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Twenty-five-year-old Ella V. Hughes Dubois (b.1880)
of 38 Oregon Ave in Chicago, wife of house painter,
Arthur L. Dubois (1877–1949), attended the Mr.
Bluebeard matinee alone on December 30, 1903. It was her second
solo theater adventure since her
marriage two months earlier. Hours later, after a long search, Arthur found his
wife's body at Buffum's Mortuary, one of over six
hundred victims of America's worst theater disaster, the Iroquois Theater fire.
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Ella was the daughter of Owen and Mary McNalis
Hughes, sister of Andrew Hughes, all of
Pennsylvania. The photo features Ella as a child,
with her mother and brother.
Ella's funeral was held on Saturday at Notre Dame
Church. She was buried in Mount Carmel.
Arthur Dubois (sometimes
spelled Du Bois) was the oldest of six children
born to Canadian immigrants Leon and Palmire Giruad.
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In the years after the fire
Arthur remarried in 1907 and by 1910 had followed in
his father's footsteps and become a photo engraver
in the publishing industry.
In 1909 he
accepted a pitifully small settlement of $750
(inflation adj $26,000) from Fuller Construction
for his wife's death.
He and his second wife,
Lucie Mosher, would have four children, including a
son, Arthur M. Dubois jr. It is thought that in
1927, after Lucie's death, he married again and
fathered three sons.
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