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Fifty-six-year-old De Lester Sackett (1847–1908) was at the Iroquois Theater with
three members of his family, including his wife, thirty-two-year-old Mary Lee Woleben,(1871–1942), his sixty-three-year-old sister-in-law, Angelina
Steward Sackett (1840–1926), wife of his late
brother, Orville Sacket, visiting from Paxton,
Illinois, and his daughter, eleven-year-old Helen P.
Sackett (1892–1981) They were
seated in the third row on the second floor
balcony at the Couch Place north side of the
theater. For all in a party to escape from one
of the balconies made them lucky indeed. The
newspaper in Mary's home town of Marengo, Illinois,
said that they were badly burned but recovered.
His account below is one of the most detailed
and conveys the development of fear and urgency felt by people
in the auditorium. The fellow credits his wife for
speaking up, admits to a bit of misplaced pride, and his story rings right with the
facts as I've found them. I was sad to see that he lived for just five years after the
fire, to only see his twin sons reach three years of age. In
his obituary it was postulated that his unexpected death
resulted from a decline in health caused by nervous shock at the
Iroquois. This was not uncommon. The Iroquois fire
would be attributed in about a dozen deaths that took place
several years after the fire. Sometimes there were
references to respiratory problems that might actually have been
consumption. Had he lived, De Lester was set to begin a
lecturing tour with the Consolidated Lyceum
Bureau on the
subject of "Man-logy" based on his book about character reading
and palmistry.
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"There was much excitement in the immediate vicinity
of my seats, with no gentlemen nearer than the three
gentlemen sitting a little further to my right and
back in the second section from us towards the rear
were two young men; all others were women and
children. There seemed to be perfect confusion and I
rose to my feet and tried to quiet them, and
counseled that they should not become excited; that
there was more danger from a panic than there was
from the fire. I never dreamed that the fire could
reach us there, and we had to keep our positions in
our seats, as I had counseled others to keep quiet,
and it would not look very well for us to take the
lead then and run, so we remained there until my
wife said to me, 'Everyone has left their seats, and
we must get out of here.'
"I then turned and looked at the stage and saw how the
fire had progressed and said to her: 'It is a race
with death,' and I tried then to get my little girl,
who was eleven years old, next to me. She was
sitting next to the aisle. I reached beyond my wife
and sister-in-law and I got my little girl and then
I tried to crowd them into the aisle.
"The pressure was so great that I could not get them into
the aisle. People crowded up the aisle so thick I
could not get them in there, and I discovered the
seats in our rear had been vacated. Everybody was
getting to the aisle, and I told my wife our only
show was over these seats, and I took my little girl
and started and told them to follow me, which they
did. At that time in the extreme left-hand corner
back of us we could see light coming up — they had
got an opening there in the rear of this balcony.
"We couldn't see any opening [because crowds standing in
the aisle and in front of the fire escape door
blocked his view], but we could see the light from
the opening, and then we went over the seats. I
didn't look back after I started. [Possible translation: wife
and SIL were nimble enough to scramble over the
seats and keep up.] My wife and sister-in-law
followed us, and we went over the seats and out of
that rear exit back of the seats to the extreme
north into the alley, where we found a fire escape.
"The doors were open when we got there, but I cannot help
but feel that if we had started sooner we would not
have got to those doors [presumably because his
family would have been hemmed in by the crowd in the
aisle]. If we had waited longer we certainly would
not have gotten through [before the fireball came].
My ears are still not healed from the burning they
got.
"My nose was burned, and my sister-in-law's bandages have not been removed from
her face yet, she was burned so bad, and it was all
from hot air coming from that stage. [In other
words, though the flames did not seem close enough to cause
burns, the structure was turning into an oven.]
"On the first landing from the exit we went out of,
evidently two ladies had turned and were coming up
the fire escape, instead of going the other way,
they were so confused. I told them to turn and go
down. They did not until I reached them and I took
hold of one lady and turned her around and started
her down and pushed the shutter back against the
wall — I remember that very distinctly — and then we
went on down and when I got to the foot of the
escape I turned my child over to my wife and went
back for my sister-in-law and crowded my way up
between people by keeping to the extreme outside
railing, and got up probably to the first landing
and found her coming down."
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The "confused women" may have turned around because
they were unable to close the outer door from the
bottom fire exit door on the second floor balcony. It is
possible that in the few seconds between their attempt to
open the door and Sackett reaching it, people who
had been pressing against the door and holding it
open as they streamed out the fire escape door and
onto the platform, had passed on down the stairs. No
more came out from inside the theater because the
fireball had killed most of the living left inside.
Many accounts describe an almost instantaneous
silence immediately after the fireball. That would
have been at 3:50 when the watches stopped.
Sacket bio
Sacket was christened Lester D. Sackett at birth by
his parents, Dexter B. Sackett and Electa Bement
Sacket, but at age ten his name was changed to De L. Sackett. In 1892
he married Mary Lee C. Woleben , daughter of Alvin and Sallie
Woleben. Sacket operated a photography studio in Elgin and Sycamore,
Illinois. In addition to photography he was a
sculptor, palm reader and phrenologist, having
graduated from the Fowler and Wells Institute of
Phrenology in 1889.
Two years after the fire daughter Helen
gained two brothers, twins De Lester and Deforest Sackett.
After De Lester's death in 1905 Mary
continued his photography business for a time, then
became a public school teacher in Elgin.
Discrepancies and addendum
In one January 2, 1904 report a W. Sachett and wife were listed as survivors from
Elgin who suffered severe burns. Since the name Sachett did not appear again
in connection to the Iroquois disaster, it was probably a typographical error
referring to the Sacketts.
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