Twenty-three-year-old Helen Koehn Miller (b. 1880)* and day laborer August C. Miller had married in the fall of 1901. On December 30, 1903, Helen attended an afternoon matinee performance of Klaw & Erlanger's Mr. Bluebeard Christmas pantomime at Chicago's newest luxury playhouse, the Iroquois Theater. When a fire broke out on stage and swept into the auditorium, Helen was among the nearly six hundred killed.

August found and identified her body at Jordan's funeral home. The pair lived at 369 W. Huron Street in Chicago. Nothing is known about Helen's theater companions or location in the theater.  It may have been August.

Body thief John Mahnken attempted to claim Helen's body as that of his aunt but failed since it had already been identified by August.  In December, 1904, a $10,000 wrongful death suit was brought on Helen's behalf.

Helen's was one of twenty wrongful death claims for $20,000 filed by attorney Nellie Carlin (1869-1948). An 1896 graduate of the Chicago College of Law, Nellie sometimes worked in  Clarence Darrow's office until 1910, when she formed a private practice. In 1913 Illinois Governor Edward Dunne appointed her as a public guardian of Cook County, the second woman in the state to hold that position. In 1918 Nellie was appointed to the position of assistant state attorney by Maclay Hoyne (1872-1939), the first female assistant state's attorney in the Illinois history. Hoyne's sister Susie Hoyne had survived the Iroquois Theater fire.  In December 1904 the probate court appointed Nellie administrator of twenty $20,000 Iroquois fire suits totaling $400,000 in bonds.  The bonds were furnished by a surety company and the claims were against the Iroquois Theater company.

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