On New Years day, January 1, two days after the
Iroquois Theater fire, coroner John Traeger appointed six men to the
coroner's jury and they were sworn in at 10:30 am
that morning. The appointed jurors (with a
curious concentration from the retail furniture
industry), in service for twenty-six days, each
compensated by $1 per day:
-
Leopold
"Leo" H. Meyer (jury foreman) (1865-1929)
– secretary/co-owner at Kennedy Furniture company.
Thirty-seven years old, married with three
children. 2nd from right in topmost photo.
Afterward Meyer was reported as having said,
"I wouldn't take the job again for $100 a
minute. It was a terrible strain. I cannot say
anything about what took place while we were
arriving at the verdict. The result speaks for
itself. We all took a pledge not to make any
statements. The verdict was unanimous. We were
all of the same mind. We did our best to place
the load of responsibility for the disaster on
the proper shoulders, and I think we succeeded.
I cannot talk about the subject of any
dissension among the jurors before arriving at a
verdict. Every point and question was weighed
and argued." Mayor Harrison's
brother, Preston Harrison, would later assert
Meyer's judgment relative to the major was
vengeance for a business loss involving a
furniture contract for hotels closed by the
mayor's office.
-
John
"Jack" E. Finn (1870-?)
– salesman for A. H. Revell & Co. furniture
company. Thirty-three years old. 5th
from left in topmost photo.
-
Walter D. Clingman
(1852-1930)
– salesman for Tobey Furniture. Fifty-one
years old, married, father of three. 6th
from left in topmost photo.
-
Joseph
A. Cummings (jury secretary)(1866-c1937)
– manager at Browning, King & Co. clothing
wholesaler/retailer. 4th from left in
topmost photo. Midway through trial
returned to Boston hometown to manage employer's
Boston store.
-
George
W. Atkin (1880-1949)
– manager in Marshall Field credit department.
2nd from left in topmost photo. Youngest
juror. Married, later had two children.
-
Dr. Peter Byrnes (1862-1918)
– bookkeeper or salesman at Lyon & Healy musical instrument
manufacturer/retailer. 3rd from left in
topmost photo. Married with two children.
A gruesome
job
The
jurors' first task was to view the bodies, as required by
state
law, and the death scene, the Iroquois Theater.
Two horse-drawn patrol wagons transported jurors to
morgues operated by the city and to funeral homes
and hospitals, beginning with Rolstons on Adams St., Jordans, St. Lukes Hospital and Buffums.
Additional trips to morgues and hospitals were made
as other victims died in the days after the fire.
Jurors also went to one home to view the body of a
girl who had been carried off from a morgue in the first
hours after the fire, circumventing official death
certificate procedures.
The
inquest (later estimated to have cost less than
$1,000, or $27,000 today) began the morning of
January 6, 1904 and continued until January 25,
1904. Either 179 or 180 witnesses (both
quantities were reported) responded to subpoenas
served by representatives of the coroner's office.
In addition to hearing witness testimony, jurors
made multiple trips to the Iroquois and evidence
(e.g. the arc lamp that started it all) was brought
into the trial room for exhibit.
Y'all come
The audience was crowded with VIP's and attorneys on
opening day. One newspaper described it as the
"most formidable array of public officials that has
ever appeared at any inquest in Cook county". In
addition to the expected players (coroner Traeger,
deputy coroners Buckley, Feldstein and Downey, and
assistant state attorney Albert Barnes with his
boss,
Charles S. Deneen, who at six months in to his
campaign for governor could recognize a publicity
opportunity, fire department attorney
Monroe Fulkerson, fire chief Musham and police
chief
Francis O'Neill and assistant chief Herman
Schuettler) at hand were city corporation counsels
William Rothmann and Charles
S. Wharton,††
and attorney for Cook county,
James H. Wilkerson.†††
Prospective future defendants (Iroquois co-owners
Will J. Davis and
Harry J. Powers, Mr. Bluebeard company
owners, Klaw & Erlanger and building commissioner
George Williams) were represented by their
attorneys,
William J. Hynes.
Thomas J. Hogan, and
Levy Mayer.
Fast tracking
In a departure from standard
procedure, to handle the volume of witnesses, court
stenographers immediately converted shorthand
transcripts of witness testimony to spoken records
so that each witness could read and sign his/her
testimony before leaving the trial room.
The plan
Coroner
Traeger outlined the objective and order the
investigation would take. The first goal was
to determine the cause of the fire and responsibility
for loss of life to
Mary Edna Torney and 564 others.
The cause of death for all victims would be entered as "shocks and
injury." The proceeding would first hear
reports of investigations by police and fire
department, then testimony from members of the
audience, ushers, stage hands, twenty-five orchestra
members, actors, theater owners and the architect.
Deliberations
After sixteen days of
testimony, heard in
the Chicago city council rooms at city hall, the
last witness was heard at 3:21 p.m. Monday, January
25, 1904. As the city council needed the
council rooms that night, the coroner's jurors,
along with coroner Traeger and Buckley, and the
evidence (McMullen's lamp), toted by police
officers, were relocated to the
county commissioner's rooms in the county building.
With police officers posted outside and Traeger and
Buckley set up in an adjacent office, available to
answer questions but not present during
deliberations, the six jurors began their task,
starting with a review of 3,000 typewritten pages of
testimony. Deliberations lasted
roughly eight hours, with an hour dinner break at
6:00 p.m.
Atta boy
At 11:30
p.m., after officially commending Traeger and
Buckley for their orderly handling of the inquest,
jurors turned over their verdict to Traeger and began signing 576 verdicts. Traeger
turned over
the coroner's jury findings to the police
department by midnight so that arrests could be made
the next morning, by which time bonds would be set.
Shortly after midnight Chicago police department
detectives set out to make arrests.
We're
outta here
The
inquest resulted in eight individuals being named as
culpable enough to be held over for examination by a grand jury.
The coroner's jury did not have the authority to
specify the exact charges or bond for each of the
individuals; that task would fall to the courts the
following day.
Arrests
Police
arrested six of the eight defendants during the
night. By morning,
Tuesday, January 26, 1904, all
were booked except fireman Sallers who had rushed to the
bedside of his dying father-in-law and turned
himself in later. All but one, McMullen, were
able to post bond that same day.
In deference to his position, the
warrant for mayor Harrison's arrest had been served
at 9:00 a.m. at his home on Schiller St. by deputy
coroner Otto Spankuch (1872-1931), rather than by a
police officer, and the mayor was
permitted to go to the courthouse soon thereafter,
without police escort. His party of four
(including two family members as bondsmen and former
Chicago mayor and attorney Hempstead Washburne
1851-1918) was met there by coroner's deputies
Galligan and William A. Flannagan and escorted into
circuit court judge
Charles M. Walker's (1859-1920) courtroom on the
fourth floor. Walker quickly ordered a recess and
led the group to his chambers where assistant states
attorney Harry A. Lewis (1869-1935) waived the
sureties requirement, documents were signed and
Carter walked on to his office as reporters yammered
for a comment.
The other seven
warrants were served by police officers who escorted
each defendant first to the office of police lieutenant Andrew Rohan
(1847-1912), then trooped to the
courthouse for booking, bond assignment and bail
payment.

The Chicago Inter
Ocean blamed mayor Harrison. The Chicago Inter Ocean
was founded as the Chicago Republican;
Harrison was a democrat.** |
 |
Jury's findings
You can
read the 5-page coroner's jury report here. In
summary, they found:
-
That
the fire started when drapery came
into contact with an arc lamp.
-
That city ordinances were
not followed, including required fire alarm boxes, fire apparatus, stage flues
and fireproofed scenery.
-
The
fire curtain was inadequate.
-
There were
not
aisles in front of first floor box seats.
-
There were no
signs designating exits.
-
The third floor gallery was
too steep
-
A
utility stairwell
was too wide, resulting it in
being miss identified as a primary path to the front
entrance.
-
Demanded immediate action
from city officials to ensure theaters
maintained safe standards insofar as egresses,
fireproofed scenery, steel fire curtains, and
multiple electrical main lines with multiple
control locations
-
Demanded city officials
educate and verify competency of city employees
and managers
-
Demanded
that two uniformed firemen be on duty during
performances.
-
Recommended that office
work and fire fighting be separated in managing
fire department.
-
Recommended
that a uniformed police office be in attendance
at every performance.
-
Named eight men to be
detained for examination by a grand jury:
-
Carter H. Harrison (Chicago mayor). The
jury asserted Harrison's tone-deaf refusal
to accept post-fire responsibility for his
appointees (department heads Musham and
Willliams) demonstrated that his pre-fire
performance was inefficient thus causal. See
description of his arrest at left. The
mayor's $5,000 bond was signed by his
brother, avid art collector William Preston
Harrison (1869-1940), and his
brother-in-law, Heaton Owsley (1856-1930),
husband of his sister, Caroline Harrison.
The next day judge Richard
S. Tuthill
(1841-1920)
granted a petition for a writ of habeas
corpus, freeing Harrison and agreeing with
his attorneys that the coroner's jury's
action was not merited by the evidence
presented. Tuthill reached his decision
following a conference with states attorney
Barnes, Harrison's attorney,
Alfred S. Trude and
Major Edgar Tolman, Chicago corporate counsel. Tuthill and Barnes thought the charges could
be quashed on the basis that the coroner's
jury was not empowered to determine guilt
for crimes other those directly causing
death but Harrison's attorney persuaded Tuthill to
read the transcripts and base his ruling on
weak evidence rather than a technicality.
The Inter Ocean was rabid but as
Tuthill was a prominent republican, his
decision could not be attributed to
politics. Still frothing, Inter
Ocean followed up with a half page
coverage in two editions featuring negative
blurbs about Harrison from other newspapers
around the country, seemingly attempting to
shame Chicago into ousting its mayor.
Though the Chicago Tribune story was
far more measured, the Inter Ocean was not
alone in its anger that Harrison wasn't
going to jail. The
Chicago Eagle was even less restrained
than the
Inter Ocean and the
Daily Herald posed the
possibility of the city going bankrupt if hit with up to $10 million in potential
lawsuits.
-
George Williams (Chicago building commissioner) Found him guilty of gross neglect of duty in
allowing Iroquois to open before complete
and compliant with city ordinances.
Williams $5,000 bond was signed by Andrew J. Graham and
prominent building contractor, Victor Falkenau
(1860-1933)* †.
Williams spoke out to reporters about his
arrest. "I have been compelled to make bricks
without straw," he said, later adding,
"If I enforced the law not a store of office
building would be left open. Suppose the mayor
had closed the theaters Nov. 2 when
my report
went to the council. He would not be living
today. An assassin's bullet would have found him
for sure. Ever since I have been in this office
I have been fearing that some big fire disaster
would happen, but I did not dream it would come
in the Iroquois theater. That was the one place
where I would never have thought any loss of
life could happen. The big stores are all
calling insistently for an inspection. All the
inspectors I have could not give them an
intelligent inspection and make the plans for
each floor, as I require, within a month. Should
I therefore close the department stores? These
things have been going on ever since the Chicago
fire and before the fire. I do not throw bouquets
at myself, but in the seven months I have been
here I have done more work than has been done by
anybody before me in two years, and the records
will show it. Let anybody look at the records if
he cares to convince himself." Sounds persuasive but one alderman disputed
William's budget-shortage excuse, stating
that his department received all but a few
hundred dollars of what he requested and
that he'd never applied for more. As to the
time-shortage excuse, one of Williams'
staff,
Julius Lenses, spent a portion of a
morning at the Iroquois on an unofficial
curiosity visit. As to William's claim
that he hadn't issued a license to the
Iroquois, deputy city collector John F.
McCarthy (1877- 1931?) produced a report
signed by Williams that requested a license
be issued to the Iroquois. George's report was evidence that he knew
better than anyone that many of Chicago's
theaters were fire traps but he judged other
theaters more risky than the newly built
Iroquois. In terms of structure, his
judgment was accurate. In terms of
capacity to contain or fight a stage fire,
he was badly mistaken.
-
William H. Musham (fire chief)
Guilty of gross neglect of duty in failing
to enforce city ordinances, failure to
demand accountability from Iroquois fireman
Sallers and failure to report the theater's
inadequate fire apparatus. Musham's $5,000
bond was signed by James Carle (or Ciare, both
names reported in different newspaper, no
one living in Chicago by either name) and
Daniel
D. Healy.***
-
Edward Loughlin (building inspector)
Guilty of gross neglect of duty and glaring
incompetence in reporting the Iroquois as
"OK" after a superficial inspection. Loughlin's $2,000 bond, signed by William H. Jung
/ Young (1840-1906), a
Randolph Street restaurant/saloon keeper, and 19th
ward alderman
John J. Powers
"De Pow" (1852-1930).*
-
William Sallers (Iroquois fireman)
Reported to courthouse Jan 27, 1904. Some
out-of-town newspapers reported it as "Fireman
gives up," as though an hombre
holed up during a siege had waved a white flag.
Sallers was found guilty of
gross neglect of duty in not reporting
inadequate fire apparatus. Posted bail
for $2,000 bond. The later
grand jury disagreed with the coroner's jury
finding.
-
Will J. Davis (Iroquois owner/manager) Police detectives John Tobin (1860-) and Michael Farrelly
(1872-1942) went
to Davis' home at 4740 Grand Blvd. He made
them wait while he dressed and had breakfast.
His
$5,000 bond was signed by William Pinkerton, backed by
$75,000 in real estate.*
-
William McMullen (light operator)
Found guilty of gross neglect and
carelessness in performance of duty.
McMullen could not
post bail for $2,000 bond and spent several
weeks in jail while his family raised bond. The later grand
jury disagreed with the coroner's jury
finding regarding McMullen.
-
James Cummings (stage carpenter) Guilty
of gross neglect for not "seeing to it" that
the theater stage was fully equipped with
fire apparatus. His $5,000
bond was signed by
Harry Powers backed by
$100,000 in real estate.* Chicago police
detectives Anthony J. Nagle (c1865-1933) and
Edward J. Flaherty (1860-1937) allowed
Cummings to eat breakfast before going to
the courthouse.
Upon
hearing the verdict, observers took note that
whatever culpability might have been attached to
George Dusenberry, manager of the ushers,
business manager
Thomas Noonan or
Harry Powers, Iroquois co-owner, had been passed
to Will J. Davis, Iroquois manager and co-owner.
The Chicago Inter Ocean speculated that the
candidness of Harry Powers' testimony, and his
partner Will Davis' failure to refute it,
contributed to Powers not being arrested.
There were a few days
remaining of the session for the sitting grand jury
but its calendar was full, as was that of the
upcoming
February grand jury, so a
special
grand jury was called to hear the Iroquois Theater
fire case. They would agree with the coroner's
jury on five of the eight named defendants, and add
one. |