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Mary/Maria Edna Torney (b. 1877) was
twenty-three years old when she died
at the Iroquois.†
She was described as small and slight of stature
with a girlish appearance. She lived at 1292 W.
Adams St. with her parents and siblings. She
was engaged to be married in two months to an
unknown westside business owner.
The coroner's office named Mary
as the lead plaintiff when it turned its findings
over to the grand jury, but she was soon replaced by
Viva Jackson.
Edna had attended the Convent of St. Charles Borromo in
elementary and junior high school and graduated from
the West Division High School in 1895.
A year later she took her first teaching assignment.
She remained at Throop in 1903, teaching first grade.
She was the oldest child of Patrick and Mary A. Torney and had three siblings.
Named after her mother, she went by her middle name from infancy.
Patrick Torney (b.1855) and his wife, Mary A. Torney
(b.1857), were natives of New York and Michigan,
married in 1875. Their surviving children were Austin A. Torney
(b. 1883), Blanche A. Torney (b.1887) and
Manus "Babe" M Torney (b.1890). All the Turney
children, including Edna, were born in Michigan, in
the Lenawee county area in the bottom southeast
corner of the state. Edna was born in Adrian
and her godfather was Thomas J. Navin.
In Chicago Patrick Torney worked as a painter and decorator in an
organ factory. As an adult, Austin became a newspaper
correspondent and Blanch and Babe worked as
telephone operators.
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Mary's injuries & funeral
Like many Iroquois victims, Edna was not found by her family
immediately but a death certificate was issued the
day after the fire and her name appeared in fatality
lists by January 1, 1904, two days after the fire.
It was reported that she was not burned and her
clothing not scorched, nor was she bruised or
trampled. One of the few victims to be autopsied,
her lungs were described as perforated in over a
dozen places from breathing the fumes.
Edna's brother Austin identified the remains on January 1
or 2, 1904. Her
funeral was held at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in
Chicago, the service led by Father Amadeus Quigley
(1865-1947). Burial was at Mount Carmel Cemetery.
In 1887 Edna's father had been the choir director and bass
singer at the two-year-old St. Charles Borromo
Church and Edna was the
organist. Father and daughter left Borromo
and began attending Our
Lady of Sorrows Church, where by age eighteen Edna
served as choir director and organist, but the Torney family remained
dear to choir members at St Charles Borromo. A
choir mass was sung there for Edna and another choir
member who lost her life at the Iroquois,
Mary Donahue.
Emma / Emily Lillian Newman Brinsley (b. 1860),
according to her marriage records, was
forty-two at the time
of her death, though post-fire newspapers
reported she was twenty-nine. She married Ohio native
Herbert Gibson Brinsley (1869-1918) in June 1902.
It was the first marriage for Herbert but I've failed
to learn if Newman was Emma's maiden name.
Prior to that time she also
taught at the Throop School but I did not find
evidence that she taught after 1901.
Emma's husband Herbert was an
architect and head of the drafting department for
the Chicago Board of Education. Reportedly
someone named C. M. Owens identified Emma's body.
Herbert remarried Eliza Elsa
Zimmerman Douglas in 1912, with whom he had one
child. He was one of four sons born to John C.
Brinsley Sr. (1828-1900) and Harriet Gibson
(1831-1895).
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Discrepancies and addendum
Missing information
- Photo of Emma Newman
- Verification of Emma's maiden name
In the Chicago Tribune the day after the fire, Edna's name
appeared twice in a list of the victims, once as
Edna M. Farney and once as Edna Torney.
Coroner Traeger reported that some name spellings
received from reporting friends and relatives were
indecipherable. Multiple possibilities were
added to the list in those cases, to better ensure
newspaper readers would recognize the name of their
family member. Two days later there was
still confusion about her name: the Trib this time
identified her as Maria Tomey. Searching on
her address demonstrates reveals that it took a
while to unsnarl her identification details.
* The Throop school and Throop street
were named after Amos G. S. Throop, a 1850s
Temperance Party mayoral candidate and businessman.
† According to burial records she was twenty-three but
newspapers reported her age as twenty-six and in
1900 her family reported her year of birth as 1878,
making her 25. A few distant newspapers
reported her age as 12.
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