Two German immigrant couples settled in Chicago in the 1870s: the Ratteys and the Reinholds. Charles and Theresa Rattey / Radke had three children, Anna, Charles Jr, and Willie.* John and Minnie Reinhold had four children, Augusta, Charles, Bertha, and Alma. When Theresa Radke passed away, Charles married Anna Mueller, with whom he had five more children: Louise, Emma, Walter, Harry, and Rosa. The children grew up and intermarried. Charles Radke married Alma Reinhold. Charles Reinhold married Anna Rattey, and in December of 1899, they had a son named Leroy.† Two of Charles Rattey's sons, William and Walter, became partners in a North Street saloon. William was born during Charles and Theresa's brief time in Alabama.

Charles Rattey's occupation as a painter and co-owner in the Rattey & Miller paint shop with Frederick Miller on 430 Clybourn Ave. (later changed to 1821 Clybourn, then to 1821 Cortland) provided for his family sufficiently that he owned the family home on Artesian Avenue. The 1,280 sq. ft. three-story home, built in 1889, accommodated nine adults. In 1900 those nine were Charles and his wife, six grown children, and a boarder. By December 1903, machinist Charles Rattey Jr. had married (just two months before the fire), and he and Alma were living with her parents on Talman Avenue. Charles moving out created a spot for a second boarder in the Radke house. In 1903 the two boarders were Fred Reimers and William Patten.

Fred Reimers plunged fifty feet to Couch Place

According to court testimony by Fred Reimers, they were seated in the third-floor balcony. When the fire broke out, they broke through two layers of doors on a fire escape (probably the middle of three exits). On the escape landing, they could not descend the stairs because of flames leaping up from fire escape exits on floors below.

Fred Reimers climbed over the railing and dropped fifty feet into Couch Place, incurring minimal injury, his fall probably cushioned by the bodies of victims who fell earlier. He last saw Willie and LeRoy on the fire escape landing. (Nothing was reported of whatever, if anything, Reimer testified about Patten's escape.)

No good options

Willie could have lifted LeRoy over the railing and dropped him fifty feet, then climbed over himself. If he looked down to see how Fred had faired, he would have looked through billowing smoke and flames to see dozens of obviously still bodies filling the narrow alleyway below. Just fifteen or so feet above and to the right of Willie and LeRoy was the plank stretched across the alley from Northwestern but to get to it required going back inside the theater, by then an inferno. Fire alarms would have been ringing from around the Loop, so Willie knew the fire department was on the way.

It is likely, in fact, that the first engines had reached the site and were frantically unreeling their hoses; a jumping net was tried and failed. Willie had to make a split-second decision to throw LeRoy to a possible death or wait just a few more seconds until the fire department could get to them. They may have been among those firemen sprayed with fire hoses in a desperate attempt to put out their flaming clothing and hair. With just seconds more, both might have survived.

In the years after the fire

Charles and Alma had another son, Charles Jr. William's half brother and former partner in the Rattey & Radke Saloon, Walter Rattey, went to work in 1905 as a chauffeur but around 1913 became afflicted with dementia praecox (schizophrenia) and was hospitalized at Dunning, Chicago's insane asylum. On a sweltering summer Sunday in 1916, he escaped with five other patients, was captured, and returned to confinement. He died at Dunning in 1917.

Discrepancies and addendum

One newspaper report said LeRoy became separated from his mother, but there was no mention of Anne Reinhold being at the theater, and Fred Reimers did not mention her in his testimony about their escape from the fire escape.

Some dates & relationships

Charles Rattey (1850–1919), William's father, LeRoy's grandfather
Theresa Schaffer Rattey (1842–1881) William's late mother
Anna Mueller Rattey (1855–1926) William's stepmother
Iroquois Theater victim William A. Rattey (1878–1903)
Anna Rattey Reinhold (1875–1938) married to Charles Reinhold (1872–1913) parents of LeRoy Reinhold

Iroquois Theater victim LeRoy Reinhold (1899–1903) Charles J. Rattey (1876–1923) married to Alma Reinhold Rattey (1881–19__)

John Reinhold (1843–1923) LeRoy's grandfather, Alma's father

Minnie Streits (1841–1919) LeRoy's grandmother, Alma's mother

* Within the family, different members spelled their name as Rattey or Radke, sometimes both. Patriarch Charles used Rattey in the 1880s but by the 1920s used Radke. His sons, half brothers, William Rattey and Walter Radke, were business partners in a saloon named Rattey & Radke at 665 North at the corner with Orchard.

† In his court testimony, Fred Reimers identified LeRoy as William's son. I wore out the web failing to find Leroy's birth information as a Rattey, Radke, or Reinhold. That he was not named after Charles might be a clue that Charles was not his birth father; it may instead have been the name of his birth mother's father.

‡ Early newspaper lists included a child named Orville Rattey/Radke and one named J. Rattey, but the coroner did not issue death certificates for either, nor did William have a nephew by that name. Lastly, reports of Fred Reimer's testimony mentioned only LeRoy Reinhold. Had there been a second child at risk, he would certainly have spoken of the boy. If a second child was in the party, he survived. There was a four-year-old boy living in Chicago named Orville Reinhold, son of George and Mary Reinhold, who passed away in 1980. It seems likely he was related to LeRoy, perhaps a cousin, but was not one of John and Minnie Reinhold's grandchildren. His grandfather, Otto Reinhold, may have been John Reinhold's brother.

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