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America's worst theater fire took place at a Mr. Bluebeard performance on December 30,
1903 at Chicago's newest luxury playhouse, the Iroquois Theater
on Randolph St.
One of the co-owners was
celebrity contralto of light opera, Jessie Bartlett
Davis, who was married to the manager of
the Iroquois. She would die before his
Iroquois trials were completed.
Jessie Bartlett Davis (1859–1905) was born in Morris,
Illinois,▼1 a small town not far from Chicago.
She was the oldest daughter born to Elias L. Bartlett (1821–1890) and
Rachel Ann Conklin Bartlett (1826–1890) who
had moved to Illinois from New Hampshire▼2 Elias
taught at a half dozen schools and academies
before the Civil War, then in the last year of the
conflict was drafted into a military band in the 146th
Illinois Volunteer infantry regiment of Company G. After
an early release with disabilities in March, 1865,
the family settled in Morris, IL and he resumed his
occupation as a school-teacher, as well as leading the church choir,
and operating a music store. Jessie was one of
ten children, of which three died prior to Jessie
and five years later a fourth.▼3
Jessie began to sing as a toddler but the family
couldn't afford
musical training. Her father taught her all that
he knew and by age twelve she dominated the town's
musical events. She later described her voice
as "loud enough to drive everyone out of the
schoolhouse." Some biographies report that
Elias took his large brood on the road as a
traveling choir but I found reference to only five
performances: one at an 1870 reunion of Civil War
veterans, three in small Illinois towns, and one in
Morris in 1877.
At fifteen, Jessie joined Mrs. Caroline Richings Bernard's "Old Folks" Concert
Company at a salary of seven dollars a week ($187
with inflation). Though her
voice was uncultivated, she attracted attention and was
given an engagement to sing in the Church of the Messiah in
Chicago. The whole family moved with her to Chicago
where she studied with Fred Root, son of George F. Root, a
composer of popular ballads.
The popularity of HMS Pinafore provided
entrance onto a larger stage.
Will J. Davis , one of
Jack Haverly's managers, heard her sing and persuaded Haverly to sign her
for the role of Buttercup for fifty dollars per week — an
extraordinary amount for an unseasoned performer, amounting to $1,400 today. At the end
of the season, in 1880, she and Davis married.
Will Davis believed in Jessie's future and advised her to
stay off the stage until she had learned how to best use
her voice. He took her to New York, where she became a pupil
of Italian pianist, conductor, and composer, Signor Luciano /
Lucien Albite (1824–1885) and Signor De Rialp, a trainer for
Colonel Mapleson of Her Majesty's Theater.
Colonel Mapleson, at that time managing Adelina Patti, heard
Jessie sing and advised her to study for grand opera.
When illness prevented the contralto from appearing
as Siebel in Faust with
Patti, Mapleson persuaded Jessie to take on the
role. "What frightened me more than anything else," said Jessie in
later years, "was the romanza that Siebel sings to Marguerita.
I was so afraid of Patti, whom I considered a vocal divinity,
that I finished the romanza without having dared to look her
in the face. You can imagine my surprise when she took my face
in her hands and kissed me on both cheeks. 'You're going to
sing in grand opera, and I'm going to help you," she said.
"Adelina Patti's favor and influence did more for me than two years of
hard study. There were only two weeks left of the opera season.
During that time, I appeared twice as Siebel in Faust and
once as the shepherd boy in Dinorah."
Colonel Mapleson offered to send Jessie to Italy for three
years of study with celebrated teachers to help her become a
world-famous singer. In return, Jessie was to sing under Colonel
Mapleson's direction for three years. Jessie later said that personal reasons
[possibly her second pregnancy and birth of
Willie Davis Jr.] made it impossible for her to
accept this offer, but she did not give up the idea of singing
in grand opera. After the birth of her son, Jessie studied a
year with Madame LaGrange in Paris. On her return, she sang
for a season in W. T. Carleton's company.
Her principal parts were the drummer boy in
The Drum Major and the German girl in The Merry War.
The next season she appeared in the American Opera Company, which
included Fursch-Nadi, Emma Juch, and Pauline L'Allemand, with
Theodore Thomas as musical conductor, then with the
reorganized National Opera Company.
"That was hard work," remarked Mrs. Davis, "all for no money,
and so I got home to Chicago, tired, sick, and discouraged,
and vowing that I would never sing in public as long as I
lived.
"While resting in Chicago, the manager of The Bostonians came
to see me to talk about an engagement. Agnes Huntington was
their contralto, and they wanted to replace her. I declined at
first but changed my mind when he asked a second time."
During her first seasons with The Bostonians, Jessie's
repertory was extensive, including the Marchioness in
Suzette, Don Quixote Cynisca in Pygmalion
and Galatea, Vladimir Samoiloff in Fatinitza,
Siebel in Faust, Nancy in Martha,
Azucena in The Troubadour, Carmen, and the Queen of the
Gypsies in The Bohemian Girl.
Her success as Alan-a-Dale in Robin
Hood, premiering at the Grand Opera House in Chicago on
June 9, 1890, kept her busy for several seasons. She then appeared in
The Maid of Plymouth, In The Mexico (aka A
War-time Wedding), The Knickerbockers, Prince Ananias,
and The Serenade.▼4"
In 1896, Jessie estimated she had sung what later became
known as
"the wedding song," Oh, Promise Me, from Robin
Hood, around five thousand times. Robin Hood had been
performed 2,041 times, and she had appeared in it all but
twenty-five of those. Oh, Promise Me always got an encore
and often a double encore, making Jessie's estimate a reasonable
one.
"I don't tire so much of the acting of a role as I do singing the
same words and music night after night," she continued. I sang
Oh, Promise Me until I thought they ought to blow paper wads at
me. One day in Denver, I said to our conductor, Sam Studley,
'Sam, I'm so sick of Oh, Promise Me that I've made up mind to
sing something else.' 'Jessie,' he said, 'I don't blame you!' So
it was agreed that on the following night, I would
substitute another of DeKoven's sentimental songs. But they
wouldn't have it. I had no sooner started singing than
there were shouts from all over the house of Oh, Promise Me! 'We
want Oh, Promise Me!' I managed to struggle through one verse
and then ran off the stage laughing. Then Mr. Studley
struck up the introductory to Oh, Promise Me, and I went back
and satisfied the audience by singing their favorite ballad.
It's an awful fate to become identified with a single song.
"Being a singer is not like being an actress. If you are a
singer, your voice must be your first care. An actress, if she
gets over-tired, can go on and spare herself. A singer cannot.
An actress can use less voice at one time than at another. A
singer cannot. Over-fatigue, excitement, anxiety all affect
the voice by which the singer lives.
"I had my grand opera experience. I wasn't very happy
in it, although I had good roles to sing — once in a while. I did
not know how to protect myself. I was young then and too
good-natured. I confess that while the work in grand opera
was more to my taste, I was happier in light opera, and,
after all, that is a great thing in the world. Sometimes I used
to sigh for more serious work, for a heavier role, and in that
way, In Mexico came to pass. I used to say sometimes,
'Oh, I wish I could have a hard part; I am tired of
rigging up to show my legs. I want something to do that is
hard to do.' So in 1895 when In Mexico was read,
they said, 'Well, here's Jessie Bartlett's serious
part.' "
"That opera was, indeed, very serious, so serious, in fact,
that the public would have nothing to do with it."
Jessie and Will J. Davis had one child,
Willie J. Davis Jr. In addition to their home in Chicago on Grand Blvd., they owned a farm in Crown Point, Indiana, south of
Chicago.
Jessie died unexpectedly at age forty-six of chronic kidney
disease. A celebrated catholic priest of Chicago, Father Dorney,
conducted her funeral, and she was buried at
Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago. She bequeathed an estate to her
son Willie that, with inflation, would amount to around a million
dollars today. I do not know if Willie was named heir rather than his father in order to protect her assets from unresolved Iroquois Theater fire lawsuits.
Jessie owned a minority interest in the Iroquois theater. The exact percentage is not known. She seemed to manage her finances separately from her
husband's; given her cash on hand at the time of her death in 1905, she might have had a substantial sum to invest in 1903.
Controversial remarks about the Iroquois Theater disaster
Two days after the fire, Jessie was quoted in newspapers for blame-the-victim remarks
to the press. Reportedly she said that audiences demanded ever more spectacular
and dangerous theatrical performances. A week later, she vehemently denied having
made the remarks. The truth will never be known, but to me, the remarks sound like
something that might have been said by a woman who had been a star her entire adult
life, remarks perhaps taken out of context, perhaps not. Gwyneth Paltrow isn't the
first wealthy celebrity to see herself as leading a hard-knock life.
It must also be noted that Jessie was not in Chicago at the time of the fire. Her
knowledge of the disaster came through Philadelphia newspapers and letters from her
husband.
Every major paper in the country covered the Iroquois fire, many with front-page exposure
and many linear inches, but no papers communicated the horror as thoroughly as
those in Chicago — that would not yet have reached Philadelphia two days after the
fire.
A few weeks after the fire, Jessie wrote to her husband and
advised him not to repeat to anyone whatever it was he had just written to her regarding
others he blamed for the fire. His letters to Jessie in that regard are unlikely to
surface. Will or Jessie probably destroyed them in their lifetimes but if compromising letters remained
in the estate, Willie or Will's second wife would have disposed of them.▼5
Jessie's cautions may have been influenced by her own recent bad experience with the press, as
well as by a mix of career, maternal and financial interests. Jessie's career was on the wane, making her dependent upon the
good favor of the Syndicate for
future bookings. Had Will pointed fingers at the Syndicate, he would have lost his job as
manager of the
Illinois Theater, and Jessie would have had to sing Oh Promise Me
at church socials. Their son's inheritance would have been jeopardized, along with the farm in Crowns Point.
From a financial perspective silence was the wisest course of action but narcissism must have made it excruciating for Will.
Three months after the Iroquois Theater fire, on April 19, 1904 — as
prosecution of her husband was temporarily stalled in the courts and
liability lawsuits filtered in, and while the Iroquois Theater building was sold
to Rich & Harris of Boston and New York —
Jessie Bartlett Davis as Captain Delauncy performed Two Eyes of
Brown and other hits in the
comic opera Erminie at the Auditorium▼6 in South Bend, Indiana,
about two hours southeast of Chicago. The Auditorium was then
managed by
Samuel Pickering, her
nephew by marriage, and was located less than twenty miles from
Elkhart, IN where she'd given birth to her son, Willie in 1880.
Command performance for Queen Victoria?
In 1937 when Willie Davis' son (William J. Davis III) married
— coincidentally to a woman also named Davis — the
pre-wedding press release, seemingly penned by Willie,
reported that his son's bride would wear a dress and veil of point applique lace that Jessie Bartlett
Davis had worn during a command performance before Queen Victoria of England. I've
failed to find other references to a royal performance by Jessie but will
keep looking. It was likely in 1882
when she toured in Europe for one season
with Colonel Mapleson's company, performing
with Adelini Patti in Faust, "The
Huguenots," and "Dinorah."
If so, the royal performance command was
given to Mapleson and the entire company and
not specifically to Jessie, as had been the
case with other favored vocalists. The
Queen and her husband Albert
enjoyed composing, performing and listing to
both classical and light opera.
In the version of the wedding dress story that appeared in the
Crown Point, IN newspaper, highpoints of Willie's career and
his enthusiasm with his new
Crown Point venture project, Willowdale
Orchard, vied for attention with the wedding. He lived
then in Pensacola, FL but his stepmother,
Mary Ellen O'Hagan Davis, lived on
hundreds of acres in Crown Point, IN where
she might have welcomed an orchard business.
Mary Ellen was a pragmatist, I think.
She'd lived with the ghost of Jessie
Bartlett Davis for decades, and for eighteen
years with the loss of her husband. By
1937 she may have cared more about
developing land than about her deceased
husband's first wife's half-century-old lace
dress worn to perform for a queen that'd
been dead for thirty-six years.
Just sayin. Then too, Mary Ellen's
many years in the background of the entertainment industry
as her husband's gal Friday might have given her the perspective of a
producer. Celebritism and costumes were
profit-mining tools, like spades and
buckets. As to historic value,
reportedly the Art Institute said the garment should be protected
behind
glass — but I found no evidence that it went to a museum. Jessie wasn't the only vocalist to receive a performance command
from Queen Victoria.
Zelie de Lussan, for example, enjoyed
that recognition many times, and Emma Albani
is also cited as performing for the Queen.
During twenty years selling antiques, I
learned that oftentimes family treasures are
best treasured by the family.
Discrepancies and addendum
1. Various years were reported as Jessie's birth year.
1859 was used on her grave marker.
2. History of Grundy County,
1882, states that Elias L. Bartlett came from Western New
York but the family reported New Hampshire as his state of birth in
three U.S. Census.
3 One son, Sherman Grant Bartlett, died in infancy in 1864,
and the oldest son, Napoleon B. Bartlett (1846–1864), died at
Vicksburg in the Civil War. Arabelle "Belle" Bartlett (1855–1874) died in
Knox, IL just as she prepared to join Jessie in a full-time
stage career as the Bartlett Sisters Combination Opera Troupe (aka
Barlett Sisters Concert Company.)
(Arabella not to be confused with soprano Belle Bartlett
(1879–1901), Jessie's niece, daughter of her brother Frank, who was
in her first season on the professional stage at the time of her
death from pnemonia.) Another contralto sister, Josephine "Josie" Bartlett Dixon Perry (1865–1910), had an active
stage career from 1883 until her death. Untill her sister
death, Josie performed chiefly as a cast member in
Bostonian productions starring Jessie,
including Robin Hood, Rob Roy, and The Serenade. Josie
was taken to Chicago's Baptist Hospital for head pains while visiting their sister
Stella Bartlett Quackenbos in October, 1910. The pain and her
death was attributed to an automobile accident in January, 1909,
when she'd been hit by a taxicab near Fifth Avenue, suffering three
fractures to the collarbone. She'd been performing at the
Knickerbocker Theater with the Fritzi Scheff company, playing
Mother Justine in a comic opera by Victor Herbert: Prima
Donna.
4. During the early days of The Serenade schedule it was rumored
( so reports Neil Gould's 2008 book,
Victor Herbert: A Theatrical Life available for
free download at
Fordham University Press). that
Jessie was having an affair with cast member and a co-founder of the Bostonians,
baritone William H. McDonald. It was not a good time for
Jessie. Though still praising her vocal and acting skills, newspaper drama critics and even one rude audience,
ridiculed her weight and contrasted her appearance with that of a
new company member, the elfen
soprano, Alice Nielsen
(1872–1943). The women did not compete for parts but
Alice was a rising star who would soon go on to form her own opera
company, leaving Jessie singing Oh Promise Me forever.
Looking matronly next to the shiny new startlet Nielsen, Jessie was
thirteen years older, had born two children, and after twenty years
on the stage, had not expected to compete with ingénues over the
diameter of her waist. In the world of opera, large women were
common and not harassed for their girth. Then there was
the nasty-note dustup with Lillian Russell.
5 In 2005 I sold Jessie's letter cautioning Will, along with a handful of other correspondence from her, to a
fire investigator far from Chicago. It was a commissioned
sale; if I had it to do over, I'd purchase the letters. Will donated hundreds of photographs to the Chicago Historical Society
(Today known as the Chicago History Museum) but their online collections index does not indicate letters.
6. The Auditorium Theater in South Bend was constructed in
1898 by Studebaker Bros. at 207 South Michigan, sight of the
original Studebaker carriage works. It was a three-story brick
facility that sat 1,635 people. It was razed in 1920 and the
Robertson's Department store was built on the site.
Robertson's wasn't as large or magnificent as Marshall Field but
then South Bend didn't have Chicago's population. Yours truly
went to Robertson's with parents as a child and still have a few
rolls of gift-wrap ribbon purchased from the final dispersal sale of
fixtures and miscellaneous in the 1980s. The ribbon got me out of a packaging fix not that long ago. Every few
years I consider throwing it out, until the little girl in me
remembers the magic of department stores at Christmas time in my childhood.
I've seen description attempts in photographs, text and film so know
it can't be done. You had to be there.
Detective William
Pinkerton
Iroquois managers son at
fire
School teacher Bessie
Zimmerman
Other discussions you might find interestingp>
irqsyndicate irqnewspapers
Story 2599
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.
