Two of four members in the Aldridge, Strawbridge and
Young party perished at the 1903 Iroquois Theater
fire in Chicago, and two escaped. The party was seated in the third-floor balcony
during the Mr. Bluebeard performance. When a stage
fire spread to the auditorium they joined nearly six hundred victims in
America's worst theater disaster.
The party consisted of
mother and daughter, Mary and Mabel
Strawbridge, Mary's neighbor, Lulu
Aldridge, and Lulu's boarder, May Young.
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Fatality Mary Adele "Adella" Hammon Strawbridge (b 1839)
Sixty-four-year-old Mary
was a teacher from Sharon, Pennsylvania, the
widow of Alfred Gwinn Strawbridge
(1849-1888) from Sharon, Pennsylvania. Her parents
were from New York. Mary taught industrial sewing at
the Farragut school. Her body was
found at the Rolston morgue and identified by
one of her ten siblings — Dr. Glenn M. Hammon.* The Jan. 4,
1904, funeral was held at the Centennial Baptist
Church on Lincoln St. and Jackson Blvd. The
family shipped the body to Sharon,
Pennsylvania for burial.
Mary's relatives filed a wrongful death suit in December 1904
Survivor May C. Young (b. 1869, Canada)
May worked as a milliner
and draftsman. She had come to America in 1880. Her parents were from
England and Canada. She helped save the life of
Mabel Strawbridge (see below). She was one of
two boarders at Luella Aldridge's home and a
descendant reports that Luella's daughter, Mabel
Aldridge, referred to her as "Aunt Jimi."
Luella Aldridge's mother's maiden name was Young so
May may have been a relative.
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Survivor Mabel Hammon Strawbridge (1884-1948)
Eighteen-year-old Mabel was the daughter of Mary Adele Strawbridge,
born in Rugby, Tennessee. A decade after the fire
Mabel married Nathan R. Wakefield II with whom she
bore two children. Mabel followed in her mother's
footsteps and became a domestic science teacher.
She credited May Young with helping her escape from
the Iroquois Theater.
Fatality Luella "Lulu" McDonald Aldridge (b. 1859,
Virginia)
Lulu's parents were from
Kentucky and Tennessee. Her husband, thirty years
her senior, whom she had married in 1883, was a
merchant, John G. Aldridge (1829-1911). He was
a member of the Chicago Board of Trade for many
years. They owned their own home and
had a daughter named Mabel McDonald Aldridge (1885-1985). A second child,
Donald John Aldridge (b.
1887-1892), died in childhood. In some early
newspaper notices Luella's last name was given as Goldbridge.
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Discrepancies and addendum
The threesome people at coroner's office in clipping at top of
page were probably Mabel Aldridge, Mabel Strawbridge and
John Aldridge.
*
Glenn Gammon
(1857–1936) graduated from Rush Medical
College in Chicago then joined the staff
for ten years as an instructor in diseases of
the chest, nose and throat. He practised
medicine in Chicago for thirty years
before moving to California.
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