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Maud Reiter's (1873-1935) early years are an unknown but her last thirty-one years were filled with sadness.
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In 1903 she survived the Iroquois Theater fire but her aunt and mother did not.
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In 1904, three weeks after marrying, her husband committed suicide.
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She married a second time in1910.
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In 1926 her second husband became ill.
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In 1928 he too committed suicide
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Maud died at age sixty-two in 1935.
She worked as an assistant kindergarten teacher at the Greeley
school in Chicago and the youngest resident in her
apartment at the Potomac Apartments* (pictured).
She lived with her sixty-six-year-old aunt, Pet
Bell, and fifty-six-year-old widowed mother, Irene
Reiter.
Maud celebrated her thirtieth birthday a month before the
roomies went to the Iroquois Theater. She
escaped from the inferno but her aunt and mother did
not.
The impressive display of marble-covered
surfaces also contributed to the inaccurate perception that the
Iroquois was fireproof. Inside
the auditorium and on the stage, where the fire
ignited, grew and killed, wall coverings were
plaster and wood, not marble, and seating was
upholstered in fabric-covered hemp.
Leland A. Reed's kindness led to marriage and tragedy.
A stranger with emotional troubles offered his assistance
to Maud. A traveling shoe salesman for Florsheim, Leland
Reed (1875-1904) went with her through the
hospitals and morgues, looking for her mother and
aunt's bodies, and comforted her during the
first terrible months of grief at losing her family.
Shared sadness led to romance and the pair married
in August 1904, eight months after the Iroquois
disaster but Leland's problems,
not reported in newspapers, overcame him. He suffered a
nervous breakdown a few months after the fire and
soon spent time in the North Shore Health Resort in
Winnetka, IL.
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The sanitarium advertised treatment for nervous
conditions amongst its services. It is not
known if his commitment was voluntary. Upon
his release, on August 3, 1904, the pair went ahead
with their marriage. They then relocated to
Columbus, Ohio. Leland was a native of the
state, the son of George and Louise Menea Reed.
Three weeks after the wedding, while on the road
selling, Leland checked in to the Briggs hotel in
Chicago and committed suicide, leaving letters
behind for Maud, his employers and solicitor, citing
his belief that he was going insane, along with a
few lines of verse from
Invictus by W. E. Henley: "It matters not
how straight the gate, How charged with punishment
the scroll, I am the master of my fate. I am the
captain of my soul."
In the years after the fire
Maud may have returned to teaching in Chicago after
Leland's death. A teacher named Maud Reed lived at
the Vaucluse Apartments at 2446 Michigan Avenue
1906 - 1909.
In 1910, Maud married Iowa native, Leon Hull Winne.
Winne was a divorcee, married 1903 - 1905 to a Miss
Mitchell from Missouri, followed by a rumored
romance with a one-time Al Jolson dance partner and
small-time Broadway actress, Florence Cable.
During Maud and Leon's eighteen years
together he worked as a sales representative
and officer for various rubber-fabrication
companies, including Buffalo Weaving and Belting and
W. H. Salisbury & Company. They lived in
Highland Park with Maud's wealthy and aged aunt,
Mrs. William "Ella" Bell. The only thing I
found about those years was that in 1921 Maud was
second vice president of the Winnetka Woman's Club.
There is no evidence that Maud and Leon had
children.
Fate wasn't done dumping on Maud. In June of 1928,
Leon committed suicide by breathing auto exhaust
fumes from their car in the garage. Newspapers
reported that he had been ill for two years.
Maud was fifty-four when Leon died. The following year, 1929,
she traveled to England, and upon her return took a job as a
maid in the household of Morton Mavor, a Chicago
building contractor. She continued living in
her aunt's home but Ella could no longer care for
herself and had gone to live with her niece, Maud's
sister, Myrtle Keating, where she remained until her
death in 1938. Ella's heirs split her $750,000
estate but Maud missed out on the windfall by dying
three years prior.
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Irene Bell Reiter - Iroquois
Theater fire fatality
Irene (b.
1847) lost her husband, civil war veteran† Winfried
Scott Reiter (b.1847), in 1900, as well as a sister
and a brother.‡ Her oldest daughter, Myrtle
(1870-1947), made a good marriage to James Keating
but her youngest, Maud, might follow in the footsteps
of her aunt Pet and not marry.
Hope to find more information about Irene later.
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Searching for bodies and burial
Maud and Leland searched but Pet's and Irene's bodies
were found and identified by James Keating,
husband of Myrtle Reiter Keating (Irene's daughter,
Maud's sister
and Pet's niece). James Keating helped look through morgues and
hospitals for the bodies of his in-laws.
James worked with his father and brothers in the
family marble contracting business, M. Keating &
Sons. Keating was the probable supplier of the
white marble used extensively in the Iroquois lobby,
leading to the theater being described in
promotional material as a "marble palace."
Three years earlier the Keating firm had provided
the marble and installation used in another theater
owned by
Davis,
Powers and the
Syndicate, the
Illinois Theater on Jackson Blvd. In the
months leading up to the Iroquois Theater fire, newspapers carried
stories about striking marble cutters and the impact
of those strikes on M. Keating & Sons and construction in
Chicago, including, the Iroquois.&
Irene and Pet were buried in a common grave at the
Chippiannock Cemetery at Rock Island, Illinois
following a funeral at the Broadway Presbyterian
Church in Rock Island, Illinois. A substitute pastor from another church performed
the service because the pastor at the Broadway, Dr.
William Stevenson Marquis (b.1853, Kenton, OH), was
attending the funeral for his niece and nephew, Zadel and Donald Stoddard, who also died at the
Iroquois. The Stoddard children's mother was Sarah
E. Bell, sister to Rev. Marquis's wife, but it is not
known if she was related to Maria Pet, Irene and
Maude.
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