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When she lost her life at the
Iroquois Theater fire, twenty-seven-year-old Susan*
"Susie" Marshall Biegler (b.1876) was in the two-year training
program at the Normal Practice School, a city-run
teacher's college. Her official status was that of
"Cadet.
She lived at 6518 Minerva Ave in Chicago with her widowed father, Charles Biegler
(1850-1919), and five siblings — a younger sister
named Marion and four brothers, Cameron, John,
Philip and Harold. Also living with the family was
Susie's aunt, Dr. Alberta Virginia McClung
(1869-1954).
Charles Augustus Biegler of New York and Mary
Elizabeth McClung Biegler (1852-1887) of Kentucky
had met and married in Ramsey, Minnesota in 1873.
After Mary's early death at age 35, Charles and the
children moved to Chicago where he worked as a
realtor and insurance agent. In 1900, three of the Biegler children were in school, including Susie.
Two worked as clerks for the Electric company. One
was a lawyer.
Susie's brother, Philip Biegler, identified her body and saw
to it being shipped to Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Burial next to her mother at Oakland Cemetery
followed a funeral service at her grandmother's home.
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Susie's middle name, Marshall, was in honor of
Colonel Thomas Marshall, an ancestor who
distinguished himself in the American revolution.
In the years after the fire
Nine months after the Iroquois fire, John Biegler, the
brother closest in age to Susie, was found dead from
a bullet wound to the head by a gun he'd purchased
in January in the weeks immediately after the fire. The coroner
and police insisted he'd been overcome with "suicide
mania" and dismissed the family's belief that John was
murdered. He had married one week before his
death, in a large, formal wedding, and scheduled a
briefly delayed
honeymoon. No
evidence was found to support either suicide or
homicide as the cause of death. His bride denied any
marital problems and his bank account held $500
($15,000 when adjusted for inflation). The
coroner maintained that since Biegler's own gun was
the death weapon, at close range, the wound was be
self-inflicted.
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