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Sometimes family members of Iroquois Theater victims were not told
of their loved one's death immediately. There seemed to be
an agreed-upon period of pretense in which a spouse, child
or other close family member was deemed too fragile to learn
of the death. In several such instances the delay
produced an unexplained absence that cannot have gone
unnoticed, leading me to suspect that the suspension of bad
news was mutually agreed upon, even by the person being
protected. "Don't tell Carrie that her mother died.
We'll pretend for a while that she was just called away."
The protected family member was usually
female, aged and/or ill. The revelation, when made, was done
by a carefully selected friend or relative, sometimes in the
presence of a doctor or minister.
Carrie Anderson and
William
Kranz come to mind. Kranz's physicians checked him over
after a friend told him of the death of his wife to make sure
the knowledge didn't harm him. He and his wife were separated
during their escape from the theater. Burns to his head and arms
kept him hospitalized for a week after the fire. His awareness
of the peril in the balcony was such that he predicted
Harry
Bliss and Mabel Botsford had not survived, but he accepted
assurances that his wife lived and was recovering elsewhere. It
appears that William, his physicians and friends participated in
a temporary false narrative.* Harry's and Mabel's mothers knew
family members were searching for their children in hospitals
and morgues but the word of their deaths was delayed. The
deception of Carrie Anderson about her mother's death lasted
over forty days. The frequency with which such delayed
notification was reported in newspapers suggests it was on a
list of "must ask" questions for reporters.
It added pathos that appealed to readers.
Common superstitions of the
early 1900s included hair turning white overnight
from trauma and women lifting tree trunks to free
trapped children. Even more popular was the
certainty that sorrow, disappointment and grief can
"break" hearts and kill. Rejection by a lover,
bereavement over the death of a loved one, a
political loss or severe melancholy were among
emotional responses that were thought to be potentially lethal.
So popular was the sentiment that reporters
and authors sought out evidence of a major life
disappointment to attribute as cause of death. The
public's understanding of medicine was limited and
autopsies infrequent. Newspaper stories about
unexpected death rarely
included the kind of cause-of-death information
expected today. Drama
injections came from details of the passing (family
members present at bedside and last words) and
whatever life disappointments or sorrows the family,
a physician or a journalist thought had played a
role.
Senator Mark Hanna died because he was
disappointed he would not be president, his typhoid
fever sometimes altogether omitted from news stories.
Congressman and Secretary of State Daniel
Webster died of a broken heart over the deaths
of his wife and several children, along with
disappointment at not getting the Whig party
nomination. Later biographers filled in the rest of the
story: alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver and a
brain injury. Newspaperman Horace
Greely suffered a nervous breakdown when
humiliating political and professional defeat
followed his wife's death but there was some
evidence of a
drug overdose by clueless physicians at the asylum
where he died.
Notions about death-by-sorrow persisted long after
physicians debunked it. Physicians recognized that
unexpected grief rarely brought on instant heart
failure but in the
1890s theorized that psychological
response could have a longer term impact on physical health†. There was the frequency with
which spouses died within a short time of one
another, for example -- today called
stress-induced
cardiomyopathy. Medicine knew something else
was at work. It would take another fire disaster and
the opportunity it provided to study a large number
of similarly afflicted patients for more answers to
emerge.
From Freud to Lindemann and Caplan
Today's response to the psychological needs of victims and
communities in disasters got its start in 1917 with
the development of classical one-on-one
psychoanalysis via Freud's personality theory.
Twenty-seven years of application revealed its
limitations in crisis situations. It took another
fire disaster, in 1943, to produce research that
informed the foundation of today's crisis theory.
Dr. Erich Lindemann began studying bereavement in
1941 relative to the role of grief and loss as a
causal complicating factor in ulcerative colitis and
hysterectomies. When called upon to treat survivors
of Boston's Coconut Grove nightclub fire, Lindemann
recognized similarities in the responses of fire
survivors with responses in organ-loss patients. His
seminal 1944 work,
"Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief," was
followed in the mid-1960s by Harvard psychologist
Gerald L. Caplan (1917-2008) with his Principles of
Preventive Psychiatry.
Discrepancies and addendum
* One of many psychological
difficulties facing men such as William Kranz, who
survived while their wives did not, were damaging
accounts about the behavior of men at the Iroquois.
A few witnesses testified about men using brute
strength to save themselves at the expense of women
and children. The number of such witnesses was no
more than two or three, but papers featured their
remarks prominently. It is safe to assume a
stigma became attached to any man who survived the
Iroquois Theater fire. "Is he at work today because
he threw women and children to the ground at the
Iroquois?" One such story came
from
Kieth Pickrell of Milwaukee who also mentioned heroism.
"The men fought with everybody, trampling down the
women and children. When the rush began people
jumped from the galleries and balconies, and I saw
several men land on the mad mob below them. Some
jumped from their seats and climbed over the persons
in front of them. I saw men pick women and children
and hold them over their heads in trying to get them
out. Then they would be pulled down with their
burdens and trampled on. Men were fighting with
women, trying to get deeper into the crowd. They
tore aside children to push through. The helpless
women and children cried piteously for mercy, but it
was in vain. Within ten minutes from the time the
fire started, the carpet was burning under us and
most of the crowd at the side entrance had escaped.
We went through that door, where the bodies of the
dead were under us. They had been trampled down in
the first mad rush."
Another witness who mentioned men's bad behavior was society
debutant,
Charlott E. Plamondon. Charlotte's account was
problematic. She described sights in the darkened
balcony that she could not have observed from her seat in
a first-floor box seat. Either she embroidered or the reporter
put words in her mouth.
Thoughtful readers might have contrasted the far greater number
of reports of men who saved wives, sisters,
girlfriends and children, some giving their own
lives in the process. Still, it is likely that many
Chicagoans went to their graves believing men at the
Iroquois were monsters. For men who survived the
Iroquois Theater fire, survivor guilt may
have merged with survivor defense.
† Prominent among those was
Dr. Louise Fiske Bryson. Some of her peer citations,
however, included doctors who believed tuberculosis
and pneumonia was caused by stress and that a dog
was made rabid by immersion in water.
Stella McCaslin couldn't
save her mother
Caroline and Marjorie
Edwards
Adele Rafter played Selim
Role
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 2962
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.
