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The Oakey family lost three
After an early stint as a
machinist, Wisconsin native, Dr. Alfred John Oakey
(b.1863), had pursued white-collar occupations. He
operated a tea store in Madison, WI, and worked as a
traveling salesman for Capital City Cracker. By 1887
he turned to dentistry, graduating in 1889 from the
Chicago College of Dental Surgery.* Later that year
at the First Methodist Episcopalian Church in
Chicago, he married Canadian native, Emma Francis
Hughes (1860-1939). His dentistry practice grew, and
by 1903, at age forty, Alfred probably felt good
about his accomplishments. He operated his practice
in offices at the Merrick building on the corner of
63rd and Stewart. The family resided in a spacious
six-room flat at 515 65th St., at the Ellis Avenue
intersection.
Alfred and Frances had four
children, two girls and two boys. The oldest in 1903 was
thirteen-year-old Frances Lucile Oakey (b.1890) who
attended the Lewis-Champlin school* where she went
by her middle name. Eleven-year-old Marion
(b.1892) was next, then six-year-old Theodore Hughes Oakey (1897-1964) and
five-year-old Alfred John Oakey Jr. (1898-1981).
It was the perfect life with summer vacationing in
Wisconsin, singing with his church choir and involvement in an Englewood music
appreciation club.†
On Wednesday, December 30, 1903,
Alfred and his daughters dropped his brother William
J. Oakey (1866-1954) off at the train station then went
on to an afternoon matinee of Mr. Bluebeard at
Chicago's newest luxury playhouse, the Iroquois Theater.
William Oakey had been visiting over the holidays
and left Chicago for Newburgh, NY, to visit another
of the Oakey brothers, Washington, J. Oakey
(1872-1946).
On another Wednesday, Frances
and the boys might have gone along on the theater
outing. Theodore was ill and awaiting ear surgery
after the first of the year, however, so they
remained behind and survived.
Identification
Dr. Oakey's body was found at
Jordan's funeral home. The receiving location of his
daughters' bodies was not reported. The bodies of all three Oakeys
were identified by Dr. Don L. Phillips, a dentist
with offices two doors from Alfred's.
Funeral and burial
Following a private funeral service at the family's
home in Chicago the Saturday morning after the fire,
January 4, 1904, the caskets were transported by
rail to Madison, Wisconsin.
There a second funeral was held, followed by entombment in a vault at the
Forest Hill Cemetery with burial to take place
in the spring. Five brothers were among Alfred's
mourners. Frances and the boys did not attend the
funeral in Madison due to Theodore's upcoming ear
surgery.
Professional eulogy
One dental publication reference suggested the Oakey and
Rimes family attended the theater together.
Because some of the worst errors in victim
biographies have been in trade magazine eulogies, I'm
hesitant to accept it without further
substantiation and I make note the Rimes were not
mentioned in the
lengthy Oakey funeral story.
With that qualification, the story provides a glimpse at how the dentists were remembered by their peers.
In the years after the fire
Emma and the boys disappeared from the Chicago city directory the year
after the fire so may have moved in with another
family member for a time. Life insurance helped them
to eventually move to California
where Frances would spend the rest of her life.
Both Oakey boys married and had families but not
without sacrifice. Theodore quit school prior
to graduation to help support the family and put
Alfred through engineering college. Alfred Jr.
named his first-born daughter Marian Lucy after his
two lost sisters. One descendant reports
the tragedy affected the family for generations.
A big thanks to Ron in Madison, Wisconsin for a
gravestone photo taken at the Forest Hill Cemetery.
At his website he provides info about
a few other Iroquois victims.
Nonsense
A Wisconsin newspaper
reported that the Oakey family's bodies were found
still in their seats, burned beyond recognition,
never having tried to escape. This gruesome bit of
yellow journalism was attached to a few victims,
always by out-of-town newspapers. Some magnified the
story to paint a horrific picture of an entire
balcony filled with charcoaled corpses. Chicago
reporters knew better. Yes, a handful of victims
were found still seated, and another handful found
with their feet and dresses caught in their seats
when ankle-length hems were caught in folding seats. ( See
fireman Roche's testimony about balcony on second
floor.)
There were fewer than two dozen found in seats, not
hundreds, and minimal probability that any were
identified at the scene.‡
The
Everett disaster book included
a moving story of a rescue worker disobeying his
supervisor to carry the body of a child out to the
street because she reminded him of his daughter. The
author featured that moment because it was
exceedingly rare. Putting out flames and getting
possibly still living victims to safety was Job One.
Job Two was getting dead bodies out of the
smoldering theater so the last bit of fire could be
put out. The grim task of removing the other 500+
bodies was carried out by dozens of two-man first
responder teams carrying blanket slings, often with
ghastly contents.
Sling carriers laid bodies on the curb for
examination by medical triage workers, then went
back inside to get another body. Often they did not
not know whether the victim still breathed, least of
all which hospital or morgue received the body.
First responders experienced
all the horror and sorrow you might expect, enough
that some could not continue. A majority stayed at
it and in three hours emptied the building of
bodies.
Identification came later at morgues, by thousands
of family members and friends looking at hundreds of
bodies, and by police and morgue attendants using
clues found on the corpses.
That is how 1903 Chicago handled over eight hundred
dead and injured with a level of effectiveness that
would be impressive had it happened yesterday in
60-degree weather in the bright of day, with
motorized vehicles to transport the bodies and cell
phones to facilitate communication. The city's
handling of the disaster under 1903 conditions was nothing short of
amazing.
Given the circumstances, it is a remote chance that
a first responder who knew Dr. Oakey was among a
half dozen workers in the third-floor balcony at the
time his body was found, and recognized the badly
burned corpse. Even less likely is that the
responder related his observation to a triage
worker, who related it to the wagon driver, who
related it to the morgue workers at Jordan's Funeral
Home who, while moving around the one hundred and
thirty-five corpses taken there, and interacting
with hundreds of family members who came to view the
bodies - blurted out the story to a grieving family
member.
That said, I can imagine the condition of the bodies
leading an undertaker to speculate to a family
member that the Oakeys might have instantly burned
to death in their seats when the fireball surged
through the balconies, as had been much discussed in
newspapers. Instantaneous death would be much preferable
to imagining your husband and children dying from
painful crushing or suffocation.
Discrepancies and addendum
At the Iroquois
Theater was a husband and wife named Oakley and a
family of three named Oakey. The
difference is that while all three members of the Oakey family died, neither of the
Oakleys did.
There is conflicting information about these
families online but the gravestone for the Oakey
family discussed here bears evidence of the deceased victims.
In the interesting trivia
category: Two years prior
to the fire Dr. Oakey enjoyed a
7,000 mile railway trip to San Francisco with fellow
Methodists, including a visit to Playland swimming
pools and amusement park in San Francisco.
* Another Iroquois Theater victim,
Harold S. Bliss, was a student at the CCDS,
expecting to graduate in the spring.
† Lucile attended school with three other
Iroquois Theater victims — the two
Rimes boys and
Eva Hire.
I was not able to learn the name of Marion's school.
Eva Hire was at the Iroquois with Ruth Robbins, who
was also from Madison, Wisconsin, her funeral
services conducted by the same minister as the Oakey
family. It seems a bit too much of a
coincidence that Ruth attended the same school, came
from the same hometown, and attended the same theater
matinee at the Iroquois, but I've not yet found a
verifying connection between the families.
‡ Prosecuting attorneys
would have been delighted to learn of "crime-scene"
identifications. Instead, they had nearly six
hundred bodies with no evidence of where they'd been
found, thus from a cause-and-effect viewpoint, nearly six hundred weak cases. Impossible as it seems, they
had difficulty coming up with a single victim on
which to base their prosecution.
Hulda Holm and Anna
Hanson
Chicago
Lumberyard owner died at Iroquois Theater
William, Katie, Howard
and Richard Palmer
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 2739
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.
