Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Today is the anniversary of the Iroquois Theater
Speaker 1: fire in Chicago, which took place one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: years ago on December thirtieth, nineteen oh three. Fires tend
Speaker 1: to be some of the most devastating disasters that we
Speaker 1: talk about on the show, and this is one of
Speaker 1: the most devastating fires. But it was also one of
Speaker 1: the most requested episodes we had ever done at the
Speaker 1: time we recorded it. This originally came out December eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Polly Pryme. Today we
Speaker 1: have a listener request by everyone. It certainly seems that way,
Speaker 1: it feels that way. It's something people have been asking
Speaker 1: us to do an episode on since we joined the podcast.
Speaker 1: And then next week I asked on our Facebook page
Speaker 1: for events specifically that people would like to hear about
Speaker 1: because our listener ideas list is about eighty percent people
Speaker 1: and Carmen, Carol and Aisha all asked to hear about this.
Speaker 1: I also want to give a special shout out to
Speaker 1: Aisha and I hope I'm saying your name correctly. Ayisha
Speaker 1: went through and answered so many people who asked about
Speaker 1: episodes that we actually already have. After I had like
Speaker 1: clocked out for the weekend, I came to work on
Speaker 1: Monday morning, and when I started plowing through that thread again,
Speaker 1: there were all these answers that it was great. And
Speaker 1: I will thank her too because I was away on
Speaker 1: vacation at the time, so she covered yes both us
Speaker 1: very kindly. That was awesome. So if you go to
Speaker 1: the movies today anywhere in the developed world, there's going
Speaker 1: to be an announcement before the feature reminding you to
Speaker 1: look for your nearest exit. If you like movies at all,
Speaker 1: you've probably heard it so many times that you don't
Speaker 1: really even think about it anymore. You probably also don't
Speaker 1: need to be reminded that it might be behind you,
Speaker 1: and you probably also just take for granted that if
Speaker 1: there's an emergency, you can push on the door and
Speaker 1: it will open. That's pretty standard in most Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty movie theater standard business. Now. Not so in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh three, when Chicago's Iroquois Theater, which had only been
Speaker 1: opened for five weeks, caught fire and killed more than
Speaker 1: six hundred people, So he alert, this is not a
Speaker 1: peppy episode. No, And if you already feel depressed, so
Speaker 1: many people have asked us to talk about this, so so,
Speaker 1: so many. So, uh, if you're angry at another Dead
Speaker 1: women and Children's story, blame them. I don't know. You
Speaker 1: can maybe come back to this one later when you're
Speaker 1: in a lighter mood, and it will be quite so
Speaker 1: impactful on your your well being. Yeah, and I personally
Speaker 1: have been trying to stick with more hopeful story since
Speaker 1: we're heading into the holiday season, and this is oddly
Speaker 1: even more appropriate because it happened during the holiday season. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we'll make great efforts to do peppier ones
Speaker 1: in the next the next several episodes at least. So.
Speaker 1: The Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street in Chicago was, as
Speaker 1: Tracy said, just a moment ago nearly knew when it burned.
Speaker 1: It opened on November twenty third of nineteen oh three,
Speaker 1: and it was six stories tall and described by Eddie Foy,
Speaker 1: who was on stage for its last performance, as quote
Speaker 1: one of the finest that had yet been built in
Speaker 1: this country. A palace of marble and plate glass, plush,
Speaker 1: and mahogany and gilding. Its foyer was immense. It had
Speaker 1: these sixty foot ceilings and a grand staircase on either side,
Speaker 1: and then the backstage accommodations for the performers and the
Speaker 1: orchestra were similarly very well appointed. It was also supposed
Speaker 1: to be entirely fireproof, and as we've talked about in
Speaker 1: past episodes, including the Woman on the Grove, park In,
Speaker 1: fire was a really huge threat to hotels and other
Speaker 1: public buildings. Various architects, planners, and builders tried their hand
Speaker 1: at coming up with a way to build a fireproof building.
Speaker 1: Theater fires in particular, had a huge potential for catastrophe,
Speaker 1: so being fireproof was a really big deal. And in
Speaker 1: addition to its construction, there was an asbestos curtain that
Speaker 1: was supposed to protect the audience from any kind of
Speaker 1: fire that started on the stage. Chicago's building commissioner, George
Speaker 1: Williams and its fire inspector Ed Laughlin called it quote
Speaker 1: fireproof beyond all doubt, but not everyone was so convinced
Speaker 1: as that. William Clendon, in the editor of Fireproof Magazine,
Speaker 1: had inspected the Iroquois Theater that summer before it opened
Speaker 1: and actually found it woefully lacking. Among his points, there
Speaker 1: was no draft to draw fire up into the loft
Speaker 1: instead of allowing it to spread out into the audio.
Speaker 1: There were exposed reinforcements around the prosenium arch, there was
Speaker 1: too much wood trim everywhere. There was also no fire alarm,
Speaker 1: no standpipe, and no sprinkler over the stage. So while
Speaker 1: the building itself was widely touted as being fireproof, if
Speaker 1: a fire did start, there was all kinds of completely
Speaker 1: flammable stuff inside of it, and a fire was very
Speaker 1: likely to spread unchecked without a way to either summon
Speaker 1: the fire department from on the property or control the
Speaker 1: fire until help arrived. At full capacity, the theater was
Speaker 1: supposed to seat one thousand, seven hundred and twenty four people,
Speaker 1: but December thirtieth of nineteen oh three was a particularly
Speaker 1: busy day. School was still out for Christmas break and
Speaker 1: the theater had been packed with nineteen hundred people in
Speaker 1: a standing room only show, although some reports put the
Speaker 1: number even higher than that, and unfortunately nearly all of
Speaker 1: them were children and their mother. The show that day
Speaker 1: was a musical, and it was called Mister Bluebeard. It
Speaker 1: starred vaudeville comedian Eddie Foy in drag as the role
Speaker 1: of Sister Anne, and he was backed up with a
Speaker 1: troop of five hundred along with a full orchestra. This
Speaker 1: play was an adaptation of Grim's Fairy Tales that had
Speaker 1: originally opened on Drury Lane in London, and it was
Speaker 1: touring with all the original props and scenery and a
Speaker 1: lot of the original cast. And you may wonder how
Speaker 1: a play about blue Beard would be okay for children,
Speaker 1: And in this version all of Bluebeard's murdered wives are
Speaker 1: restored to life, and like many musicals at the time,
Speaker 1: it was mostly a framing device for a bunch of songs,
Speaker 1: so it focused less on the actual story of blue
Speaker 1: Beard and his murderous spreeze. As you know if you've
Speaker 1: ever been in a play, stage lights are really really hot.
Speaker 1: And in the second act, eight couples took the stage
Speaker 1: for a number called in the Pale Moonlight, and about
Speaker 1: three fifteen in the afternoon, one of the painted canvas
Speaker 1: backdrops caught fire. It was in the vicinity of a spotlight.
Speaker 1: There are various explanations for exactly what happened. One is
Speaker 1: that the backdrop brushed against a reflector of the spotlight,
Speaker 1: which was extremely hot. Another is that it actually blew
Speaker 1: blue a fuse. Another is that just something went wrong
Speaker 1: and a spark shot out. Regardless, this oil paint covered
Speaker 1: canvas backdrop started to smolder, and a stage hand named
Speaker 1: William mcmollin saw it happen and actually tried to put
Speaker 1: it out with his hands like you would hit out
Speaker 1: something small that was smoldering, but he couldn't reach it
Speaker 1: from the catwalk where he was standing. Also on hand
Speaker 1: was an on site firefighter who tried to put the
Speaker 1: fire out with two tubes of a product called kill Fires.
Speaker 1: This was according to an advertisement in the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Herald the following year. Quote a dry compound in a
Speaker 1: tin tube and weighs less than three pounds, so its
Speaker 1: primary component was bicarbonate of soda baking soda. And it
Speaker 1: probably would have done fine for the task of putting
Speaker 1: out a grease fire in a kitchen, but on the
Speaker 1: vertical surface of a burning oil paint covered canvas, it
Speaker 1: was not sufficient to do the job at all, and
Speaker 1: the fire started to spread. Yeah, it was basically meant
Speaker 1: to smother a fire out and no falling off of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was literally no way to do that on a
Speaker 1: vertical hanging surface. So at first the audience didn't know
Speaker 1: anything was wrong because the fire, as fire generally does,
Speaker 1: climbed upwards, and the first things that really caught were
Speaker 1: everything in the fly space above the stage. This was
Speaker 1: full of curtains and painted canvas backdrops and other scenery
Speaker 1: that was suspended above the stage area. But the audience's
Speaker 1: lack of awareness about the situation changed rather quickly as
Speaker 1: the various flies and curtains caught fire and started to fall,
Speaker 1: still burning, onto the stage. So things are going to
Speaker 1: become pretty horrifying in a minute. And before they do,
Speaker 1: let's take a brief word from a sponsor that sounds grand.
Speaker 1: What kind of brace ra impact. As soon as burning scenery
Speaker 1: started to fall onto the stage, the actors, i mean
Speaker 1: some of them, continued on in their roles and some
Speaker 1: of them really started to panic. People in the audience
Speaker 1: also started to panic, and Eddie Foy, who'd been in
Speaker 1: his dressing room when the fire started, ran out to
Speaker 1: find out what the commotion was. He had actually brought
Speaker 1: one of his children, a little boy named Brian, to
Speaker 1: the show, and since there weren't any of seats available,
Speaker 1: he'd let Brian sit in one of the wings. When
Speaker 1: Foy saw what was happening, the first thing that he
Speaker 1: did was find his son and give him to a
Speaker 1: stage hand to try to keep it safe, and then
Speaker 1: he ran downstage to try to calm the audience. He
Speaker 1: told them not to get too excited, that everything was
Speaker 1: under control. It became pretty clear quickly that it wasn't
Speaker 1: actually under control, because burning curtains started falling onto the
Speaker 1: stage at his feet. At this point, he yelled at
Speaker 1: the stage manager to drop the asbestos curtain, but that
Speaker 1: curtain got snagged on a light fixture and it jammed
Speaker 1: part way down its track. Boy stayed on the stage.
Speaker 1: He really did his best to calm the audience, and
Speaker 1: while the people in front who could see and hear him,
Speaker 1: did try, or did at least seemed to try to
Speaker 1: take a more orderly, calm approach for the exits. At
Speaker 1: this point, the people in the balconies were already completely
Speaker 1: in a panic. The actors and dancers, completely terrified, fled
Speaker 1: the theater through the stage door. When they did, a
Speaker 1: huge blast of air came in through that door and
Speaker 1: forced the flames under the asbestos curtain come down part way,
Speaker 1: and now it was just sort of being drafted out
Speaker 1: underneath it into the audience. The events that should have
Speaker 1: allowed the inrushing air to escape through the roof were
Speaker 1: nailed shut. These were also supposed to contain fans to
Speaker 1: draw the air out, but those had never been finished.
Speaker 1: The result of this combination of fire and airflow was
Speaker 1: an enormous fireball, and it spread out over the heads
Speaker 1: of the people who were on the first floor of
Speaker 1: the theater, and according to reports, it actually brushed the balconies.
Speaker 1: Everything in the house that was flammable caught fire, and
Speaker 1: the audience started to flee for the doors. As the
Speaker 1: stage literally started to collapse, Foy looked up and saw
Speaker 1: that the asbestos curtain itself was now burning. It was
Speaker 1: basically too thin and it wasn't rein forced, so once
Speaker 1: the fire got to it, it literally fell apart. Boy's
Speaker 1: actions were really pretty heroic during all of this. He
Speaker 1: stayed on stage as long as he could, trying to
Speaker 1: encourage people to calmly seek safety, until finally the blinding
Speaker 1: smoke and terror for the safety of his own son
Speaker 1: sent him out the stage door as well, and he
Speaker 1: was reunited with his little boy outside. As he left,
Speaker 1: the cables holding the last of the flies and curtains
Speaker 1: in the loft gave way, and the whole burning mass
Speaker 1: of scenery fell to the stage, causing a second fireball
Speaker 1: to erpt through the house of the theater. The Iroquois
Speaker 1: Theater did indeed have a lot of exits, twenty seven
Speaker 1: of them in total, although there was one report that
Speaker 1: said there were thirty, with twenty seven of them locked,
Speaker 1: but some of them were actually obscured by drapes. Others
Speaker 1: have been blocked in an effort to keep people from
Speaker 1: getting into the show without buying a ticket, and those
Speaker 1: that could be opened by the audience used an unfamiliar
Speaker 1: design and people did not know how to get them open.
Speaker 1: They had kind of a weird, fiddly lever thing that
Speaker 1: would have been tricky and even under good circumstances, but
Speaker 1: by terrified people in a building filling with smoke, they
Speaker 1: were next to impossible. Also, just before we came in
Speaker 1: here I found a report that the actual doors leading
Speaker 1: from the balcony to those grand staircases had also been
Speaker 1: locked to try to keep the people in the balconies
Speaker 1: from getting to the better seats in the lower levels
Speaker 1: of the theater without paying for them, so as people
Speaker 1: tried to push their way out, the situation only got worse.
Speaker 1: Smoke filled the theater and no one could see, and
Speaker 1: there were also no emergency lights that would have helped
Speaker 1: guide people to the exits. Those who made it to
Speaker 1: the doors first were actually crushed against them by the
Speaker 1: people behind. People who fell while trying to reach safety
Speaker 1: were trampled to death. Casualties even continued outside the theater
Speaker 1: because the fires spread up the side of the building
Speaker 1: under the fire escapes, So people who had been in
Speaker 1: the balconies and actually managed to get out onto the
Speaker 1: fire escape saw that it was impassable and they tried
Speaker 1: to jump. A lot of them died when they landed,
Speaker 1: and later waves of people who jumped survived only because
Speaker 1: they landed on the bodies of the people who had
Speaker 1: died in the jump previously. Then that got even worse
Speaker 1: because the people jumped after them crushed the people who
Speaker 1: had initially survived their descent. And I need to break
Speaker 1: from this story. It's so awful. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things that sounds almost ridiculous in just the levels of
Speaker 1: horror that keep kind of layering on top of one another,
Speaker 1: it gets worse and worse. Yes, yeah, So we're going
Speaker 1: to take another brief pause or a word from a sponsor.
Speaker 1: So to get back to the Iroquois Theater fire. It
Speaker 1: was all over in about fifteen minutes. Because there was
Speaker 1: no fire alarm in the theater a state each hand
Speaker 1: had to run to the nearest fire station to summon help.
Speaker 1: Firefighters had the blaze extinguished within about half an hour.
Speaker 1: There wasn't really much left for them to do when
Speaker 1: they got there because the fire had burned up just
Speaker 1: about everything that was flammable. By that point. The people
Speaker 1: who had survived the crushing rush for the exits had
Speaker 1: all nearly died of smoke inhalation. Firefighters found piles of
Speaker 1: bodies up to ten deep at the exits and clogging
Speaker 1: all of the aisles. In total, five hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: five people died that day out of the nineteen hundred
Speaker 1: that were there, so that equates to about thirty percent
Speaker 1: of the audience. Nearly all of the victims were women
Speaker 1: and children, and thirty more people died of their injuries
Speaker 1: in the following weeks, and hundreds more were injured by
Speaker 1: the whole event. Most of those killed had been in
Speaker 1: the balconies. A very few people were almost miraculously pulled
Speaker 1: out from under the bodies of others, which had protected
Speaker 1: them from the smoke and the fire. The whole thing
Speaker 1: was obviously devastating to Chicago's families, with the overwhelming number
Speaker 1: of victims being moms and their children. Was the deadliest
Speaker 1: fire in Chicago history, far out pacing the Great Chicago Fire,
Speaker 1: which killed about two hundred and fifty. Was also the
Speaker 1: deadliest theater fire in United States history, and I think
Speaker 1: it's still also the largest single building fire death toll.
Speaker 1: The cast, having escaped through the stage door, was almost unscathed.
Speaker 1: The only fatality among the performers was a tightrope artist
Speaker 1: named Nellie Reid, who was supposed to be part of
Speaker 1: a flying ballet and had been in the loft above
Speaker 1: the stage when the fire started. She died of her
Speaker 1: burns a few days after the incident. When all of
Speaker 1: this happened, it was a huge scandal. Even though having
Speaker 1: twenty seven exits and an asbestos curtain and a non
Speaker 1: on site firefighter sounds like it's good from a fire
Speaker 1: safety standpoint. A whole series of inquests and investigations followed
Speaker 1: the tragedy, and every single one of them unearthed all
Speaker 1: kinds of problems in terms of safety and oversight. The
Speaker 1: Chicago Daily Tribune actually sponsored its own investigation, and it
Speaker 1: later published an enormous list of faults and wrongdoing. The
Speaker 1: theater itself had actually been in violation of fire code
Speaker 1: before its opening, but city officials got complimentary tickets and
Speaker 1: they looked the other way. In addition to all the
Speaker 1: problems we mentioned earlier, there were no hooks for taking
Speaker 1: down burning scenery, there were no fire extinguishers, and there
Speaker 1: was no training for the staff about what to do
Speaker 1: in the event of an emergency. Had all the proper
Speaker 1: codes been followed and had basic safety precautions been in place,
Speaker 1: many lives would have been saved. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: tragedy that a lot of times gets a lot of
Speaker 1: credit for revolutionizing fire safety, which in some aspects is true.
Speaker 1: But in other aspects there were actual elements of the
Speaker 1: fire code that would have saved lives and were not followed,
Speaker 1: and city inspectors did not do anything to prevent the
Speaker 1: theater from opening before those faults were fixed. Although the
Speaker 1: theater manager, and several Chicago public officials were indicted. None
Speaker 1: of them were ever charged. The owner of the theater
Speaker 1: was charged and convicted, but that charge was later reversed.
Speaker 1: The only person who ever did jail time in conjunction
Speaker 1: with this fire was a tavern keeper whose business had
Speaker 1: been used as a temporary morgue, and he was convicted
Speaker 1: of stealing from the dead. None of the victim's families
Speaker 1: received any sort of restitution, apart from one class action
Speaker 1: suit whose members each received seven hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: The mayor of Chicago at the time was Carter H. Harrison,
Speaker 1: and he was one of the people who was indicted
Speaker 1: after the fire. Afterward, he shut down more than one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy theaters, churches, and other gathering places to
Speaker 1: have them reinspected. He also passed ordinances requiring that all
Speaker 1: theater doors be clearly marked and open outward in the
Speaker 1: direction that traffic would need to go in an emergency.
Speaker 1: And as devastating as this fire was, the building itself
Speaker 1: was actually mostly unharmed. It closed down, and it reopened
Speaker 1: a year later as the Colonial Theater. It was then
Speaker 1: torn down in nineteen twenty six to make room for
Speaker 1: the Oriental Theater. It is now the Gertrude Sea Ford
Speaker 1: Center for the Performing Arts. There's also a memorial to
Speaker 1: the disaster in Montroe's Cemetery in Chicago, and today, as
Speaker 1: Tracy mentioned at the top of the episode, just about
Speaker 1: everywhere has laws saying that exits have to be clearly
Speaker 1: marked and that you have to be able to see
Speaker 1: them from the inside, even if you can't get in
Speaker 1: from the outside. As I was working on the outline
Speaker 1: for this, I was reminded of the SS Sultana episode
Speaker 1: Yes and which people ignored safety to make extra money.
Speaker 1: I feel like we have had other episodes also about
Speaker 1: people ignoring safety to make extra money. I know there
Speaker 1: are definitely definitely episodes in the archives about people ignoring
Speaker 1: safety to make extra money. I would like the world
Speaker 1: to learn a lesson from this history and stop ignoring
Speaker 1: safety to make extra money. Yeah. I mean, it's one
Speaker 1: of those sort of horrible indicators of you know, that
Speaker 1: aspect of human nature that you will prioritize cash flow
Speaker 1: over doing the right thing. It's not our finest hour
Speaker 1: as people. No, thanks so much for joining us on
Speaker 1: this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the art.
Speaker 1: If you heard an email address or a Facebook RL
Speaker 1: or something similar over the course of the show, that
Speaker 1: could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all
Speaker 1: over social media at missed Inhistory, and you can subscribe
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Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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