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When the fire started, Robert
waited in his seat for the crowd at the interior
exit to the stairs leading to the lobby to clear,
but when the flames grew too close and too hot he
made a dash for a fire escape exit
(
probably door #35 or #36). Flames blazing from other
exits and windows prevented fleeing people from
descending the fire escape stairs, so there was a
jam on the fire escape landing. In desperation,
Robert climbed beneath the landing and hung from the
metal framework, then began making his way down the
steps, hand over hand. When he reached the fire
escape landing on the second floor, he jumped into
Couch Place alley. The fire singed the hair on the
back of his head but he was uninjured. He caught
several others who jumped from that same landing and
gave his overcoat to a chorus girl.
According to Robert's WWI draft card he was a tall
man, of medium build. Nothing was reported about
others, if any, in Robert's theater party.
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His wife of two years, the
former Jeanette Williams (1880-1948), was spending
the winter in California with her two sisters or
this story might have had a different ending.
Robert was the son of Robert Lee France of
Washington DC and Susan Coffman of Virginia. In 1903
three of his five siblings and his parents were
alive to celebrate his escape from the Iroquois.
In the years after the fire
Robert worked as a salesman
for National Coal and Coke in 1903. In 1912 he
co-founded the Puritan Coal Company that by the
early 1920s became Puritan-Tuttle. He eventually was
involved in the Victor Chemical Works Company and in
1915 married widow Mae E. Burry Ruthenberg who
survived him, leaving behind an estate of nearly
$700k (just over $7 million in today's dollars).*
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Discrepancies and addendum
* France's Puritan Coal was a
distribution company, not the mining company of
Pennsylvania. In 1945 another of his
companies, Victor Chemical, was
among a list of firms fined for
anti-trust violations. Could not discover what
happened to the first Mrs. France and there may have
been a second wife between Jeanette and Mae.
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