Agnes S. Hinck Lange (1857-1939) chaperoned a holiday afternoon theater party for a group of seven Chicago Lakeside area young people, including her own two children.  It was the day before New Year's Eve, leading into the last weekend of the Christmas break before classes resumed.  Performed was Mr. Bluebeard, a Christmas pantomime Klaw and Erlanger imported from the Drury Lane Theater in London.

Shortly into the second act, a fire broke out on stage.  Despite a desperate effort on the part of some of the stage workers to contain it, coping with poorly designed and inadequate equipment, the fire spread to the auditorium.  The terrified audience fled, jamming doors and stairways, handicapped by darkness, draped exits and unfamiliarity with door hardware and the building layout.  When a backdraft hurled a ball of fire into the auditorium at 3:50 PM, hundreds died in the auditorium while hundreds more died jumping from third-floor fire escapes and suffocating from inhalation and crushing.   The death toll of nearly six hundred included four in Agnes Lange's party, including her own son and daughter.

Victims in the Agnes Lange Iroquois Theater party:

• Sixteen-year-old Herbert Lange (b. 1887) who had left school and worked as a draftsman
• Four teen-year-old Agnes Lange (b. 1888), named after her mother, a student at Louis Nettelhorst school
• Twenty-three-year-old Frieda Washington (b. 1880)
• Nine-year-old Johnny N. Washington (b.1894), a student at Louis Nettelhorst school

The Washington family lived on Melrose Street in Chicago.  Johnny w as named after his fraternal grandfather and Frieda after her mother. They were two of eight children born to Herman B. Washington (1847-1936 ) from North Carolina and Frieda Gerstner Washington (1852-1842 ) from Baden Baden, Germany, who had married in 1875 in Manhattan . Herman Washington was a fire insurance agent employed by the Witk owsky and Affeld agency in Chicago . The Washington family moved often in their early years, and the children were born in three different states.

A third Washington child was also in the party and escaped, probably Anna or Lawrence.  Percy L. Barter identified Frieda and John's bodies.  The Washington family lived on Melrose St. 

Frieda and Johnny were buried in the Saint Boniface Cemetery in Chicago.

Herman and Frieda moved to Brooklyn at the end of their lives and after death returned to Chicago to be buried at Saint Boniface Cemetery with Johnny and Frieda.  Herman was still selling fire insurance at age seventy.

Agnes suffered a brutal ending

Agnes S. and Louis Lange by 1910 moved to Otis, New Mexico and spent the remainder of their years in the Carlsbad, NM area selling cultivators and seed in conjunction with operating a 160-acre hay and alfalfa farm.  Louis's younger and older brothers, Hermann (1857-1939) and Henry (1854-) lived with Louis and Agnes and helped work the farm.

As if it weren't enough for Agnes to spend the last three decades of her life in sorrow over the loss of her children, likely wrenched with self-recrimination for having survived while they and the Washington children perished, her final hours of life were horrific as well.

At age eighty, widowed for eight years, Agnes died from heart failure and stroke.  When the coroner-undertaker examined the body he found the aged woman had been whipped, her body bearing fifteen lash marks, and concluded the beating had contributed to her death.  Sheriff Howell Gage opened an investigation and questioned Agnes's eighty-two-year-old brother in law, Hermann.  Hermann claimed no knowledge of Agnes's wounds, said she had been ill and sent him to get help.  Upon his return Hermann said he found her in her bed, dying.  The investigation was ended a few days after Agnes's death, however, when Hermann died of heart failure at her funeral.  With Hermann gone, officials concluded no one could shed light on her death.

A nephew of Agnes's from Anaheim, CA, Edward Bloodgood, was the executor of her estate.

The Lange family lived at 1632 Barry Ave. near the Augustus H. Burley elementary school.  Louis Lange (1860-1931) was a Wisconsin native, born to German immigrants, and Agnes had immigrated to America from Germany in 1885 with her family.  They married in 1886.  Herbert was born the following year and daughter Agnes the year after.  At her children's funeral, Agnes sobbed, "We were four of the happiest mortals in all Chicago."

One report said that Agnes's body was located at Gavin's funeral home, another that Herbert's was found at St. Lukes hospital and a third report that both were found at Rolston's funeral home.  Agnes and Herbert's bodies were identified by their father, Louis Lange.

The funeral for the Langes was held at the Johannes Evangelical Lutheran church on Garfield and Mohawk and burial was at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago the Sunday morning after the fire.  There were over one hundred Iroquois victim funerals in Chicago that day.

In Chicago Louis Lange was an insurance agent.  The Langes carried life insurance policies on both Agnes and Herbert and accepted a settlement from Fuller Con struction of $750 per child (roughly $20,000 adjusted for inflation .)

In 1899 Mrs. Lange was a teacher at the Maniere school in Chicago.

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