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Twenty-seven-year-old Rita Wild (b. 1876*) was one of eighteen Felsenthal public elementary school
teachers. On December 30, 1903, she was one of the few
teachers who escaped, temporarily, from America's worst theater
fire. When a stage fire spread to the auditorium, Rita was
seated in the fifth row of the dress circle in the second-floor
balcony. Her family physician said her injuries
were not life-threatening. When she died, physicians attributed her
death to fright.
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Inhalation injury? I've read of wild animals dying
from
capture myopathy
but am not sure about humans dying from delayed
fright. Shock or respiratory failure seems more likely.
Rita
lived with her widowed mother, Irish immigrant Annie
Collins Wild (1838 -1927 )
and the late Frederick J. Wild (1843-1882).
She had three siblings:
- Harry C. Wild (1868-1932 )
- Lenore Wild Hickey (1870-1934)
- Alice Wild Handschy (c1871-1944)
Included in a list of injured
theatergoers, but not in lists of fatalities, was a
"Nellie Wild" that was almost certainly Rita's older
sister, Lenore. Newspapers did not report the extent of her injuries.
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Rita was buried in the family
plot at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.
Another Felsenthal School teacher who perished at the Iroquois was
Pauline Ann Geary and two Felsenthal students —
Myrtle and
Theodore Shabad.
In the years after the fire
Alice and Frederick Handschy
had four children, one of whom they named after
Rita. They were the family's tumbleweeds, moving
west, first to Seattle, then California, then back
to Chicago by the 1920s. Harry Wild had four
children, Nelly and Jefferson J. Hickey three.
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Discrepancies and addendum
* On some records, including the death certificate, Rita's
birth year was stated as 1878 but her birth certificate stated September, 1876.
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