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Eleven days after the
fire one Chicago columnist decided the
doom and gloom of nearly six hundred deaths
needed an injection of what passed then
as humor. Portrayals of intoxicated
people was popular, especially on
Vaudeville stages, but Henry M. Hyde of
the Chicago Tribune brought it to the
editorial page. He inflated a story of
one family's survival with many column
inches of dialect attributed to an
inebriated stranger.
A similar story by Elizabeth A. Reed
appeared in the Chicago Record-Herald.
It was picked up by dozens of other
newspapers and still appeared four years
later.
The stories are slightly different. In
Hyde's story the child is leery of the
strange man; Reed's story portrays
Dorothy as receptive. Hyde's story ends
with the stranger having to be awaken
from sleep; in Reed's story he departs
in annoyance at having been offered
payment for his gesture. Hyde's story
reports that the children's father is an
attorney but doesn't name him; Reed's
story that they are the family of Henry Stirling.
I spent more time than I wish to admit
to in a failed effort to find the
Stirlings. I found a man named Henry
Stirling in Chicago in 1900 but he was a
clerk, not a lawyer, had one child, not
two, and by 1903 no longer lived in
Chicago. (Also looked for a Henry
Sterling, Henry Starling and Henry
Sperling, for Dorothy and Dot, for
Robert and Bob.) The Henry Stirling of
1900 Chicago reported himself as married
in the U.S. Census, but his daughter was
not named Dorothy. His wife did not live
with him so a second child, Bob, may
have lived with her. When Chicago ran
dry I broadened the search to the whole
country but found no Henry's with two
children of the right ages. In 1907 a
Henry Stirling turned up in Council
Bluffs, Iowa, with a daughter, name
unknown. She died in a home fire when
their servant threw oil on a kitchen
range and it exploded. (See accompanying
clipping.) That could have been Dorothy
if in 1903 she had been four instead of
six. But then I could not find a
suitable Henry Stirling/Sterling/Starling/etc.
in Iowa.
I suspect Reed gave the family a
fictitious name, perhaps at their
request.
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