Time Machine: Chicago theater fire killed 602 in 1903

The Iroquois Theatre in Chicago opened Thanksgiving Eve, Nov. 23, 1903. It was billed as the most beautiful and most fireproof theater in the city.

The theater’s three-level capacity was 1,602, but the matinee crowd on Dec. 30, 1903, exceeded that by more than 400. The play everyone had come to see was a musical, “Mr. Blue Beard,” that had become popular in England.

Women and children made up most of the matinee audience, many of them standing in the rear or seating in the aisles.

Among those excited theatergoers were three Cedar Rapids residents — sisters Bessie and Nina Chapman and Josephine Munholland.

The second act started shortly after 3 p.m. with the number “In the Pale Moonlight.” The stage had been darkened for a night scene. Suddenly, an arc light sparked and nearby curtains caught fire. While theater employees tried to put it out with Kilfyre, a product that consisted of 3 pounds of baking soda in a cardboard tube, the fire quickly spread.

Soon the highly flammable painted scenery was involved.

One of the play’s stars, Eddie Foy, tried to keep the theater crowd calm, ordering the musicians to keep playing. An effort to lower the asbestos curtain on stage failed..

As fire, smoke and fumes increased, the patrons panicked and tried desperately to escape. Many of the doors opened inward, and the press of bodies kept them closed.

The theater had no working sprinkler system, no fire alarm and no employees trained for emergencies. It had one exit — the front door — and one grand staircase.

The death toll was 602. The Great Chicago Fire in 1871 killed about 300 people. This fire, contained to one building, killed 600. It is the fifth deadliest fire in U.S. history. Among the victims were 17 Iowans.

The fire prompted widespread changes in theater design, with theaters adding multiple exits and theater doors that open outward.

The Chapmans

Nina Chapman and her sister, Bessie, both natives of Anamosa, had moved to Cedar Rapids after their mother died in 1888 to live with an aunt, Sarah Chapman Isham.

Their father, John Harlow Chapman, managed the corncob pipe division of American Cooperage Co. that had a factory at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Anamosa. Before that, he’d been the clerk of court in Jones County.

The sisters later moved in with the L.L. Barnums in Cedar Rapids, who quickly came to consider them their foster daughters.

Nina, 23, went to Chicago on Dec. 26 to visit Bessie, 19, who had moved there to attend business college, and their uncle, W. Pearson. They sent a letter home expressing their delight with Chicago and saying they had secured tickets for “Mr. Blue Beard” on Wednesday afternoon and intended to return to Cedar Rapids on Jan. 2.

When he heard news of the fire, the Barnums’ son, Roy, immediately went to Chicago to locate the sisters. He learned they had been seated in the first balcony, close to a door, where they were caught in a crush of humanity and suffocated.

The sisters’ bodies were returned by train to Anamosa on Jan. 2, where two horse-drawn hearses conveyed their coffins to the Congregational Church, where services were conducted by the Rev. H.P. Huggett of Cedar Rapids and the Rev. Dr. James H. McClaren of Anamosa. They were buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Anamosa.

Josephine Munholland

Confirmation of Josephine Munholland’s death came Jan. 1 from Fred McFarland of Chicago, who told an Iowa acquaintance that Mulholland’s body would be taken to Bloomington, Ill., where her mother lived.

Munholland, 39, a kindergarten teacher in Cedar Rapids, had been visiting the McFarlands in Chicago. She left their home Wednesday for the performance at the Iroquois, hoping Mrs. McFarland would go with her, but little Gladys McFarland was sick, so Mrs. McFarland stayed home.

Mulholland had planned to spend the night at the home of baseball player-manager Clark Griffith and his family. Mrs. McFarland and Mrs. Griffith found Josephine’s body in one of Chicago’s morgues around 5 p.m. Dec. 31.

The Rockford, Ill., newspaper reported Munholland had reached safety but returned to the building to try to save children.

Munholland’s mother, Kate Munholland, arrived in Cedar Rapids Jan. 5 to pick up her daughter’s belongings. She said the doctor who examined her daughter’s body said death was almost instantaneous, caused by gases from the fire.

In 1952, Mamie Doud Eisenhower, who would become the nation’s first lady, talked to a reporter about her childhood in Cedar Rapids, where she’d attended Jackson school on Fourth Avenue SE. Most of her memories were pleasant, except one.

“I have one horrible impression. … I can remember it was about Christmastime, and I heard my parents talking about my kindergarten teacher, Miss Josephine Munholland, who was burned to death in the Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago.“

The Iowa victims

The Iroquois Theatre was repaired and reopened less than a year later as a music hall, then became the Colonial Theatre. It was demolished in 1925. The Oriental Theater was built on the site and opened the next year.

By Jan. 1, 1904, the list of Iowans who’d died in the Iroquois fire numbered 17.

They were Josephine Munholland and Bessie and Nina Chapman of Cedar Rapids; Nellie Staininger of Tipton; C.D. James of Davenport; Helen Wunderlich of Dubuque; Miss L. Christopher of Decorah.

Also, H. Banner of Burlington; Mrs. Millie Lowitz of Keokuk; Mrs. W.A. Edwards and Marjorie of Clinton; Mrs. A.N. Wendell of Neola; and Mrs. James N. Stark, Mrs. Lynn Tuttle, J. H. and Lillian Holland and Helen McCaughan, all of Des Moines.

Former Cedar Rapids resident Lucille Sill, a teacher in Chicago, died in the fire and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Cedar Rapids on Jan. 2. The fire also claimed the life of Lillie Hammond Wickersham, 54, a Tipton native who lived in suburban Chicago. She’d taken her nieces, Nellie and Alice Staineger of Tipton to the theater. The nieces survived, though Nellie was seriously injured.

In the aftermath of the fire, a man’s Elgin gold watch was found in the debris. Elgin checked the serial number and found the watch had been sold at Boyson Drug in Cedar Rapids. Boyson determined the watch had been sold to an H. Ludwig on Oct. 22, 1901. Ludwig was a traveling salesman from Chicago who sold soda fountains and had been to Cedar Rapids frequently, where he’d made many friends. Ludwig and his family perished in the fire.

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