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A family is like a pond and for survivors death is a stone thrown into it, making ripples that last for decades. Because
people attend the theater in company with others,
the Iroquois fire resulted in multiple horrific deaths
for many families, the rippling was more like a
tsunami. As a result of the deaths in this one Iroquois
party of four, one man lost his wife, both sons and
his stepdaughter. Parents lost a daughter and three
of their five grandchildren. Another man lost his
only daughter. Another his mother, sister and two
half brothers. A woman lost her sister, a niece and
two nephews. A man lost his aunt and three cousins.
Four deaths produced twenty-one lost relationships just
among immediate family members.
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The fatalities:
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Louisa Kehres Bogg Corbin, age 37
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Mamie Bogg, age 17
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Vernon Corbin, age 12
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Norman Corbin, age 10
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Born in 1865, Louisa Kehres was the youngest daughter of
German immigrants, John Kehres (1831–1909) and
Ernestina "Christina" Kehres (1839–1909).
At nineteen, Louisa married William Thomas Bogg
(1861–1954). Their son, Harry Joseph Bogg
(1884 1936), was born soon thereafter, followed by
Mary Louise "Mamie" Bogg in 1886. Mamie was named
after her aunt and her nickname probably came about
to avoid confusion. The two women lived in the
same household.
William Bogg was from a large family that emigrated
from England when he was a toddler. He worked as a
bookkeeper at the Armour company in the Chicago
stockyards.
The marriage was not successful and in March 1891, Louisa
and William divorced. Louisa remarried that same
year, to Victor V. Corbin (b. c1865), a
flour salesman for the Pillsbury company. It was a
second marriage for Victor, too, but the identity of his
first wife is not known.
The divorce
between Louisa and William was amicable enough that nine years later, in 1903, when Mamie lived with her father at 6933
Princeton, Louisa's parents and sister lived with
them as well. (They were John and Christina Kehres, and Mary
Louise Kehres Hinckley (1861–1923). Mary Louise had
married a Spanish immigrant, Carlos "Charles" B.
Hinckley (1859–1924), the same year Louisa married
Victor Corbin, 1891.)
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With Victor, Louisa bore two sons, Norman W. Corbin (b.
1893) and Vernon W. Corbin (b. 1891). In 1903 the
Corbin family lived at 6938 Wentworth in Chicago.
Norman and Vernon attended the Yale Practice School.
On December 30, 1903, Louisa, then thirty-seven
years old, took her three children to a Christmas
matinee performance of Mr. Bluebeard at
the Iroquois Theater. All four perished.
Problems in identifying the remains
The task of identifying the bodies of his wife and sons
fell to Victor Corbin and his brother in law,
Charles Hinckley. Mamie's remains, taken to Gavin's
Mortuary, might have been identified by her father
or uncle Hinckley. She was buried in Mr. Hope
Cemetery in Chicago. Victor and Charles miss identified
another boy, Leroy Greenwald, as being Norman Corbin. That
mix up was discovered ten to twelve days after the fire and corrected. There was an unidentified boy remaining at the morgue that the Corbins decided was Norman.
William Bogg remarried four months after his
daughter Mamie's death, to Iola "Ola" Mackie. He
lived to age ninety-three and moved to California after Ola's
death in 1962.
Victor Corbin became the sales manager of the
western division for Pillsbury Flour. In 1918 he
co-founded the Corbin Flour Co. and a decade later
the Marek Oil Company, to prospect for oil in New
Mexico.
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