May have thought she was a story teller rather than a newspaper journalist

When I failed to find a performer named Rose Dicks in other newspaper stories about Mr. Bluebeard or the Iroquois Theater, or in US Census reports or city directories, I guessed that a stage name was involved and put a pin in it for later hunting.   When two other mystery names appeared in the same St. Louis Republic news story by Cowgill, however — electrician Thomas J. Coleman and a child named Gracie Leonard — I studied the story and saw what I should have noted before.  It is filled with specious dialogue and descriptions that did not appear anywhere else.  The descriptions may be accurate but too many of Cowgill's stores were presented with names and details that cannot be verified. 

Two other names in the story, Antoine Frosolono and John Thompson, were real people whose words were published in countless other newspaper stories, making me wonder if Cowgill was on the scene of the fire at all or made up the entire story from reading reports by others, spicing it with lively dialogue and titillating scenes.

Cowgill seems to have seen her article as a story such as might have appeared in a magazine, not as a newspaper article in which factual references are expected.   It would be interesting to know whether she informed her customers, the St. Louis Republic and St. Louis Post Dispatch newspapers, that she was selling them stories that contained bogus names and quotations.  Whether made by Cowgill alone or in partnership with a newspaper editors, it was a poor journalistic decision.  People around the country were scouring newspaper stories about the Iroquois Theater fire to learn the status of relatives. 

Fortunately, perhaps because of its length, the story wasn't picked up by many other newspapers so the misinformation was confined to readers of the Republic, Post Dispatch and Cincinnati Enquirer.  I've decided to link the lengthiest story as an example of poor journalism with a caveat that it should not be used as a factual representation of events at the disaster scene.

MORE BOGUS STORIES THOUGHT TO BE COWGILL'S

The two news stories above also appeared only in a St. Louis newspaper, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and are suspected to be more of Jean Cowgill’s fakery.  I found people named Burton living on Prairie street in Chicago, but none named May Burton and none that could have afforded diamond bracelets. No A. J. Frederick or Fredericks in San Francisco that could have been an A.J. No A.O. Stimson in Chicago. No stories in Chicago newspapers about a child with burned-away hands and no 3XX Fifty-fifth St. in Chicago. 

Another story in the Republic, next to Cowgill's, referred to Edward Butler of 419 Wooster / Webster, said to be a city employee.  Lots of Edward Butlers in Chicago but there was no such address in 1903 and he wasn't mentioned in Chicago newspaper stories about the fire.  The same story also embroidered remarks from Iroquois fireman Sallers and baseball players Houseman and Dexter, quoting lengthy dialogue — as in the Cowgill article. The “tell” that they were likely the work of Cowgill, besides appearing only in St. Louis, is the heavy use of dialogue and exacting non-verifiable details about the subjects, their apparel, occupations, addresses, etc.  It is improbable that two prominent St. Louis newspapers employed dishonest editors.  I suspect instead that two newspaper editors in St. Louis were bamboozled by the same free lance reporter.  In 1903 no one imagined how easy it would someday be to check their facts.