Enlarge

Green = opened easily
Purple = opened with difficulty
Red = locked or stuck –unopenable
Light blue = conflicting reports

Enlarge

Green = opened easily
Purple = opened with difficulty
Red = locked or stuck –unopenable
Light blue = conflicting reports

FIRE ESCAPE DOORS

Enlarge

Read more about fire escapes at Iroquois Theater

Enlarge

Green = opened easily
Purple = opened with difficulty
Red = locked or stuck –unopenable
Light blue = conflicting reports

A few tips to make it easier to parse out door-related material you find in period newspaper accounts of the Iroquois disaster.

• Of the thirty-odd doors at the Iroquois Theater, thirteen doorways led out of the structure.  References were imprecise at best.  So inexact was some reported testimony that I cannot imagine how jurors at the coroner's inquest or grand jury inquiry were able to decipher it accurately, even given their two walk-throughs.  Newspapers reported only fragments, of course.  Had full transcripts survived for study, presumably many ambiguities would be eliminated.  Am thinking not all, though.  Even Chicago reporters able to take notes during proceedings sometimes became confused.  I'd love to know what if any visual aids would have been used in the courtroom had the case ever come to trial.  Without enlarged posters of floor plans and establishing a labeling system for doors, serious miscommunication would have been inevitable.  Just checked and found a few newspaper references in the early 1900s to attorneys using photographs and charts at other trials but it was not commonplace.

• The number of references to a given doorway in newspapers and in legal inquests was in inverse proportion to the deadliness of the doorway. Makes sense. The more fatalities at a given doorway, the fewer witnesses remained to describe the experience. Eyewitness accounts referencing the three doorways in the lobby (nos. 10-16), for example, at which two doors were locked but no one died, far outnumbered accounts referencing the other ten doorways that were death portals for two-thirds of the fatalities. The vast majority of those who passed through the lobby exits lived to talk about it to reporters or in court.

• Another doorway that received disproportionate news coverage was the door at the landing of the utility stairwell (door no. 40).  Fewer than 5% of the fatalities took place in that stairwell but almost every newspaper in the country included several paragraphs about the circumstances there, most failing to identify it as a narrow stairwell never intended for use by theater goers and none putting it together with the operator of the lamp that started the fire, William McMullen.  The sole survivor of the utility stairwell victims, James Strong, granted interviews freely and had one of the most dramatic Iroquois stories.  Newspapers and prosecutors glommed on to it, even though it was atypical for the disaster.  The door at that landing was locked not to prevent theater goers from accessing pricier seats, as was the case with the stairwells blocked with brass accordion gates, but to prevent burglars from breaking into the adjacent business office where receipts and records were sometimes kept and that would have sometimes been unoccupied.  Earlier in the year thieves had broken into dressing rooms at the Studebaker Theater during a performance, taking all the cash they could find.   Petty crime by pickpockets, purse snatchers and burglars in the Chicago Loop was no small problem.  Iroquois business manager Thomas Noonan instructed one of the ticket clerks to take the receipts to the safe in the Best Russell Tobacco shop in the Delaware building next to the theater.  Under ordinary circumstances receipts from afternoon and evening performances at the Iroquois might have been kept in the business office overnight, perhaps in a safe, and a bank deposit made the following morning.*  Sales of 1,700 $.65 tickets for two performances would have meant roughly $2,400 cash on the premises, around $70,000 today.  (Tickets sold for $.50, $.75, $1 and $1.50 so a $.65/seat average is probably low.)

Discrepancies and addendum

* Or not.  Chicago was home base for the Brinks Company, founded there in 1859.  The year following the Iroquois Theater fire Brinks acquired its first motorized vehicle, a Knox Gasoline Express Wagon.)  (Might be the blue one appearing in this photo on the right, taken in the Brinks Museum in Chicago.)  Iroquois Theater receipts might have been collected by Brinks after evening performances.

Story 2665