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On December 30, 1903 George Schneider (b. 1883), a junior at Beloit College in
Wisconsin, attended an afternoon matinee performance in Chicago
of
Klaw & Erlanger'sMr. Bluebeard Christmas pageant.
When a fire broke out on stage and spread to the auditorium
George would become one of nearly six hundred victims of America's
worst theater fire. Severely injured, George was taken to the Samaritan
hospital where friends cared for him until he died
two days later.
Found seventy years later in the papers of retired Racine, Wisconsin high school teacher
Edwin Sanders, were Sanders' notes about the Iroquois fire.
Sanders was himself a student at Beloit so may have heard this
story from fellow students. He said that George Schneider
attended the theater with an unnamed girlfriend.
According to Sanders, the young couple escaped from the theater
but George returned to the auditorium to retrieve his friend's
coat. Newspapers, however, reported that George's lady
friend was also killed. Due to other errors in Sanders
notes,* his remarks about Schneider have to be weighed lightly.
Twenty-year-old orphan, George Grenier† Schneider, was was
spending the winter recess with Reverend David Beaton at 437 Belden Ave,
pastor of the Lincoln Park Congregational Church in Chicago.‡
Classes at Beloit College were due to restart on January 6, 1904.
Prior to Beloit College, George had attended the English High and Manual Training school
of Chicago, Rose Polytechnic (today's Rose-Hulman
Institute of Technology) and the Chicago Art
Institute. He was to have graduated from Beloit in a class
of forty-four students in 1905. He was one of
fifteen or so members in one of the school's three fraternities, the Alpha
Zeta chapter of Sigma Chi. As a junior at Beloit, he would
have completed Psychology 3 and Ethics 2 before the
Christmas break and looked ahead to 16 credit hours
in Economics 3 and Ethics and Christian Evidences 2.
His annual room, board and tuition was $250.
George was buried alongside his parents on Monday, Jan 4, 1903 at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.
Services were conducted by Reverend Beaton and many of his Beloit classmates and faculty attended. His
only surviving relative was a grandmother.
George’s artwork appeared in the Beloit annual, the
"Codex" and the school established a lectureship in his
memory. George may have been a young man searching
for his proper niche.
Discrepancies and addendum
* Sanders was not in attendance at the Iroquois. He saw the back of the theater the day after the fire and read about it in
newspapers, I suspect on the first day after the fire when there was more speculation than fact regarding the fire's origins. Sanders, for example, thought
the fire curtain caught on an aerialists wire rather than a reflector and that it started in a dressing room, rather than at the proscenium. Both matters would
be clarified the following day and in later court testimony by dozens of witnesses from the audience, stage workers and performers.
† Spelled Griner in some period newspapers. In early newspaper victim lists he was cited as "George Sexton" and "George Zaxton.
‡ In 1909 the Lincoln Park Congregational and Evanston Avenue Congregational churches merged to
form the Wellington Avenue Church of Christ that exists today.
Chicago policeman John
Reidy lost his three girls
Painter
Charles Cubbon saved lives at Iroquois theater
Emily Henning and her
four sons
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 1210
A note about sourcing. When this
project began, I failed to anticipate the day might come when a
more scholarly approach would be called for. When my
mistake was recognized I faced a decision: go back and spend years creating source lists for every page, or go
forward and try to cover more of the people and circumstances
involved in the disaster. Were I twenty years younger, I'd
have gone back, but in recognition that this project will end when I do, I chose to go forward.
These pages will provide enough information, it is hoped, to
provide subsequent researchers with additional information.
I would like to
hear from you if you have additional info about an Iroquois victim, or find an error,
and you're invited to visit the
comments page to share stories and observations about the Iroquois Theater fire.
