Abbie N. McLean(1887–1966)

Abbie was the sixteen- year-old ^▼2 daughter of William and Cora Howard McLean of St. Louis.  The family had moved to St. Louis from Louisiana, MO around 1900.  She joined the Mr. Bluebeard company in Chicago after a week of rehearsals. The year before she'd briefly appeared in Liberty Bells and in the two months prior to going to Chicago she'd performed at the Hashagen Park Theater in St. Louis.
She was described as tall with a symmetrical figure and dark gold hair. Her role in Mr. Bluebeard is not known.
In 1904, the year after the Iroquois Theater disaster, Abbie performed in the chorus of Louisiana at Delmar Garden at the St. Louis World's fair, staged by an Italian ballet dancer, Luigi J. Albertieri (1868–1939).^▼3 Despite the difference in their ages — seventeen and thirty-six — they fell in love. When Abbie went to New York in the fall of 1905 to join a Roger Bros. production, she agreed to marry Luigi provided it was kept secret from the media and her family. She finished the season, wrote to her mother to tell her of the marriage, and retired from the stage. Luigi went on to become ballet dancer and director at the Metropolitan Opera House and from 1915-1930 operated an acting and dancing.   They named their daughter Cora after Abbie's mother.

Marguerite Martin (1883–__?__)

Had PTSD been discovered yet, twenty-year-old Marguerite Martin might have met the diagnosis. Back home in Brooklyn she described her Iroquois experience as so terrifying that she was left with nightmares. Martin was in a 5th floor dressing room waiting for her next stage call for the "Ma Honey" sketch featuring Bonnie Magin when she heard loud sounds outside. She ran down a few flights of stairs, saw flames in the scenery and ran back upstairs to pull, push and browbeat her roommate and two other dancers into leaving their rooms immediately, preventing them from returning to the room to gather their property or clothing.

Once outside the women initially took shelter in Best Russell Cigars next to the theater but that was soon evacuated and they accepted hotel hospitality from a stranger. Marguerite, like most of the Bluebeard chorus girls, lost purses, jewelry and clothing.  Then came a boldly false paragraph that I suspect was added by the reporter putting words in her mouth. Expressing her horrible memories she said she saw the heads of a boy and a woman, that two chorus girls were killed and six were hospitalized, two of which would not recover. A boy was decapitated but based on her description of her exit from the theater, Marguerite would not have seen him. His body was found between rows of seating on the first floor. She made no mention of her quartet going out into the auditorium, with good reason. The Dearborn St. exit (Door #5) was closest to the bottom of the stairs the women descended. Only one female performer died in the fire, aerialist Nellie Reed, and there's little chance that six spent more than an hour or two in a hospital. If a performer had shown up at a hospital in tights reporters would have been all over the story. Didn't happen. Marguerite first said she was going to leave the stage forever, then allowed as how she was only swearing off out-of-town theaters and might "do a little in the city." Which she got busy doing.  Twelve days after the fire she was singing a song she'd performed in Bluebeard, "Julie", at Watson’s Cozy Corner, a vaudeville theater in downtown Brooklyn (that in another four years would be transformed into one of Marcus Loew's movie palaces, named the Royal Theatre).^▼4
 
Seven years later, the the 1910 Census, and again in the 1920 Census, Marguerite continued to describe herself as an actress.  Though described in a couple 1904 newspapers as having been "the one" who warned fellow dancers of the fire, there were several who did so, including another dancer on the fifth floor, Lulu Maroney (below).

Lulu Mahoney (1885–1967 both are iffy dates)

Theresa Lulu Mahoney was one of two women said to have warned other dancers of the fire outside their fifth-floor dressing room.  A non-Chicago newspaper reported that after reaching the stage door she and other escapees smashed a door.  That would have been door 5. She lived in New York.  I think she may have been the soprano who in 1910 married Boston Red Sox baseball outfielder and manager, Patrick J. Donovan (1865–1953).   (Four years later Donovan persuaded the Sox to hire Babe Ruth.)  If I have the right woman, she was the daughter of undertaker Maurice and Ellen Holihan Mahoney.
Hope to learn more about Lulu later.

Rita Nagle / Nagel

Rita was in a basement dressing room when she heard shouting about fire. She fled through smoke and up the stairs to find a hundred other chorus girls trying to escape. She was eventually carried into a nearby drug store, uninjured. She traveled back to New York by train with the company and was met by an uncle who said she could never leave home again. They lived in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens, NY. In the years after the fire she performed with the Mother Goose, Buster Brown, Miss Muffett in Babes in Toyland companies and by 1913 was playing in vaudeville.
Rita's uncle was probably James E. West, aka newspaper illustrator/reporter Charles Mortimer, married to Isabella Monahan West. Newspapers from around 1900 to 1921 often carried social mentions of Rita and her cousin, Daisy West, Isabella's daughter.  Daisy was a nickname for Isabella.  I failed to learn the name of Rita's parents.

Ruby Rubie Rubia Page /Paige (1879–___)

In October of 1903 while the Bluebeard company was performing in Cleveland, Ruby  married a salesman named John Cutler.  It wasn't mentioned in newspapers but the marriage certificate is online in genealogy records.  I didn't find anything to document a dissolution of that marriage but by 1906, mentioned within a sad story involving her mother, was Ruby's new husband, Ralph Thomas.^▼6  (Twenty odd years later, by then a drug addicted house painter, Cutler did five days in Sing Sing prison for assault.)
Like Rita Nagle, Ruby Page lived in Richmond Hill, Queens, NY in 1903.

Every news report about Lola Quinlan's Iroquois Theater experience is unreliable.  The only references to her being in Mr. Bluebeard appeared in stories after the fire in which she was reported to have been a hero who saved another fellow dancer, Violet Sydney.  Reportedly Lola half carried Violet down the stairs to the stage floor then joined her when a kind stranger escorted them to the Continental Hotel.  So far so good but in another story Lola was said to have done the same with aerialist dancer, Nellie Reed, who died of her Iroquois injuries.  There wasn't enough time for Lola to have saved both women and two separate stage workers described having seen Nellie Reed in the basement, confused and injured, one of whom helped her escape through a coal chute.  Interestingly, Violet's thoughts on her cowoker's assistance were not remarked in news stories.  That's not the end of it.  Lola's name  first appears in 1899 as a dancer in George Lederer's production, The Belle of New York, performing as a chorus girl with his company in London.  A lengthy 1901 news story told of her fortuitous switch from the life of a housemaid to being hired by Lederer where she fulfilled her lifelong dream of going on the stage.  Her name then disappears until the post-Iroquois stories in 1904 and does not reappear.^▼7

Lucy Revasey

Lucy's name was listed as one of twelve chorus performers granted permission by Chicago police chief O'Neill to retrieve their personal belongings from the Iroquois after the fire.  That is the only instance I've found tying her to Mr. Bluebeard, the Iroquois disaster or the theater. A search in genealogy records for a woman by that name was not fruitful.  I suspect a typographical error but failed to find her with alternate spellings.

Henry Seeger

Was one of twelve chorus performers granted permission by Chicago police chief O'Neill to retrieve their personal belongings from the Iroquois after the fire.   That is all I've found to indicate that a man by this name, whether spelled Seeger or Sieger, was a performer at the Iroquois Theater.  In the possibility he was a stage hand rather than a performer I also looked for an electrician, carpenter or painter, and found nothing.

Harry Augustus Sickford (1881–1928)

Two years before his role in Mr. Bluebeard  Harry Sickford was living with his parents and working as a bookkeeper.  How he came to join a theater company, and his role at the Iroquois Theater, was not reported but an 1899 newspaper story about a local fund raising event reported that he sang tenor.  He was also a dancer and in 1904 gave dance lessons in Indianapolis.  He remained in his hometown until at least 1910 when he still worked as an actor.  Sometime thereafter he relocated to Chicago and in 1917 worked as a tailor and salesman for the Anderson Brothers Clothing store, but returned to Indianapolis for the last years of his life.  He died of meningitis.

His late father, George Sickford, had been a musician, co-founding the Ringgold Band  of Terre Haute, IN in the 1876.

Teresa Agnes — last name unknown

Nothing is known about Agnes except that she was friends with cast member Daisy Ashton, who first identified her as Agnes Teresa but referred to her as Teresa, and said she was from Jersey.  They appeared together in the Ma Honey number.
Daisy and Teresa were in the basement dressing rooms when one of Stella Follis' children alerted them to the fire.  They continued putting on their costumes, then went back to grab their street clothes, and exited into the Iroquois lobby and out the front exits. Daisy said there were not many people in the lobby at that time. They were staying at the Bush Hotel in Chicago after the fire, where many other Bluebeard performers lodged.

Pauline Thorne

Mary Pauline was one of twelve chorus performers granted permission by Chicago police chief O'Neill to retrieve  their personal belongings from the Iroquois after the fire. She continued performing in road companies until at least 1910, in 1905 appearing in The Rogers Brothers in Ireland, in 1906-8 in the Ziegfeld Follies and as Middy in The Grand Mogul, in Girlies in 1910 and The Miser's Dream in 1913.

She disappeared after 1913 but may have married novelist, Frederick John Niven.  His wife was reportedly named Mary Pauline Thorn Quelch but was described as a former journalist, not an actress.  A Pauline Thorne appeared as a dancer in 1935 but would have been a bit old for it and Niven didn't died until 1944.

Louise Van Deusen

Louise was one of twelve chorus performers granted permission by Chicago police chief O'Neill to retrieve their personal belongings from the Iroquois after the fire.  Performed in the "Ma Honey" sketch with Bonnie Maginn.  An actress named Maude VanDusen lived in California in 1900 and in Philadelphia in 1910.  Nothing more was learned.

Betsy Warren

Was ill so not at the Iroquois the afternoon of the fire.

Grace Barley Warren^▼9 (1870–____)

The fire in the loft over their heads was terrifying and brought dozens of the Bluebeard cast and stage workers to a door, all trying to go through at once. (Probably the small door within a large door going out into Couch Place alley.) Grace was knocked down, stepped on and fell unconscious as her fellow workers fled the stage but someone carried her out and she awoke in a drug store, still in her costume, her hair burned. From there she was led to a hotel.
Afterward Grace was angry with Chicago police department for not protecting their belongings at the Iroquois after the fire, costing her to lose $15 (inflation adjusted: $525).   She was the widow of Joseph Warren and her mother was Cecelia Barley.

Norene Williams

Norene was overcome by smoke and was carried outside by stage hands. She performed in 1907-1908 in The Tattooed Man. She lived in New York and Norene Williams was probably a stage name.  Nothing more is known.