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On Wednesday, December 30, 1903 in
Chicago, a matinee performance of
the French fairytale, Mr.
Bluebeard, was in progress at
the city's newest luxury playhouse,
the Iroquois Theater on Randolph St.
Shortly into Act II, as a double
octet danced and sang on stage, a
breeze blew a lightweight fabric
side curtain too close to an stage
lamp. Within seconds a fire
was racing into the loft where hung
hundreds of scenery drops.
With no equipment on stage to fight
the flames, a fire curtain that on
descent was blocked by an obstacle,
and non-functioning stage vents, the
stage quickly turned into an
inferno. Performers escaped
through a large utility door at the
rear of the stage, letting in gusts
of freezing cold air that combined
with the flames to produce a
backdraft. It belched out into
the auditorium where sat seventeen
hundred women and children.
Vented fans in the back wall of the
auditorium drew the fireball up into
the balconies where audience members
had the greatest difficulty
escaping. nearly six hundred
lives were lost, over ninety-five
percent of them from the second- and
third-floor balconies.
Amongst the survivors was a
pair of sisters from a small town in
Iowa, one married, one a teacher.
Nothing was reported about their
location in the theater, escape or
injuries, if any.
Ruth and Emma Bullis were two of seven children born to Levi
Bullis 1828–1902 and Abbie Dibble Bullis. Levi and Abbie
had left New York and in 1854
located in the northeast corner tip
of Iowa in the town of Decorah. Levi
practiced law there for nearly fifty
years and became a fixture in the
community. For three years after his
death his office at the SE corner of
West Main and Winnebago streets,
though occupied by a new lawyer tenant,
would continue to be advertised and
referred to as "Levi Bullis Office.
In 1907 it was purchased and razed to build a new post
office.
With a population of
around 7,500, today's Decorah is
twice the size of the city in the
days when the the Bullis family
called it home.
Emma was the oldest Bullis
child and Ruth the youngest.
Emma was the first to die and Ruth the last. Both married
prosperous men and appear to have enjoyed comfortable lives filled with summer retreats,
foreign travel and country clubs.
Emma Bullis Noyes (1866–1950)
In 1892 Emma had married
David A. Noyes (1867–1946), a grain trader in
the futures pit at the Chicago Produce Exchange.
Noyes traded for a succession of brokerages
(Carrington, Hannah & Co., J.F. Harris, Finley
Barrell and O.A. Brown), in 1903 becoming
a partner in Finley Barrell.
The Pitnovel by Frank Norris,
published that same year, was probably much discussed in the
Noyes world. Five years later David opened a
partnership with William C. Jackson that evolved
in 1926 into the David A. Noyes Company that survived until 2018 when it was
acquired by Sanctuary Wealth.
Emma and
David did not have children and lived in luxury
hotels throughout their lives. At
death David left the entirety of his $500,000
estate to Emma (adj for inflation: $7.8
million).
Noyes was an active member of
The Indiana Society in the early 1900s thus
probably socialized with charter member,
Will J. Davis, manager of the Iroquois
Theater. Noyes had been born in LaPorte,
IN, graduated from high school in Evanston, IL
north of Chicago, and gone to work on the grain
trading floor at age nineteen.
Ruth Bullis (1882–1969)
Ruth graduated from Smith
College and taught school for a short time
before her marriage. On December 19, 1906 she
married a childhood playmate,widow Gilbert Dickerman
(1869–1958). Dickerman had
lost his wife from an unnamed surgical procedure
in 1896 just months after they'd married.
Ruth and Gilbert raised their
family of two sons and a daughter in Duluth,
Minnesota and Wisconsin
Rapids, WI. Gilbert worked in banking,
real estate, insurance and investments.
Anamosa IA Chapman girls
Iroquois Theater victims
Josie Munholland of Cedar
Rapids Iowa
Beyer family of 3 Iroquois Theater
victims
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 2993
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.
