is now the Gertrude
cy Ford Center for the Performing Arts. There's also a
(18:56):
memorial to the disaster in Montrose Cemetery in Chicago, and today,
as Tracy mentioned at the top of the episode, just
about everywhere has laws saying that exits have to be
clearly marked and that you have to be able to
see them from the inside, even if you can't get
in from the outside. Because I was working on the
outline for this, I was reminded of the S. S.
(19:17):
Sultana episode Yes and which people ignored safety to make
extra money. I feel like we have had other episodes
also about people ignoring safety to make extra money. I
know there are definitely definitely episodes and the archives about
people ignoring safety to make extra money. I would like
(19:37):
the world to learn a lesson from this history and
stop ignoring safety to make extra money. Yeah. I mean,
it's one of those sort of horrible indicators of you know,
that aspect of human nature that you will prioritize cash
flow over doing the right thing. It's not our finest
(19:57):
hour as people. No, do you have some listener mail
to shift us into a slightly peppier and less depressing gear. Yes.
Before I read it, I do like part of me
wondered as I was finishing this up if all of
the people who have asked us to talk about this
episode already knew how heartbreakingly tragic it was. I feel
(20:20):
like some of them must have, and some of them,
uh probably had sort of heard it in the same
context as like the Triangle shirt waste factory fire, and
it's sort of it was a big fire. I would
like to hear more about that. Hm. Sorry, it's such
a terrible story. Well, and it is important. I mean,
there were a lot of you know, ramifications that we
(20:43):
still feel today, whether or not we knew that this
was the source of some of them, but it is.
It's not not really an uplifting and delightful adventure to
go on. I have a much more uplifting and delightful
listener mail. I love it when it's out. Yes, So
this is from Vanessa sa and Vanessa says, Hi, Tracy
and Holly. I was so happy to stumble onto your
(21:05):
podcast about the Lady Julianna. I'm a regular listener, but
I had that one unplayed in my feed when I
heard you reading listener mail about it. My fourth grade
grandmother Anne arrived in Australia on the Lady Julianna. She
had been convicted for stealing clothes from her employer. I'd
say she was already pretty sassy as at that tender age.
(21:26):
She was already using an alias Hannah and stated in
court quote, I had no more intention of taking the
things than I have of going to Jamaica this minute.
She was tried at the Old Bailey in February sight
and the court transcript still exists, which I think is
just the most amazing thing. She tried to bluff it out,
but it's pretty clear she was guilty of her crime.
(21:47):
She gave her ages nineteen, but she was probably only
fourteen or fifteen. On board the ship, she quickly took
up with a sailor James. I don't know whether they
had strong feelings for each other, if it was exploitation
on his part or pragmatism on hers. I just hope
it made her voyage more comfortable. I have heard the
trip to the colony of New South Wales described as
(22:09):
akin to traveling to the Moon, a prospect which must
have been terrifying at times to a girl so young
when she arrived in New South Wales in June and
was about five months pregnant on the sixth of October
seventeen ninety four months after landing, and married Thomas, who
had arrived in the second fleet on the twenty eighth
(22:29):
of June. See On Board the Neptune. The treatment of
convicts aboard the Neptune has been described as the most
horrific in the history of transportation to Australia. They had
four children over the next six years. Baby James was
baptized in late November se but died the following January.
One of Anne's other children, William, died of a snake
(22:51):
bite when he was eleven. I can't imagine what a
strange and dangerous place Australia must have seen no snakes
in London. I'm gonna pause here and say, I know
I said that this, uh, this letter was uplifting, and
now we have just talked about the transportation of prisoners
and dead children. Just bear with me. I don't I
(23:12):
don't need to laugh at it. I'm laughing at Tracy's
joke that we have to hang in there because I am,
you know, choked up. I have the wet eyes over here. Well,
I'm hanging in there. I'll confess. We had to stop
recording a second ago so because I had to compose myself.
So I have quite a few other convict ancestors too,
and they all did really well in the colony. Two
(23:33):
brothers convicted of highway robbery were later to become the
first sheriff's in a remote area patrolling against bush rangers.
Thomas and husband became a soldier in the New South
Wales Corps and tried his hand at farming on several
different land grants he received. He even ended up putting
notices in the newspaper warning against trespassers onto his land.
(23:54):
I find it really ironic that a former highway robber
would be so precious about his property. But I've always
believe that opportunity and hard work can lift a person
out of the circumstances into which they were born. This
was true for a great many of the colonists who
came to Australia, considered the worst of the worst in England.
They were able to serve their time and then be
given land in civic responsibilities in their new country that
(24:16):
they could never have imagined in England. I like to
hope that as Anne matured, became a wife, had children,
and farmed the land that she and Thomas acquired, that
she was grateful for the circumstances that brought her so far,
no matter how inauspicious they had initially seemed. And died
in eighteen twenty one, and Thomas in eighteen twenty four.
He was murdered by intruders who were not convicted due
(24:39):
to insufficient evidence. Their son and my ancestor, Henry, was
one of the ten men chosen to settle Australia's first
inland city, in eighteen fifteen. The bicentenary celebrations will be
held this year. Convict heritage is considered something to be
very proud of in Australia. I'm fascinated by all of
my ancestors and genealogy is a great passion, but I've
(25:00):
always had a soft spot for Anne and her story.
She was the first of my European ancestors to arrive
in Australia. Thank you for a wonderful episode with such
a special connection high regards Vanessa. So maybe not uplifting
all the way through, but I wanted to read it
because I love the tone of Yes, these circumstances were horrible,
(25:25):
but this led to being a family, and it leads
to being my family. There there are so many nuances
to that story, and so many aspects of uh the
colonization of Australia on the part of of Great Britain
that are are problematic and upsetting in a lot of
(25:45):
ways that when you get to the part of this
is a person in her family and this is her
family's story, like that is the part that is really
really touching to me. And that's the positive part and
why I wanted to read it. Not all the snake
bites and the murders and the being sentenced to be
transported at the age of probably fourteen. Yeah, when I
(26:07):
when we first got that email, the part that got
me choked up, And it's because of Vanessa's she has
a really nice um writing tone. When she mentions that
she hopes that the relationship that her her relatives struck
up with the sailor on the ship made her voyage
more comfortable. I so got a lump in my throat. Yeah,
that's like. We we have had a fair amount of
(26:30):
listener mail talking about the relationships that women had on
the the ship and and how we should talk about them,
and uh, which ones were consensual and which ones definitely
we're not consensual, and this, like this letter is one
of the reasons. But I feel like it's important to
talk about all those things, but also important not to
paint all of them with the same brush. So you
(26:56):
would like to write to us you are angry that
we have this sad, sad episode and then also some
sadness in our listener mail. You can We're at History
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. We're also on
Facebook at Facebook dot com. Slash mt in History and
on Twitter at miss in history, are tumbler is missed
in history dot tumbler dot com, and are on Pinterest
(27:17):
at pinterest dot com slash miss in history. We have
a spreadshirt store if you're looking for some holiday gifts
for some history fans. It is at miss in history
dot spreadshirt dot com. UH. You can also learn a
lot more about we talked about today by coming to
our parent company's website putting the word fire in the
search bar, and you will find how fire works. You
(27:40):
can also come to our website, which is miss in
history dot com and find uh episode show notes, and
an archive of all of the episodes, lots of other
interesting stuff. So you can do all that and a
whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or
miss in history dot com for more on this thousands
(28:02):
of other topics because it has to have workstack home
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Tracy Wilson
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