Poor lamp placement and handling

The rectangular proscenium light fixtures installed via hinges on each side of the stage were mirror-backed concave reflectors twenty feet high and sixteen to twenty inches across, each containing a row of thirty incandescent bulbs. The fixtures were designed to be rotated into wall cavities when not in use.* The Mr. Bluebeard production called for the lights to be used intermittently during the performance. It was the habit of William Carlton, Mr. Bluebeard company stage manager, to leave the reflector on the north side of the stage open during acts, with the power turned off, turning on the power when that type of stage illumination was needed. The problem with that method was that if either strip fixture was left open, the act/fire curtain could not descend. The curtain bar dropped as far as the top of the fixture and could go no further.

That problem occurred during the opening night performance. The fire curtain hung up on one of the lamp reflectors and "tore away a small piece." Carlton and Iroquois stage carpenter James Cummings discussed it, and Cummings assigned two workers to close the lamps after every act so the curtain could be lowered.† On December 30, 1903, the fire broke out soon after the opening of Act II, so the fixture on the north side was open. The lamp on the south side of the stage may have been closed or had not yet been opened for that act.

Fire curtain and reflector conflict

Seconds after the fire broke out, stage workers and performers began shouting, "Bring down the fire curtain!" So John Dougherty tried. With flaming scenery behind and above, four-stage workers, three on the stage floor and Dougherty in the loft, valiantly attempted to lower the fire curtain and contain the blaze to the stage and prevent it from moving out into the auditorium. He hauled the ropes to raise the curtain up and down, up and down. The curtain descended properly on the south side of the proscenium opening but on the north side was hung up about twenty feet from the floor. The heavy bar at the bottom of the fire curtain weighed down the light fixture, was perhaps wedged between the fixture and the proscenium wall, and the men could not rotate it out of the way and back into its recessed cavity on the inner side of the proscenium wall. The simple three-step solution required Dougherty raising the curtain beyond the height of the lamp, the men on the floor closing the lamp, then Dougherty re-lowering the curtain. That solution was not recognized, however, because Dougherty could not see that the strip lamp was what was causing the curtain to hang up, and and could not hear the men on stage over the shouts and screams of people on the stage floor and in the audience. What happened instead was that Dougherty raised and lowered the curtain several times but it was out of sync with the actions of the men on the floor. They were frantically climbing a ladder in an effort to raise the curtain bar but could not get close enough to the bar to leverage it off the top of the light fixture and the curtain didn't stay up long enough for them to find a tool of some sort to extend their reach.

Assistant flyman Fred Shott removed a hinge pin from the light fixture in an effort to take the reflector/plank off the wall, but that did not solve the problem, probably because there were other pins higher up beyond their reach. The pin removal may even have further impeded rotation if it resulted in misalignment in the hinge.

By the time workers realized the curtain could not be forced free from the lamp, the rigging loft was engulfed in flames, and all four had to flee for their lives. John's initial remarks to investigators indicated that as he escaped, he did not know the light fixture was responsible for the curtain failing to drop but upon hearing the experiences of the men on the stage floor, he confirmed that the reflector had caused a problem in the past and that it would have explained the behavior of the curtain the day of the fire. Makes me wonder if he had even experienced a hang-up with it in the past. Maybe he'd heard about it, but it hadn't happened during one of his part-time shifts.

John Joe Dougherty (1857–1909)‡

Forty-six-year-old Dougherty tried to do the right thing, for it suffering a broken leg and burns that kept him in the hospital six days after the fire. He was a hero but was never recognized as one. Had the fire curtain come down, fewer lives would have been lost, and Dougherty was the man wielding the ropes for that curtain, so the implication in newspapers was that he was incompetent.

Joe was an ironworker

Though a substitute (for either a rig employee nicknamed Mr. Halt or rig supervisor Fred "Slim" Seymour), Joe Dougherty was not inexperienced or a fool; rig boss Slim Seymour described him as his most experienced man. So why was Slim's best rigger a part-timer? Iron work probably paid more, even if work was slow in the winter, and Dougherty may have been proud of being an ironworker. It was the occupation he reported to the U.S. Census enumerator in city directories and that his family reported as his occupation in his funeral notice. (The six-line obituary did not include the names of his surviving family members but did state that he had been a member of the Bridge and Structural Iron Workers Union Local No. 1.) That suggests Joe and/or his family thought that being an ironworker was important. So though his performance as a rigger earned Slim's respect, Dougherty remained a part-time theater worker, perhaps wintering in theaters and summering in iron.

John escaped from the stage onto the western-most fire escape. The last rung of stairs on that escape was frozen and initially could not be lowered. John jumped ten to fifteen feet to the Couch Place alley floor, where he was helped by a fellow stage worker, Alexander Johnston/Johnson. He was taken to Passavant Hospital for treatment of burns and a broken leg but was out and able to testify in the coroner's inquest on January 7, 1904.

Questions about snagged curtain

Early testimony about the fire curtain was filled with inconsistencies.

Since the fire curtain was lowered between every act, it should have been familiar to stage workers, but they disagreed about its appearance. Some said the backside was off-white in color; others said it was green. There was even more disparity in audience testimony. Some witnesses said the curtain was green; some said red. Some said it was plain, others that it was decorated with a painted scene. A promotional booklet distributed at the Iroquois premier described the fire curtain as featuring a painted scene. Could the fire curtain and act curtain been one and the same?

They kept trying

Several audience members, as well as orchestra musician Arthur C. Brown, reported multiple attempts to lower the curtain. Brown testified that the curtain first snagged about six feet from the floor, and on a second lowering that it snagged about fourteen feet from the floor. Why would there be such variance when the same light fixture caused the hang up both times? The height of the lamp did not/could not change. Some audience members testified that the curtain made it all the way down but burned up; others testified that it hung up on one side, then burned.