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On Wednesday, December
30, 1903 Alice and Isabel Kilroy attended an afternoon matinee
of
Mr. Bluebeard at Chicago's newest luxury playhouse, the
Iroquois Theater on Randolph St. When a fire broke out on stage
it spread to the auditorium. Within minutes nearly six hundred
were dead. Alice and her sister were among the survivors.
Alice and her sister were unable to get seats so took standing
space on the north side of the third-floor gallery. After the
fire broke out the sisters made it to the top-most fire escape
door and to landing just outside the door. Behind them in the
auditorium people screamed and struggled to free themselves from
masses of others. Due to a jammed shutter and flames pouring out
from doors on lower floors,
the fire stairs were impassible so the women tried to go
back inside the auditorium but the doorway was packed with other
people. The Kilroy women didn't know it but their inability to
reenter the auditorium probably saved their lives. They were
pushed against the railing by people behind them, trapped in the
heat from the fire, knowing they were burning but unable to move
in any direction save jumping to their deaths. Suddenly the
pushing and shouting from inside theater stopped, as though a
switch had been pulled. It was 3:50 PM and a fireball had hurled
into the balconies, instantly killing everyone still inside the
theater. From below came a spray of water from a fire hose,
relieving the heat on their skin.
A painters plank was stretched across the alley to a window at
Northwestern and the Kilroy sisters braved it.
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The only way I'd get across a
plank sixty feet in the air would be if dragged by
the hair while blindfolded and tranquilized. But
then I've never been within seconds of catching
fire. Fear of agonizing pain might outweigh fear of
heights. Alice Kilroy managed the challenge and
lived to testify about it at the Coroner's inquest,
one of the lengthier testimonies to be reported.
Alice and Isabel were two of around nine
children born to Irish immigrants, Daniel Kilroy, a
carpenter, and Mary McNamara Kilroy. Some of the
Kilroy children were born in Ireland before
emigration, some in Indiana, and some in Illinois.
Twenty-two-year-old Alice Kilroy (1881 – 1972) was a
new teacher assigned to the Drummond school. She had
graduated in 1900 from the West Division High school
in Chicago. Isabell (1874 – 1944) worked as a
clerk.
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Alice had followed in the occupational footsteps of her oldest
sister, Cecelia E. Kilroy (1863 – 1922), who taught at
the Andrew Jackson school.
The Drummond elementary school was located at
Clybourn Place and North Lincoln St. The Andrew
Jackson school was at 820 Carpenter. Alice lived at
67 Oregon Ave.
In the years after the fire
Alice and Isabel's
burns were not serious. Isabel continued working as
a clerk in a mail order house. She spent her final
years in the Chicago Home for Incurables on Ellis
Avenue.
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