On December 30, 1903 mother and daughter, Mabel and Libby, attended an afternoon matinee at Chicago's newest luxury playhouse, the Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street.  By days end they'd become victims of America's worst theater disaster.  When a massive ball of flame was hurled from the stage into the  auditorium by a backdraft, a ventilation shaft in the northeast corner of the structure drew it up into the balconies where six hundred people could not escape.  Among them were Mable and Libbie Norris.

Henry worked for eighteen chief's during his career

Michael C. Hickey
Valorus Seavey
Simon O'Donnell
William J. McGarigle
Austin J. Doyle
Frederick Ebersold
George W. Hubbard
Frederick H. Marsh
Robert W. McClaughry

Michael Brennan
John J. Badenoch
Joseph Kipley
Francis O'Neill
John M. Collins
George M. Shippy
Leroy T. Steward
John McWeeny
James Gleason

Henry's career as a Chicago police officer

When wed to Elizabeth "Libbie" Breed in 1875, Henry T. Norris was a twenty-nine-year-old sergeant with the Pinkerton Detective agency.

1877
Henry began a 35-year career as a Chicago police officer. During his years on the police force, he saw eighteen police chiefs come and go, and thirteen Chicago mayors.

1879
Henry was transferred to the Hinman station, where he was one of approximately 45 officers.

1880
October — Henry was one of six Chicago police officers fired because he refused to obey a command by the Democratic Carter Harrison Sr. administration to leave his beat to campaign for an election. It is not known if Henry's disobedience was based on a dislike of the party or the process.  Henry was a Freemason, an organization that believes in separating one's politics and religion. Perhaps Henry believed in keeping politics out of the job. The Chicago police force that year employed 473 men.

1888
October — Henry chased after and stopped a woman from committing suicide. The police department numbered 1,624 officers.

December
Henry responded to screams and breaking glass and arrested a man who had jumped through a parlor window. It turned out to be Louis Schutte who surprised his sister Hattie. The department made 48,119 arrests that year.

1894
Chicago's 2,277 officers looked out for a population of nearly 2 million, occupying over 187 square miles. They arrested 88,323 people, returned 3,865 lost children to their homes, gave temporary lodging to 133,006 homeless people, serviced 136,615 meals to the homeless and prisoners, handled 4,927 accidents, 377 burglaries, and 416 dead bodies. They took reports about 227 defective gas pipes and 377 defective drains, 847 defective hydrants, 1,142 water pipes, 1,073 sewers, 15,471 sidewalks, 29,505 unlighted street lamps, 4,207 broken street lamps, 20,093 nuisances, and dead animals, and 1,131 building ordinance violations. They extinguished 397 fires and arrested 146 fugitives for other cities. The department operated 877 patrol boxes and owned 247 horses, pulling 41 wagons and 6 ambulances.

1897
Henry was a desk sergeant at the 5th precinct at 144 35th Street.  He became one of 400 Republican police officers fired by Democrat mayor Carter Harrison Jr. to make jobs available to Democratic policemen that had been fired during the prior administration of Republican mayor George Swift. Harrison's police chief, Joseph Kipley (1846-1904), wasn't as careful as he might have been in making up his fire/hire lists.  He had to re-hire some and re-fire some. The rehired firees were officers who were needed to testify in a heavily publicized trial about a sausage manufacturer who killed his wife and disposed of her body in a vat.† The re-fired hirees were officers that had originally been fired not for their political allegiances but because they'd been convicted of graft, drunkenness, brutality, etc.

In the late 1800s, Chicago's newspapers carried many stories about the city's police officers being treated as  political cattle. In 1887 it must have been particularly ironic for Henry Norris, an Irish immigrant, to consider his unemployed status while reading in the newspaper that the mayor was favoring Irish police officers.

I did not find indication that he was involved in the sausage-maker trial, but Henry did reclaim his job, though seemingly with a demotion from desk sergeant.

1901
A patrolman now, Henry was assigned to the Stanton Avenue station and was one of a half dozen officers rescued from a coal gas leak in their sleeping quarters. Henry was then reassigned to the 10th precinct Hyde Park station at 53rd and Lake Park Avenue in the 4th district, commanded by James Madden, 2nd division. See the accompanying map of the territory covered by the 10th.

1902
Chicago's 3,164 police officers made 70,314 arrests.

1903
In June, Henry became one of the 159 officers who were injured on the job that year, the particulars and severity of his injury are unknown. The annual salary for patrolmen was raised to $1,100 in 1903. Henry was still assigned to the Hyde Park station, a building reported to be haunted.

December 30
It is not known what shift Henry worked or whether he was at the station house or their home on south Dearborn street when he heard the Iroquois was on fire. He could have reached the Iroquois from either place in 20-30 minutes, but no matter when he got there, it was too late for Libby and Mabel. He searched the morgues and hospitals for two days before finding his wife and daughter.

1912
September Henry stopped a runaway horse near the Ray elementary school. The school was/is in Hyde Park, so Henry may have remained assigned to the 10th precinct for the last twelve years of his career.

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