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Website with 683+ pages devoted to 1903 Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago

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U & V

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   Keyword search (Iroquois-specific results will appear at bottom of search list):

Note: If this tab has been open in your browser for hours or days, a new search may bring an access error or unproductive results.  When that happens, position the cursor in the "Enhanced by Google" search box above, then refresh your screen (F5 on PC, Cmd-R on Apple, 3-button symbol at top right of screen on Android or iphone) and re-enter your search words.

Links to other websites offering information about the Iroquois Theater disaster, and some site-building stuff.

If you find a dead link here, please drop me a line. This is an on-going project and changes are made frequently.  I have not tried any of the programs cited in Karen Blakeman's list of apps that will notify you of website content changes so cannot offer tips or evaluations but if you would like to know if information has been added or changed, one of these might be the solution. Some can be set up to send you an email if the content changes on any single page of a website.  So if you want to know if information has changed about the Reidy family, for example, you'll be notified.  Receiving a notification every time a change is made on 650+ pages on this site is apt to become annoying so filtering is advised.

Iroquois Theater Audience

A note of caution about Find-A-Grave information. I cite the above two compilers because they try to be conscientious about stating whether the cemetery information has been verified with cemetery records.  Not all posters on the site do so.  Some copy text from the Marshall Everett disaster book (see below) and from newspapers, probably figuring that if it was published, it's likely true. That's exactly what I'd have done before I started this project. No way would I have guessed at the inaccuracy in old newspapers. In the case of the Iroquois theater fire, the rush to publish while public interest was strong resulted in many errors about ages, names, burial locations, etc. There were simply too many victims to verify information about all of them in a time when it had to be done manually, with books. My rule is that if the Find-A-Grave listing does not include exact burial plot information, it's a maybe. I've found too many instances in which the victims were buried in an altogether different state.

Overall Story of Iroquois Theater Fire

About specific aspects of Iroquois Theater fire

Websites containing general information about the Iroquois Theater fire

Theater history online and off

  • Bigger, Brighter, Louder: 150 Years of Chicago Theater as Seen by "Chicago Tribune Critics
    Sounds interesting but I'd have to read with caution.  Author states that the Iroquois Theater "burned down."  The Iroquois was operating within nine months after the fire.  The structure remained in place for many years before it was razed to build a new theater, the Oriental, in its place.  I don't mean to harass the author, who probably busted his tail on the book; it just reinforces the benefit of putting big projects on the web where errors can be quickly and easily corrected.  I reiterate: If you find a factual error on any of these 600+ pages, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!
  • Bluebeard: A Reader's Guide to the English Tradition
    This one is winging its way to me as I type.  Have wanted to read it for some time but my local library doesn't have.  I'll be reading it with caution, however, because the text states that the fire curtain at the Iroquois caught on an aerialists wire, a notion that was debunked by fire investigators within hours of the tragedy then supported by dozens of witnesses in legal inquiries thereafter.
  • 1920 book about adventures of young men learning trade of bill posters and advance men
  • Drury Lane Theater that gave birth to Mr. Bluebeard and other pantomime extravaganzas eventually produced in the United States by Klaw & Erlanger.
  • Interesting website "It's Behind You" about Pantomime and early theater.  Definitely one to bookmark.
  • Footlight Notes Blog

Chicago history online

Chicago history offline

  • Chicago History: The Stranger Side, Raymond Johnson, 2014, available on Amazon
  • Chief O'Neill's Sketchy Recollections of an Eventful Life in Chicago by Francis O'Neill (Found several used copies on Amazon for under $10 including shipping.)
  • City of the Century: the Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, Donald L. Miller
  • Chicago Dreaming: Midwesterners and the City, 1871–1919, Timothy B. Spears
  • The Jews of Chicago: from shtetl to suburb, 1996, Irving Cutler  (I found a copy for $9 on Ebay.)

Disasters involving massive loss of life from fire

Family members grief

General 1903 period history websites and books

Site recognition

Chicago Sun Times interview Jan 2, 2021


So you're thinking of making a website about your favorite history topic or hobby

Tool talk

This site is presently hosted on Bluehost but was custom built from scratch so I can't comment on site-build apps offered there.  HostGator is similar and years ago was commendable for its support, don't know if that's still true. 

For research I use a variety of online subscription services, including Ancestry.com, Fold3 and Newspapers.com.

Coreldraw is used to make scrapbook-like buckets to store images and graphics.   Screenshot of a Corel bucket page, this one for Bonnie Magin.

Corel Photo-Paint, is used to manipulate images.  If you're already fluent in Photoshop, go for it.  I connected with Coreldraw products in the early 1990s and am too old to learn Photoshop.  In any case, an authenticity commitment means I prefer minimal image correction for this project so image manipulation is mostly limited to cropping, sizing and contrast adjustments.

To keep track of people, components and the connections between them, I use MS Access, a relational database.  Screenshot of my current Access workhorse screen.  Messy looking, but it helps me keep track of the dots.  Not gonna lie, there's a learning curve.  I've used the program since 1997 and dBase before that, but a professional Access user would laugh at my structures. 

Excel is handy for quick and simple list making and  Notepad++ is great for batch editing html files.   I use Coreldraw and MS Word to compose PDFs.

As to html coding, professional site builders would use this site as an example of what not to do when building a website.
Fifty years ago some friends of ours, new to antiques, proudly displayed their recent furniture purchase.  It was a washstand wannabe, cobbled together of spare parts from several different pieces of furniture in different eras and refinished, not worth a fraction of the relatively small price they'd paid.  They didn't have enough money to make a habit of purchasing-without-knowledge and I kept my mouth shut, let them enjoy their treasure. 
What that washstand has to do with website building is that if your code includes systemic amateurism, the people who have answers, i.e., experienced site builders on forums, will see your project as a cobbled washstand and back away in silence.  The rude ones will spit, call you a Boomer and threaten your pets.  I made that up.  You will have to spend more time wearing out the web in search of solutions.   This site's flaw is its table-based structure that was okay in 2003 when I started using MS Frontpage, but in 2023 is considered être démodé because it takes longer to parse.  As a self-taught and part-time coder, tables were and still are easier for me to understand than CSS.  Don't do what Judy did.  If you're an amateur just beginning a site, and can afford Adobe Dreamweaver, go for it.  Vanity and curiosity make me hanker to learn CSS and recode this entire site.  Then I gauge my remaining cognitive resources relative to the number of people and subjects remaining to be researched in this project, and conclude that'd be self-indulgent.  There are more humans with the capacity to update the coding on this site than there are humans willing to do deep dives on people and events in 1903.  I'll stay in my lane and perhaps a future code fixer will tidy it up right nicely.  Probably compromising the crap out of content for the sake of form, but by then I'll be too dead or gaga to grieve.

I've been addicted to personal computers since 1984, have been online since 1992 and have many years of experience with Coreldraw and MS Access but am entirely self taught, of very average intellect on my best days, and older than mud: if I can do it, you can too. 
Dive in and have fun.


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.


Judy Cooke 2024 All rights reserved ©