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Henry Pomeroy invited a college classmate from Haverhill, Massachusetts, Fred Carrick, to
come home with him to Chicago for the 1903 Christmas break. On December 30,
one of the last days before they'd have to return to classes at Harvard, the men took in a
play at the city's newest luxury playhouse, the Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street.
They were lucky to purchase seats in the first row of the first floor, left of the orchestra.
At the beginning of America's worst theater disaster, flames were just barely visible in the curtains
at the top of the south side of the proscenium opening. They disappeared for a
short while as they raced up into the loft above the stage and engaged
hundreds of fabric scenery drops. As the fire in the loft grew, smoke and
shards of fabric billowed down to the stage floor, super-heating the stage area . When a large door
was opened at the back of the stage, cold air swept in and created a backdraft that
gained additional power from opened doors and vents at the back of the second and
third-floor balconies. At 3:50 p.m. a wide tunnel of flame exploded out into the auditorium with
explosive force and was drawn up to the back wall of the balconies,
instantly killing everyone who had not yet been able to escape, roughly four hundred people.
Two hundred more died on the alley floor behind the building when they fell or were pushed from
balcony fire escapes, and on stairwells leading from the balconies in the lobby area.
While Pomeroy and Carrick strolled to the coat room to retrieve their overcoats and went home to dinner.
Upon reading newspaper reports of stage workers frantically trying to lower the fire curtain,
Pomeroy and Carrick felt compelled to go to the mayor and any reporters who would
listen. No one tried to lower the curtain, they asserted with cocksureness
that came through the newspaper stories, and since they'd been the last people to leave
the first floor, their observation had to be the final word on the subject.
Newspapers around the country ran their story and as I type there may be some
blogger or student retelling it as fact.
Pomeroy was unique in being the only one I've come across that years later
was still publically relating his erroneous version. In the 1907
announcement for his wedding engagement, more column space was given over to
he and Pomeroy's Iroquois fire proclamation and his college
football career than to his fiancé and their upcoming marriage. Other Iroquois
survivors perhaps read newspapers after the fire and recognized that their
experience took place during the first half of the fire and that the second half
brought a whole new set of events, or that their location in the theater obscured
what they saw, etc. After their first fifteen seconds of fame, they gave no
other interviews, though in some instances it is likely they were urged to do so by
their hometown newspapers.
Frederick Arthur Carrick (1883–1928)
Frederick Carrick was the son of Henry and Catherine Boyle Carrick.
Carrick was on the Harvard varsity football team 1903–1905 as a center and guard, and
was captain of the football team in high school at Rindge Technical in Cambridge.
I suspect the best years of his life were as a seventeen year old football player.
He entered real estate soon after graduation, then became an insurance salesman, then went into
manufacturing shoes, then worked as a traveling salesman for the Heinz Pickle Co. He
graduated from Harvard in 1906, became engaged to Sarah K. Kaulbach the following year and
they married in 1910. They remained married until his early death but did not have children.
Henry King Pomeroy (1884–1950)
Henry went into insurance in California, then ranching in Washington. He was the son of a
divorced couple, Silas and Christina King Pomeroy. His mother was from Chicago and lived
there with her children under her father's roof in 1903, explaining why two Massachusetts
boys were in Chicago during Christmas break in 1903.
Henry married Ohio girl Hazel Wood Hedrick in 1912. They had two daughters, Shirley and Ruth.
He enlisted to serve in WWI in 1918 as a private in Battery F of the 47th Field Artillery,
16th Division of Camp Kearney, California, and was discharged in 1919. He'd later express
his regret at the war ending before he saw field
service.
The marriage was intact in 1920 but something went amock. In January of
1923 Henry was convicted of selling mortgaged property and spent thirty days in jail, then iIn
July came divorce and tragedy. Sometime between 1920 and June 1923 Henry and Hazel were divorced, Hazel
moved to Balboa, California, and in July, 1923 became engaged to marry Roy Roumbold of Santa Ana,
California. On a June afternoon Roy, Hazel and Hazel's girls, nine-year-old
Shirley and six-year-old Ruth, went on a picnic at Roy's mother's ranch in El Toro. As they
left to return home, at a railroad crossing near his mother's home, Roy's attention was
diverted as his mother waved goodbye from her front porch. His touring car was struck by a
southbound Santa Fe train, killing all four passengers as his mother looked on. Henry's
mother attended the funeral; Henry did not attend the funerals and was not mentioned in their obituaries.
From 1926 to 1940 Pomeroy lived at a friend's ranch in Tacoma. In February of 1940 his
friend married and brought his bride to live at the ranch. The next day, the wife's former
lover, a gun-toting fireman, forced his way in, shot and killed Henry's friend, covered his
body with carpeting and set the house afire with two gallons of oil. When Henry tried to
come to the aid of the newlyweds, the fireman first hit him on the head with a chair, then a
fireplace poker, then the butt of a gun. Henry crawled outside and passed out. While the
husband's corpse burned to a skeleton, the fireman beat, raped and shot the wife, then took
her to the hospital where she died a week later from bullet wounds to the stomach. The
fireman got two concurrent life sentences at Walla Walla, reduced to fifteen years (!)
Henry spent a day or two in the hospital but did not have a concussion. He lived to
testify against his assailant and died about ten years later of heart failure
and cirrhosis of the liver.
Discrepancies and addendum
1. Pickpockets were so prevalent in the loop that as hundreds of first responders
removed bodies from the scene they had to chase off thieves who snuck into the the
theater to rob the dead. In 1900 Chicago police had arrested one hundred
twenty-one people for assault with intent to rob.
Second unidentified woman
Iroquois injury made him kill wife
Charles survived
Bloomington and family but not the conductor
Other discussions you may find interesting
Story 3004
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.
