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George Dunlap's name was omitted from hundreds of 1903/1904 column inches describing
planks and ladders used to help Iroquois Theater victims escape from the gallery.
In Tinder Box, a 2003 book by Anthony Hatch about the Iroquois Theater fire, a name
appears that was omitted from 1903-4 newspapers and books. George Dunlap was one of
five people who in the 1960s told Hatch alone of their Iroquois Theater experiences. According to Tinder Box,
George had in 1903 been a twenty-two year old student at Northwestern University who helped victims
escape from a balcony at the burning Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street in Chicago.
There was a great deal of newspaper coverage about the desperate effort by painters and
Northwestern students to help victims escape from a balcony at the Iroquois via ladders
and planks stretched from the school to a theater fire escape. They were
interviewed by eager reporters and testified at the coroner's inquest. At death their
participation at the Iroquois was often mentioned in their obituaries.
In the Dunlap version of
events as described in Tinder Box, he is portrayed as a major participant, an
organizer in the effort to bring victims across planks into Northwestern, calling out
instructions to painters, dragging people from the theater, and protecting victims from gawkers.
Painters and other Northwestern students receive less attention. It is odd that such an
active contributor as is described in Tinder Box was omitted from
the witness list by the coroner, from published testimony from painters and students, and
from published remarks by other Northwestern students and painters.
With my present
limited information, efforts to learn about Dunlap's life have been unsuccessful. As a
Northwestern student in the building adjacent to the Iroquois Theater in 1903 he he would
have been pursuing a degree in dentistry, pharmacy or law. Of the Chicago residents
named George Dunlap in his age range from 1900 to 1950, however, I found an electrical
engineer, clerks and a tailor-turned-aviator; no dentists, lawyers or druggists.
Since his name does not appear in period Northwestern alumni publications, he may not have
graduated.
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