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Other than U.S. Census reports, dressmaker Anna E. McChristie
(b. 1862) is a mystery.
On December 30, 1903, with two unknown friends, she attended an
afternoon matinee of Klaw & Erlanger's Mr.
Bluebeard Christmas
pantomime on Randolph St. at the city's newest luxury playhouse,
the Iroquois Theater. In the second act, a stage fire spread to
the auditorium and took the lives of over 600 theatergoers,
including Anna's. |
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Anna lived at
6315 or 6321 Lexington in Chicago. Newspaper death
lists reported her age as thirty-five and
twenty-seven, but she was probably forty-one.
At least one of her theater companions probably knew
her age. The discrepancies might indicate that
the person in her party who knew her best was also
an Iroquois victim, thus unable to provide
information to authorities. In 1900 Anna
worked as a maid, employer unknown. By 1903
she worked as a dressmaker. Dressmakers in
1903 worked out of their homes, in department stores
and factory
sweatshops. Women's clothing made up only 25% of
ready-to-wear garments, and most middle-class
homemakers made clothing for their families. The
wealthy hired dressmakers and one of Anna's
cousins may have been one of her customers.
Anna was the daughter of the late Thomas and Mary
Thompson McChristy of New York. She had lived in
Chicago from at least 1880 to 1902 with her great aunt and
uncle, Mary and John Willson. She had two surviving
siblings back in New York. |
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Anna's great uncle John was a carpenter, but one
of he and Mary's daughters married a wealthy,
successful banker. They might have contributed to her
mother's upkeep after his death. In 1900, Mary
was able to afford a domestic servant/boarder.
Mary Willson died a year
before the Iroquois Theater fire. In 1903,
Anna rented a room on Lexington St. Her
cousins, Mary and John Willson's children and
grandchildren, might have paid for Anna's funeral and
burial.
A Dr. Howard Steere,*
identified Anna's body. He worked at the Hering
Emergency Hospital at 3832 Rhodes. I found no
other references to the Hering facility or Dr.
Steere in conjunction with Iroquois victims. If he
was one of the many physicians and nurses who came
to the Iroquois to volunteer their services, how did
he identify Anna? Perhaps she carried
something on her person or in her purse.
Possibly, one of her theater companions reported her
as missing.
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Discrepancies and addendum
* In 1914 at age thirty-seven
Steere was murdered by a patient, thirty-year-old
Polish immigrant Anton Truskowski, a window washer
at the Palmer House. Truskowski was left weakened
after a hernia operation by Steere. Despite three
months of treatment totaling $435 in charges
($11,000 today, about the average price of hernia
surgery today), Truskowski put two shots in Steer's
gut and one in his own heart. Steere remained
conscious long enough to point to Truskowski as the
shooter. Steere's partner, Dr. Sprafka, described Truskowki as a
"half-wit anarchist" whom they had charged half price.
Steer was married, then, with two sons under
four years of age. He'd studied
medicine in Herrick, North Dakota and begun
practicing medicine in 1896. |
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Emma Geik died two days
before her wedding |
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Margaret and Clara |
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Amelia Sands and her
daughters |
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Other discussions you
might find interesting |
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Story 2947 |
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