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Page 1

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.***

4. 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).*

5. 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.

6. 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.*

7. 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.

8. 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.

** Chicago Republican ceased publishing after the 1871 Chicago fire and was reborn the following year as the Chicago Inter Ocean.

*** Subsequent special grand jury would later decline to indict.

† Victor Falkenau is credited with building the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Congress Hotel and many structures for U.S. Steel in Gary, Indiana.  He met in closed sessions with Chicago aldermen after the Iroquois fire to discuss the condition the fire risk of Chicago theaters.  On Jan 7, 1904, a week after the Iroquois fire, Falkenau called a conference with Chicago police chief O'Neill and coroner Traeger to report that he had received reports that evidence was being tamped with and removed from the theater. Traeger requested O'Neill to prevent anyone from entering the theater without a signed permit.  Details of the tampering were not publicized.
  In 1933 he was killed in a hit-and-run accident while at his second home in Pasadena, California.  The driver of the car, identified and arrested, was Ada Mae Brooks, pioneer in kindergarten teaching methods.

†† Later that year Charles Stuart Wharton (1875-1939) was elected to a 2-year term as a U.S. congressman.  He returned to Chicago to serve as an assistant state attorney and in private practice. In 1907, soon after completing his congressional term, he ran into a spot of trouble.  He clubbed a stranger in a bar with the butt of a gun because the stranger spoke churlishly in presence of women. In 1928 he got into substantially worse legal problems when convicted of conspiracy in the robbery of a mail train. After disbarment and a two year imprisonment in Leavenworth, he operated a restaurant and authored several books.