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On December 30, 1903, thirty-nine-year-old Emma Hill Lange (1864–1949) took her two
daughters, sixteen-year-old Hortense Lange (1887–1976) and
eleven-year-old Irene Lange (1892–1979), to an afternoon
performance of Mr. Bluebeard at Chicago's newest theater, the
Iroquois.* The two girls took standing space in the third-floor
balcony while their mother found a seat on the first floor. When
a fire broke out on stage and spread into the auditorium, the
girls were among hundreds that became trapped in the balconies
by flames and throngs of people.
Workmen in an adjacent building, a Northwestern University
facility, stretched planks from a window there to a
fire escape landing at the theater across Couch
Place alley behind the theater. The planks were
roughly sixty feet off the ground.
Another survivor,
Carrie Anderson, believed she was the first to cross Couch Place on
a plank, but so did Hortense Lange. Given the chaos, it's not
surprising if their impressions were contradictory. Carrie's
burns were such that she was quickly whisked away to a hospital
where she spent the next forty days, likely heavily medicated
with morphine. Hortense and her family gathered at Northwestern
and may have watched as the other two dozen plank walkers came
through the window but might not have seen Carrie's crossing or
dispatch to the hospital.
And by the end of January, relatives of
two additional women had contacted newspapers to say the plank
girl hero was their daughter. They were
Eunice Smith and
Estelle Muir.
Painting contractor
Charles Cubbon described the first plank walker as looking like an
eight-year-old child. Carrie was around thirteen years old, and
Hortense Lange was sixteen, so neither girl should have looked
so young, but their stature is unknown. At eleven years of age,
Irene was most likely to look like a younger child, but that
would have required Hortense to compel her little sister to
start out across the plank by herself.
Carrie's burns were significant, possibly because she was
trapped in the theater longer than Hortense, whose injuries were
minor. In the 1906 picture (above), Hortense looks somewhat
petite despite bulky outerwear. Unfortunately, there isn't a
picture of Carrie.
Emma Hill and Leon† Lange (1852–1936), natives of Germany, married
in 1886. Emma was the oldest of six children born to
Marks and Bertha Schwerzen / Schwersenski Hill. Both
Emma's parents were deceased at the time of the
Iroquois fire. Over the next six years, Emma and
Leon had three daughters: Hortense, Mildred, and
Irene. The family lived at 380 E. 45th Street (in
1909 renumbered as 423 E. 45th). In 1903 they shared
their home with Emma's unmarried sister, Marie,
until her 1905 marriage to Meyer Weil. Leon Lange
was a wholesale liquor salesman.
The family seems to have been financially secure but
not wealthy. They could take summer vacations at a
rented cottage on Cedar Lake in Wisconsin and in
1910 had a live-in Swedish maid but did not own
their home. They seem to have lived quietly and
privately.
In the years after the fire
Around 1930 Emma, Leon and
Mildred moved to San Francisco. Mildred Lange
(1889–1991) lived with her parents throughout their
lives and did not marry.
Hortense married a haberdasher, Bernard Frank, with
whom she bore two children. Irene married Irving
Heilbron, became an avid bridge player, and
participated in amateur theater. Both women spent
most of their lives in San Francisco.
In some early reports, Hortense and Irene were
reported as fatalities, with their mother Emma as a
survivor. In other reports, all three were reported
as survivors, but Emma was described as a child. The
girl's ages were miss-reported as ten and eleven
years old instead of eleven and sixteen. Emma was
described in some reports as having been badly
burned, but in other reports was said to have found
her daughters at Northwestern soon after the fire.
Had she suffered severe burns, Emma would have been
in a hospital, and in any case, severe burns would
have been unlikely since she was on the first floor.
The business of her being seated separately from her
children and on the first floor is a bit peculiar, a
missing piece to the Lange puzzle. Was there a
fourth member of the party who sat with Emma on the
first floor? Her third daughter, Mildred, comes to
mind. Mildred was not reported as having been a
member of the theater party, but it seems odd she
stayed home. Could Leon have been in the party? Such
was the ugly press about the behavior of men at the
Iroquois Theater that the family might have
refrained from mentioning Leon helping Emma escape
from the first floor.
† Americanized from Leopold.
Henrietta and Natalie
Eisendrath
Stagehands at 1903
Iroquois Theater
Eugene Field Chicago
journalist and poet
Other discussions you might find interesting
irqplank
Story 2954
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.
