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Other than U.S. Census
reports, dressmaker Anna E. McChristie (b. 1862) is a mystery.
On December 30, 1903, with two unknown friends, she attended an
afternoon matinee of Klaw & Erlanger's Mr. Bluebeard Christmas
pantomime on Randolph St. at the city's newest luxury playhouse,
the Iroquois Theater. In the second act a stage fire spread to
the auditorium and took the lives of over 600 theatergoers,
including Anna's.
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Anna lived at 6315 or 6321 Lexington in Chicago. Newspaper death
lists reported her age as thirty-five and
twenty-seven, but she was probably forty-one. At
least one of her theater companions probably knew
her age. The discrepancies might indicate that the
person in her party who knew her best was also an
Iroquois victim, thus unable to provide information
to authorities.
In 1900 Anna had worked as a maid, employer unknown. By
1903 she worked as a dressmaker. Dressmakers in 1903
worked out of their homes, in department stores and
factory
sweatshops. Women's clothing made up only 25% of
ready-to-wear garments, and most middle-class
homemakers made clothing for their families. The
wealthy hired dressmakers and one of Anna's cousins
may have been one of her customers.
Anna was the daughter of the late Thomas and Mary
Thompson McChristy of New York. She had lived in
Chicago from at least 1880 to 1902 with her great
aunt and uncle, Mary and John Willson. She had two
surviving siblings back in New York.
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Anna's great uncle John was a
carpenter, but one of he and Mary's daughters
married a wealthy, successful banker. They might
have contributed to her mother's upkeep after his
death. In 1900, Mary was able to afford a domestic
servant/boarder.
Mary Willson died a year before the Iroquois Theater
fire. In 1903, Anna rented a room on Lexington St.
Her cousins, Mary and John Willson's children and
grandchildren, might have paid for Anna's funeral
and burial.
A Dr. Howard Steere,* identified Anna's body. He
worked at the Hering Emergency Hospital at 3832
Rhodes. I found no other references to the Hering
facility or Dr. Steere in conjunction with Iroquois
victims. If he was one of the many physicians and
nurses who came to the Iroquois to volunteer their
services, how did he identify Anna? Perhaps she
carried something on her person or in her purse.
Possibly, one of her theater companions reported her
as missing.
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Discrepancies and addendum
* In 1914 at age thirty-seven
Steere was murdered by a patient, thirty-year-old
Polish immigrant Anton Truskowski, a window washer
at the Palmer House. Truskowski was left weakened
after a hernia operation by Steere. Despite three
months of treatment totaling $435 in charges
($11,000 today, about the average price of hernia
surgery today), Truskowski put two shots in Steer's
gut and one in his own heart. Steere remained
conscious long enough to point to Truskowski as the
shooter. Steere's partner, Dr. Sprafka, described
Truskowki as a "half-wit anarchist" whom they had
charged half price. Steer was married, then, with
two sons under four years of age. He'd studied
medicine in Herrick, North Dakota and begun
practicing medicine in 1896.
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