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A prosperous young Winnetka matron, and two out-of-town Winnetka visitors, took four children aged nine to fifteen to the Mr. Bluebeard matinee. Though sitting on the main floor where the number of fatalities was proportionately much less than on the second and third floors, all seven died.^▼1

In the party were thirty-six-year-old Emilie Fox, thirty-five-year-old Jeanette Higginson, thirty-three-year-old Mabel Gerow,^▼2 Emilie's three children — twelve-year-old William Fox, fifteen-year-old George Fox, and nine-year-old Emilie "Lydia" Fox - and Jeanette Higginson's nine-year-old-nephew, Roger Higginson.

The Fox family

Emilie Fox married the son of George Sidney Fox, a Philadelphia industrialist who owned the Union Traction company and built a fortune financing streetcar companies. As the only daughter of William Melancton Hoyt, Emilie was accustomed to a comfortable lifestyle. Starting with a fruit stand when he was eighteen years old, W. M. Hoyt had built one of Chicago's largest grocery wholesaling companies. A half dozen servants cared for Emilie and her three brothers at the family home at 341 Dearborn in Chicago, next door to the Potter Palmer family (before the Palmers built a new mansion on Lake Shore Drive in 1900).

A director in her father's company, Graeme Stewart, searched for Emilie and her children until he found the remains of all four, in three different mortuaries. Funeral services were conducted at the Fox home by Reverend Henry G. Moore of the Christ Episcopal Church, and burial was at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. In 1905, a new Christ Episcopal Church, including a Tiffany stained glass window, was built in Winnetka with funds provided by William M. as a memorial to his daughter and grandchildren. Called Church on the Hill, it is still in use today.

The Higginson family

From a Boston family with roots tracing back to America's colonial settlers, George Higginson Jr. (1864–1936) left his father's farm in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts to graduate from Harvard in 1887. Over the next seventeen years, as the nation electrified its homes, cities, and factories, he made a small fortune as an expert in power plant financing and brokering. By age forty-six, he was the largest landowner in Winnetka, IL, enjoying life as a gentleman farmer at his "Meadow Farm."

From 1896 to 1903, however, sorrow and loss ran concurrently with success for George. His first wife and second child died in childbirth in 1897, his mother two years later, and in September 1903, his three-year-old namesake, George Higginson III.

Then in December came the Iroquois fire, where he lost his sister, Jeanette Barker Higginson, and nine-year-old son, Roger Higginson.

Both Higginson victims were transported to Lennox, Massachusetts for burial in the family plot at Church on the Hill Cemetery.

The victims

Thirty-six-year-old Emilie Lydia Hoyt Fox (b. 1867)

Her body found at Horan's, Emilie was the first in the family to be identified by Graeme Stewart, her father's business associate.

Emilie's thirty-eight-year-old husband, Frederick Morton Fox (1865–1904), died less than three months after the fire, reportedly from grief. I was doubtful that a person can die from grief but turned up the information that the risk of death from heart attack increases substantially when people are undergoing trauma or are in mourning. The cause of Fredrick's death is not known, and it appears he did not assist in locating the bodies of Emilie and their children. He may have been ill prior to the fire, unable to help with the search, then succumbed to the illness two months later. I found no indication that he was in the theater party and suffered injuries at the Iroquois. Perhaps grief and stress weakened the health of a man already in precarious condition.

Emilie's brother, Phelps Buttolph Hoyt would serve as treasurer of the Iroquois Memorial Association founded a month after the fire.

Fifteen-year-old George Sidney Fox

George's body was found at Jordan's. Eighteen months earlier, he hit a golf ball that landed on Roger Higginson's head and knocked him unconscious.

Twelve-year-old William Hoyt Fox (b.1891) and nine-year-old Emilie Lydia Fox (b.1894)

Both children were found at Rolston's funeral home. The Fox children were not cited in lists of Chicago students who died at the Iroquois, possibly because as Winetka residents they were not considered as Chicago school students. So far I've found fourteen student victims who were not included on those lists.

Nine-year-old Roger Griswold Higginson (b.1894)

I wonder how life looked to young Roger in the three years before his death. He was only two years old when his mother died, so it is unlikely he remembered her.^▼3 If the opinion of author Henry James is any indication, the arrival of Roger's stepmother, Emily N. Wakem (1864–1941),^▼4 made an indelible impact on the household. After visiting George and Emily in 1906, James (a distant Higginson relative) referred to Emily as "a social and domestic scourge." How ever Roger viewed Emily, he certainly linked her to the arrival of three babies, born in 1899, 1900, and 1903. Even in a household with a half dozen servants to help care for them, babies would have drawn attention away from a boy accustomed to being the only child. Then the oldest of them died just three months before the theater excursion. For Roger, the best part of going to the theater may have been the opportunity to get away from a grieving stepmother and two little sisters—one-year-old Emily "Lee" Higginson (1903–1979) and two-year-old Theresa Higginson (1901–1973).

News reports in 1903 said Roger lived at 419 East Huron Street, but it is more likely he lived on Prospect St. Another reporting error relative to Roger spelled his last name as Higgins rather than Higginson. His body was presumably identified by his brother, George.

Roger was George Higginson Sr's first born son but was not named after his father. That distinction was instead given to the son born to George and his second wife, Emily. George's first wife, Roger's mother, Edith Griswold, had a brother named George, a father named George and a husband named George. Perhaps she was tired of the name George.

Thirty-five-year-old Jeanette Barker Higginson (b.1868)

A mixed blessing sentiment about Emily Higginson and the babies may have been shared by Roger's unmarried aunt Jeanette who had spent the past year traveling in Europe with a hired companion, Mabel Gerow. The women returned to the states in October to spend a month with Jeanette's father at The Corners in Stockbridge, MA, then headed west to visit George and his rapidly growing family, as well as Jeanette and George's brother Augustus Higginson who lived a few doors away from George in Winnetka.

Jeanette's body was identified by her brother, George Higginson Jr. Upon hearing the news about his daughter and grandson, Jeanette's father, George Higginson Sr., age seventy, and his brother, Henry L. Higginson, immediately boarded a train for Chicago. At the depot in Lennox, George spoke with a reporter, expressing his shock. He said that Jeanette had been the head of his household and cared for him in his senior years. She suffered from obesity, and her year in Europe was spent at a bath resort in Germany where she lost sixty pounds and studied the German language and history.

Thirty-three-year-old Mabel Redruth Gerow (b.1870)

Mabel was Jeanette Higginson's hired travel companion, a nurse from Vineland, New Jersey where her parents operated a farm.  It is not known if Jeanette Higginson required a nurse but Mabel was described as an educated and interesting companion so probably brought more than nursing to the relationship. Mabel worked as a tutor and teacher as a younger woman, then in 1898 graduated from a two-year program at the New Jersey Training School for Nurses in Camden.

She was buried at Siloam Cemetery in Vineland with her parents and siblings.

Discrepancies and addendum

1.  Some reports in 1903/4 stated that a two-year-old female named Janithe B. Higginson also died at the Iroquois, her body identified by P.D. Sexton, but I think the report was an error, probably due to confusion with the name Jeanette B. Higginson. No child of that age is buried in the Higginson family plot in Massachusetts where Jeanette, Roger, George and Edith Higginson are buried and in a 1904 interview George Higginson only cited the deaths of his son and sister. Had a Higginson toddler died in the fire he certainly would have referred to her in his remarks.

2.  Some period newspapers referenced a victim identified as Mrs. Geron from Winnetka, an incorrect reference to Mabel Gerow.
Various period reports stated that a Higginson governess died in the fire but I've found nothing to substantiate that death and suspect Miss Gerow was incorrectly guessed to have been a governess by the newspapers. That said, George Higginson customarily employed a half dozen servants, including several twenty-something girls from Sweden or Scotland. One of those servants might have served as a governess and could have accompanied the party to the theater. With three adults present, presumably, a fourth would not have been needed to care for children aged nine to fifteen.

3.  George Higginson Jr's first wife, and mother of Roger Higginson, was Edith Green Griswold Higginson (1859–1897) who died while giving birth to her second child. Edith and George married in 1891 in New York and moved to Chicago the following year. Edith was sister to author and noted landscaping authority, Mrs. Mariana Griswold Schuyler Van Rensselaer. Edith left behind an estate of personal property valued at $88,637, inherited by George.

4.  Some genealogy researchers spell Emily Higginson's maiden name as Wakeham rather than Wakem but Wakem appeared on her marriage certificate, on her tombstone, and in her newspaper obituary. It is interesting to note that after the death of George Higginson Jr in 1936, Emily moved to Lennox to live with the Higginson family.
Emily and four of her eight Wakhem siblings were born in Coquimbo, Chili, to English parents. When Emily was a toddler, the family moved back to England, and she was educated in Lancashire. Around 1880 the family immigrated to Nebraska and took up farming. At age twenty-seven, Emily graduated from nursing school in Pennsylvania and in 1898 married thirty-four-year-old widower George Higginson Jr. I am curious to know how a nurse from England, by way of a Nebraska farm, met and attracted a wealthy banker from Chicago. That unlikely union, together with Henry James remark about her, suggest that Emily Wakem Higginson was an unusual character.

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