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A 1903 fire at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago during the Christmas holiday took the lives of nearly six
hundred people and injured hundreds more. It earned the
still-held status as America's worst single-building fire and worst theater
disaster.
For the twelve thousand residents of Kenosha, Wisconsin,
one hour north, Chicago was a popular destination for special excursions
like theater outings. Of the seventeen hundred people in the audience at the
Iroquois Theater's Mr. Bluebeard matinee on December 30, 1903, were
at least eighteen Kenoshans, one of the largest representations of any city
outside Chicago and its suburbs. In addition to seven fatalities, including the
two Cooper
brothers and
five members of the Van Ingen family, there were eleven survivors. Among those were
Edith M. Brown and Franklin Slosson, and the
Allen brothers, Nathan and
Charles. This page focuses on seven other survivors from Kenosha:
Charles Busek, age nineteen — who might have sat with the Derbyshire sisters
Mollie Derbyshire, age twenty-one, Anna Derbyshire Dickhaut
, age twenty-nine, and Una Slater, age twenty-seven
Peter Fisher Jr. (and possibly Amy Corey, Peter's fiancé)
Anise Palmatier, age twenty — a possible attendee
Will H. Yule, age twenty — who might have sat with Peter Fisher
Many thanks to the Kenosha News for its coverage that helped
fill knowledge gaps.
BUSEK
Joseph Charles Busek (1884–1975)▼1
The Kenosha News report that a musician named Charles Buseck was present
at the Iroquois disaster is the only information
I found connecting the Iroquois fire to a Kenosha musician. and the report did not include details of Charles' experience
that day.
From 1901 to 1906 the Busek Bros Orchestra frequently performed in Kenosha at
events sponsored by social clubs and church groups. They were the sons of
1891 Austrian immigrants, divorcees George and Frances "Fanny" Paul? Busek.
The family lived in Chicago upon arrival and moved to Kenosha in 1894. (They did
not speak English and during the fractious years before the divorce Fanny sought
help from the courts several times and George posted an accusatory classified
ad when Fannie left him.)
George jr.
(1885–1933) was the leader of the orchestra and the
other brothers were Edward (1880–1942), Henry (1883–1927), and Joseph Charles. Some years it was
described as a quartet, other years as a quintet so the name of a fifth musician
is missing.
The orchestra broke up In 1906 when George jr left
Kenosha to join the Marine Band. (He was aboard the Florida Battleship in
Vera Cruz in 1914. The following year he was a member of the 26th infantry band
in Harlingen, Texas.)
Edward played the zither,
bass drum and trombone, but the instruments of the
other Busek's isn't known. Fanny Busek and her boys lived at 159
Caledonia St. in Kenosha for about a decade (known today as Sheridan Rd), while husband George lived in
Chicago. Joseph Charles worked as a machinist.
In 1901 the Busek Bros Orchestra performed for an event for the Womens Relief
Corp, WRC., a women's organization connected to the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)
for men. Note that Mollie Derbyshire performed a reciation.
Joseph Charles' life in the years after the fire
Edward
Busek married Josephine Thein in 1905, moved to Milwaukee, and patented a knitting machine in 1916. Henry Busek
served in the navy during WWI, married a woman (also named Elsie) and settled in Brooklyn.
Joseph Charles Busek was the only one who remained in Kenosha. He married Elsie S. Kisten
in 1910, braved a Chicago theater in 1926, and worked as a machinist throughout
his life.
George Busek jr. traveled the world, as a soldier and musician, married Eliza Gerard and settled in Boston.
George Sr. remarried in 1908. In 1919 he was working as a
bartender in Chicago, living on the premises at 3829 S. Morgan and asleep in the
basement when thieves broke in. He tried to stop them and was shot to
death. In February 1920 five men were indicted for his death.
In 1908 Joseph Charles usek, "Joe," sent the postcard (below) to his brother George Busek jr
in New York (where George was a member of the 12th Infantry Band). The
woman pictured is presumed to be their mother Frances (because she's too old to
have been Joe's wife) and Joe's admonition to George jr that he shouldn't worry
may have related to a prior letter from George jr to Joe about their mother's
health. Frances' obituary two years later reported that she'd suffered
from Brights Desease
(kidney disease) and died of a common side effect of Brights, heart disease.
A number of Bright symptoms might have been remarked upon by Frances in a letter
to George jr.
DERBYSHIRE, DICKHAUT & SLATER
A party of three women from Kenosha, Wisconsin
were among the Iroquois survivors. I failed to find information about
their experience at the Iroquois and know of their presence there only from a
report in the Kenosha News. Their party could have included others;
these three made up the only known party among the Kenoshan survivors on this
page. Charles Busek and Mollie, for example, shared an interest in music
and performance.
Anna Barbara Derbyshire Dickhaut (1874–1908)
and her sister,
Mollie Margaret Derbyshire (1882–1973)
Anna and Mollie were the only children of Truman Derbyshire and Elizabeth Christman Derbyshire, married in 1874 and
divorced in 1899. Mollie Derbyshire was single in 1903 and Anna Derbyshire was married to a Kenosha barber,
Henry Dickhaut (1866–1922).▼2 Neither woman had children.
Mollie had graduated from the Columbia College of Expression in Chicago and joined
the faculty at the Seminary College Conservatory in Cleveland, TN. as an
elocution
teacher, a skill set acquired while a Kenosha high school student. In 1901
Mollie performed at a WRC program with the Busek Brothers Orchestra (see above). In 1903 she taught
second and third grades at the Demming School in Kenosha.
Mollie and Anna's
lives in the years after the fire
Anna died unexpectedly at the Columbus Memorial hospital in Chicago after an appendectomy.
It was reported that she was staying in Chicago to care for her mother and that
Henry was ill and living with his brother in Indianapolis, but a legal dispute
between them had been cited four years earlier.
Mollie married Lawrence J. Parrish (1893–1949) in 1920. He was a former Kenosha
resident who at the time of their marriage worked in Milwaukee, WI as an industrial relations manager for the A.O. Smith Company,
manufacturer of water heaters and boilers. After WWII he worked for
Cluett &
Peabody, makers of Arrow shirts in Scarsdale, NY.
Una Slater (1876–1963)
Una was the daughter of Kenosha city attorney (and later judge), John C. Slater and Bridget Boyle
Slater. Both were immigrants, John from England and Bridget from Ireland.
The family lived at 507 Ashland In 1895 she'd been among the twelve graduates from Kenosha High School.
The Telegraph-Courier newspaper devoted two full length
columns to the event in its June 27, 1895 issue. Una was one of the teachers at the
Durkee School for which a new ten-room building would be completed in 1905, at a
cost of $45,000 (inflation adjusted: $1.6 million).
Una's life in the years after the fire
In 1907 she married Walter H. White (1874–1932) of Cleveland, OH and gave up
teaching to raise their three children; it would have been rare then for her to
do otherwise. (Fun aside: a popular principle at Durkee School, Morrel B. Gilman, resigned
in 1908 to pursue a higher paying occupation as a car salesman for Thomas B.
Jeffery in what became the Nash Rambler Automobile Company in Kenosha.
Coincidentally that year brought the birth of Una's daughter who would spend her
working years as an executive secretary at American Motors, where the Nash
Rambler was born.) Walter White worked for
Windsor
Spring. Una won a position on the school board in 1915, receiving
fourteen of seventeen votes cast for the office, but lost the position the following year.
She spent her entire life in Kenosha, as a widow living with one of her sons.
FISHER
Peter Fisher Jr (1880–1932)
In the months before the Iroquois fire Peter had undergone a lengthy recovery from
typhoid fever, passed the bar exam at Cornell University, and had begun building a
wholesale coal business, while also working in his father's law practice. Peter
Fisher senor was a prominent Kenosha lawyer. The only published information I found about Fisher's Iroquois experience
was his name in a list of the missing in newspapers immediately after the fire.
The Allen brothers and Frank Slosson stayed in Chicago touring morgues in search of missing fellow Kenosha citizens and a
posse came from Kenosha around nine pm to help in the search. Guesses about Fisher theater party
The identity of those in Fisher's theater party is not known but
I think it was his fiancé, Amy Corey, and friend, Will Yule (right). Two days
before the Iroquois matinee Fisher and Yule attended an engagement party in Amy's honor
at her father's home in the Ravenswood
neighborhood of Chicago.
It was reported that at the Iroquois Will Yule sat with two friends. My theory is that
since Baptists were discouraged from attending theatrical performances, to protect her
father from embarrassment or condemnation by his Baptist congregation, her presence at the
Iroquois was omitted from newspaper reports. I suspect the only reason we know
Peter was at the Iroquois was because his name appeared on a Missing list, possibly
because when Yule was done saving people, he couldn't find Peter and Amy and reported
Peter as missing. If my guess is right, little wonder that she asked Yule to
substitute for her father, who would conduct the service, and give her away at her
wedding.
Peter's life in the years after the fire
In 1905 Peter married the daughter of a Baptist minister in Chicago, Amy
L. Corey (1886–1967). As Amy's father performed the service, she was given away by Will Yule
(see right). Peter was elected and served three terms as Kenosha's district attorney,
and was living the good life with a large home on Chicago Avenue and two domestic
servants, but his life was irrevocably changed in 1922 when one of the sources of his
prosperity was uncovered in a Kenosha graft investigation. Peter was convicted of multiple
felonies and briefly imprisoned.▼3 In 1925 the family relocated to East
Aurora in Buffalo, NY so Peter could work as an abstract realtor for the meteoric department store
chain founded by Leonard R. Steel. (A connection perhaps made through a Buffalo man named Alan Ripley
who'd been a friend from Cornell and served as Fisher's best man.)
The LR Steel company crashed two years later▼4 and Peter
became a stockbroker while Amy played for the Buffalo Philharmonic and gave piano lessons.
After Peter's death from throat cancer Amy remarried, to a widowed stockbroker
named Horace B. Pomeroy, moved to a beach house in Vera Beach, Florida and was then
widowed once again. The first of Amy and Peter's four children, Peter Fisher III, (1907–1943), became
the first student at Buffalo's Colonial Flying School and went on to become an aviation technician.
While traveling to a new job with Hindustan Aircraft Ltd of India, his ship was sunk by
a Japanese torpedo in the Caribbean. Their youngest daughter, Martha, married
journalist historian Robert
J. Donovan who was president Truman's biographer and authored twelve books, including PT109, Eisenhower: the
Inside Story, and My First Fifty Years in Politics.
PALMETIER
Aniss Louise Palmetier (1883–1965)▼5
Only the December 31, 1903 issue of the Kenosha News mentioned a Palmetier as an
Iroquois Theater survivor, without elaboration, and the Palmetier name was omitted from three other issues over
the next century. That alone may not be significant given that she left
Kenosha in 1905 thus was less accessible to reporters. On the other hand, the high error rate in day-after
Iroquois disaster stories in all newspapers makes me tempted to disregard a single Palmetier reference.
Another reference in that same issue, however, compels me
to include her on this page. It was a simple society blurb, probably
placed before she left home, saying that she was in Chicago that Wednesday
afternoon. Being in Chicago does not put her at the Iroquois but earns a maybe.
Perhaps an ancestor or Kenosha historian will help us out on this
one.
Aniss was the daughter of the late Colonel Charles Palmetier, a celebrated
Civil War soldier in the Eagle Regiment. Suffering from Brights Disease and depression the
Col. had committed suicide in 1901. Her mother, Annis Wheeler Palmetier, died in
January, 1903.
Annis' life in the years after the fire The summer after the Iroquois fire, Annie won the tournament cup at the
Glenview Golf Club. She competed in women's golf tournaments for several
years in Kenosha and Chicago, winning the Wisconsin state women's golf
championship in 1910, 1911, 1912 and 1916. She was a co-founder of the
Wisconsin Women's Golf Association WWGA in 1909.
In 1905 Anise married Edwin R. Whitcomb, a 1903 Yale graduation and the oldest son of the president of the Wisconsin Central
Railway. They moved to Fond du Lac, WI where Edwin worked as the assistant train master of the Wisconsin railroad. The historic
Hamilton residence on East Division Street. was
remodeled for the newlyweds. According to the 1950 U.S. Census they had one child, a son named Roger Whitcomb,
born in 1929 when Annis was forty-six. Annis and Edwin lived in Chicago in
the last decades of their lives. In the 1940s
Edwin was a salesman for the Richardson Ball Bearing Skate Co. and in 1949 Annis
maintained a booth in a Michigan Avenue antiques mart in Chicago. Annis'
obituary heralded her as the first Wisconsin women's golf champion.
YULE
William "Will" Head Yule (1883–1951)
Will Yule was a Harvard freshman, home for the holidays. He was the son of George A. Yule jr and Harriet
Head. The Bain Wagon Company (below) was the source of the wealth that paid for
his education. His father was a manager at Bain and his grandfather,
George L. Yule, an early settler from Scotland who had worked his way up from
wagon production, was the president. (Bain Wagon was also the employer of another survivor, Frank Slosson,
who was a neighbor of Will's grandfather).
At the Iroquois William sat with two friends at the
back of the first floor. I'm betting the two friends were Peter Fisher and Amy
Corey (see "Guesses about..." section at left) but the friends could also have
been the Allen brothers or Frank Slosson and Edith Brown (links above).
Yule carried one woman from the theater and returned to help dozens to their feet in the lobby.
His heroism meant that he heard the screams of occupants in the balconies. Balcony
victims accounted for over 99% of Iroquois Theater fire deaths but some first floor occupants were astonished to
read of the death count in the next day's newspapers, and were mystified at how it could
have happened. It was a matter of timing. The first floor was emptied, it's
occupants fleeing to hotels and nearby stores before the backdraft that killed nearly
six hundred people in the balconies.
Will's life in the years after the fire Will Yule graduated with honors from Harvard in 1906. Five years later
he married an Ohio woman, Mary Perkins Raymond (1891–1978) and the pair had four sons.
Mary was the first granddaughter of
CCol. George Tod Perkins, grandson of the founder of Akron,
Simon Perkins.
After an impressive Civil War performance, George had helped bring BF Goodrich Rubber Company to the
city.▼6 Will went to work for Goodrich in 1915 as the New York branch manager, then became
sales manager of the mechanical division. In those years the company employed over six
thousand workers and was described as the largest rubber company in the world.
During World War I he became Goodrich's primary coordinator for government
contracts, including observation balloons, dirigibles, gas masks, submarine
jars, hoses and other rubber goods.
In 1919 Will purchased a ranch in the Carpinteria area of Santa Barbara, California,
resigned from Goodrich and the family, then with just two children, relocated to
began a new adventure. Lemons, lima beans, walnuts and two more sons were
grown on the Casitas Rd., property. They later moved to Montecito, CA. While he
and Mary were traveling in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with friends he suffered a
stroke and died at age sixty-seven. According to his passport he weighed 160 pounds,
stood 6'2" tall, and had brown hair and eyes. He was on the rowing team at Harvard, an
enthusiastic golfer throughout his life, a skilled trap shooter (at a match in 1921 shooting
288 of 300 targets), and in 1924 caught a 345-lb marlin. He was described as affable, his academic
performance at Harvard indicates that he was bright, and his sportsmanship suggests he was energetic.
Discrepancies and addendum
1. Newspapers in 1905 spelled Joseph Charles Busek's name as Buseck, and
the Kenosha News of contemporary times understandably used that spelling as well but
the correct spelling was Busek, without the c. Joseph used Busek on his WWI and
WWII draft cards, the Busek spelling was used on his grave marker and those of his
family members, and he used the Busek spelling in his own hand in the 1908 postcard (above).
Joseph used C as his middle initial most of his life. One genealogy researcher reports that
his middle name was Carl but Charles was reported on his WWII draft card and Charley was
recorded on his 1914 naturalization card. Carl may have been his legal middle name
but his use of Charles on the draft card suggests a preference or perhaps a family
habit, that ties him to the name Charles. One theory is that the initial J. in his
older brother George's name stood for Joseph and that when George senior lived with the
family, George jr was called by his middle name, Joseph, to make a distinction between
the Georges in the household. When Joseph was born, however, since George jr was
already using the name Joseph, they called Joseph by his middle name, Charles.
When George jr. moved out of the household in 1906, there was only one Joseph in the
house.
2. The non-disaster connections between the seven survivors on this webpage are numerous. Over decades they
and their families were bound by the Kenosha community. Bain Wagon, civic affairs, teaching, prosperity,
fraternal organizations and womens clubs, churches and baseball. It is outside the scope of a study
of the Iroquois Theater fire to dive into that rabbit hole but an example in a
1922 story in the
Kenosha News about the city's early baseball teams caught my eye. Around 1890, Anna Derbyshire
Dickhaut's husband, the barber named Henry Dickhaut, played on the Kenosha Regulars
team with Peter Fisher's father, George A. Fisher.
3. In 1922 Peter Fisher was
convicted of accepting bribes, malfeasance and embezzling. He
accepted bribes in exchange for diverting a grand jury from prosecuting a local gambling and bootlegging operation. In the cover-up he was joined
by Kenosha's sheriff and police chief who were also convicted and imprisoned. His
testimony against the operators won a commutation of his three-year sentence from
Wisconsin governor John J. Blaine. He was disbarred but served only twenty months in prison. Throughout his trials and
imprisonment, his wife Amy maintained a vigorous schedule of piano recitals, organ
performances and church activities, and their son had a busy year at St. Albans school, becoming
captain of the basketball team as well as lettering in football and track. The
family's dogged determination to soldier on could not save Peter's father's life,
however. Though spared witnessing the sentencing that sent his namesake to prison, Peter
Sr. lived long enough to see his son convicted.
4. Little was published about
Leonard Rambler Steel (1878–1923)
in his lifetime but author Dave Dyer contributes to the history of retail commerce with
his website and book Steel's, A Forgotten Stock Market
Scandal From The 1920's. As general manager for U.S. stores in the
large
Metropolitan Store chain
Steel brought ample experience to the party and, had he paid more attention to financial
matters when implementing his vision, might have been hailed as a genius. Instead
he blew through his capital then invested cash flow in non-essential projects with small
long-term returns. When it toppled in 1923, seventy-five stores were in the ruins,
along with the savings of sixty thousand mostly small investors. (To help finance
the company and build customer loyalty Steel had established an aggressive marketing arm
that sold shares in the stores to his retail customers.) He died of heart failure
in the midst of front-page headlines about bankruptcy and shady trading. His widow
was left penniless.
5. Sometimes spelled Palmatier.
I've found Annis' first name as Aniss, Anice, Annie, Agnes, and Lannie.
6. George Perkins was a
prominent Akron philanthropist, contributing to such projects as the YWCA and Mary Day
Nursery — named after his granddaughter — that grew into the
Akron Children's Hospital.
The Perkins family donated seventy-nine acres of land that became Perkins Woods Park, home to the
Akron Zoo and natural history museum.
Van Ingen family of
Kenosha, WI
Kenosha
girl scouts benefited
Cooper brothers of
Kenosha were Iroquois Theater victims
Kenosha industrialist
survived Iroquois to face another kind of fire
