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Recollections varied after America's worst theater disaster In 1903
twenty-seven-year-old Catherine "Katie" L. Cavanaugh
(1876– ?) was one of seven teachers at the Hawthorne elementary school in Bloomington, Illinois,
across the road from the North Lee Street home where she'd grown up.▼1
Her older brother, Edward Bernard Cavanaugh (1870–1950), and his wife Hattie, didn't want to
make the train ride from Chicago to Bloomington with a seven-month-old so at Christmas
break Catherine took a train to Chicago. Home to Illinois State University and
with a population just over twenty thousand, Bloomington wasn't a cow town, but Chicago
was nearly a hundred times larger. The opportunity to visit department stores and
theaters, and spend time with her
brother and new niece was probably a nice change from her
fourth-grade class. The loss of a brother and sister three years early likely made
family
relationships doubly important.
At her sister-in-law's recommendation, Catherine changed into a "short
walking skirt" before leaving for the theater. Newspaper advertising of the period
reveals that walking skirts appeared in Chicago as early as 1870, peaked in popularity
in 1902, and by 1914 all but disappeared. As hem lengths rose and styles changed,
special mobility styling was no longer needed. Harriet, nicknamed Hattie,
sometimes called Anna, stayed home from the
theater to look after baby May. Her advice
about skirt length would have been based on weather rather than clairvoyance. Chicago was
colder, wetter and snowier than Bloomington.
In Chicago on December 30, 1903 the low was minus four and the week's six inches of snow
wouldn't be melting soon. The next day in Bloomington it was forty-one degrees and
the month's biggest snowfall was long gone.
Catherine attributed her survival to Edward's strength and her shorter skirt length.
Her appreciation for her big brother's assistance was touching, and her opinion that
long skirts cost lives at the Iroquois was accurate, but neither played the personal life-saving
role she imagined. Catherine and Edward were seated in the parquet at the back of
the first floor of the Iroquois, where fewer than 1% of nearly six hundred victims died.
Without the convoluted stairways found elsewhere in the theater, the first floor was emptied before the backdraft responsible for a majority of the
deaths at the Iroquois. Some first-floor evacuees were surprised to read in
newspapers about the death count, so uneventful was their Iroquois experience. Catherine was far from alone in her terror, however; many first-floor theater members expressed similar feelings, exhibiting a
human nature failure to
recognize the difference between their experience and that of hundreds of people in the
balconies who burned to death or suffocated, or died on impact after a forty- to
sixty-foot fall from a fire escape landing.
The Cavanaughs of Bloomington, Illinois
Edward Bernard Cavanaugh had been six years old when his sister Katie was born. They were in the middle of a flock of nine children
born by Margaret Henry Killian Cavanaugh (1842–1907), one by her first husband,
William Killian (1832–1860), the other eight fathered by the late Thomas J. Cavanaugh (1840–1884).▼2
Three of Margaret's children had been lost; a daughter passed sometime prior to 1884 and
1900 took two — Josie in October and Frank in December. In age, Josephine had been between Edward
and Catherine so childhood memories may have given her death especial impact.
Thomas Cavanaugh had worked in the railroad industry throughout his life, mostly in their hometown
of Bloomington, IL, and in Missouri during his last few months before becoming a
victim of tuberculosis. He'd married widow Margaret Henry in 1862, becoming father
to her infant son, William Bernard Killian (1861–?).
In the late 1890s Catherine and Edward had still lived with their widowed mother and
several of their siblings in the family home at 902 N. Lee Street.▼3 Edward and his partner,
John A. Jordan, had purchased liquor merchant William Tritt's saloon on West Front Street in Bloomington.
In 1898 Edward started making big changes in his life. He left the retail bar business and became a traveling salesman for the T.H. Ross
lumber company of Indianapolis. In 1901 he married school teacher Harriet Shinners (1876–1952) of Appleton, Wisconson
and moved to Chicago.
There he worked for a liquor distiller and the newlyweds lived in an apartment at 486 sixty-second street.
In the years after the fire
In 1905 Edward owned a saloon at 550 Lincoln Avenue in Chicago.
During prohibition he turned to real estate, then became an investment broker for
Hibernia Securities. In 1928 he and Hattie lost daughter May at age twenty-five. Their
youngest daughter, Margaret Cecelia Cavanaugh (1908–2002), married John W. Scallan,
president of a division of the Pullman-Standard corporation, and lived to age
ninety-four. Son John W. Cavanaugh became an attorney and married Jane Stude.
He and his teenaged son died in an automobile accident in 1969. The last reference I found
to Edward and Bloomington, Illinois was in 1907 when he was named administrator of his mother's
estate.
In 1905 Catherine transferred to
Bloomington's new Edwards School at Market and Allin streets where she taught in Room I. She
also took time for an extended visit to California. She still lived in the family
home in 1907 but after the death of their mother, the Cavanaugh siblings seemed to
scatter. In 1908 Catherine sprained her foot
when standing upon a seat at the high school, trying to light the
gas.▼4 In 1910 Catherine lived with the Tilton family on Lace St.
The last reference I found to her living in Bloomington was in 1915. In 1922 she may have
lived in Chicago with her sister Margaret.
Margaret Cavanaugh died in 1907 and after thirty-five years their home on North Lee street passed
out of the Cavanaugh family.
Discrepancies and addendum
1.
In the Fifth Ward at the corner of Lee and Walnut streets, the Hawthorne School in
Bloomington had been constructed in 1872, named after George W. Hawthorne, a
township land owner. In 1913 the
school was rebuilt and the new structure named
Horatio G. Bent School. Bent was a long-time member of the Board of Education.
2.
In the unlikely-but-true-coincidents category, in a population of around 20,000 in 1890s Bloomington were two
seemingly unrelated men named Thomas
Cavanaugh. Tom #2 (married to Fannie, father of John and Thomas jr.) also worked
for the railroad and became road master in Bloomington, and also had a Josie in his
immediate family, his sister.
3. The house presently at 902 N. Lee in
Bloomington was
reportedly not built until 1910. Since the Cavanaugh family lived there as early
as 1872 and until at least 1907, their original home may have been razed. Or
online realtor reports as to the age of the structure are pulling inaccurate information
from building records.
4. As an educated woman Catherine knew a sprain
wasn't as serious but in the back of her mind she must have thought about her mother's
fight with a gangrenous foot during the last two years of her life.
Bloomington Illinois
mother and daughter Iroquois Theater victims
Charles survived
Bloomington and family but not the conductor
Josie Munholland of Cedar
Rapids Iowa
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 3005
A note about sourcing. When this
project began, I failed to anticipate the day might come when a
more scholarly approach would be called for. When my
mistake was recognized I faced a decision: go back and spend years creating source lists for every page, or go
forward and try to cover more of the people and circumstances
involved in the disaster. Were I twenty years younger, I'd
have gone back, but in recognition that this project will end when I do, I chose to go forward.
These pages will provide enough information, it is hoped, to
provide subsequent researchers with additional information.
I would like to
hear from you if you have additional info about an Iroquois victim, or find an error,
and you're invited to visit the
comments page to share stories and observations about the Iroquois Theater fire.
