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Over
forty Chicago school teachers lost their lives on December 30, 1903 in America's worst theater disaster.
When a stage fire spread to the auditorium at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago nearly six hundred perished. Among
them was thirty-eight-year-old Florence Elizabeth Tobias (c.1865–1903).* She taught at either the Flournoy
School or Jefferson Elementary School on Laflin and Elburn (conflicting information was reported) and may have
attended the Mr. Bluebeard theater performance with a fellow Jefferson teacher who died at the Iroquois,
Rose Mary Rogers
, or with her sister, Mary, also a teacher.
Florence's body was found by
Dr. Joseph Springer of the coroner's office at
Horan's Funeral Home. Her face was too badly
damaged for recognition but her brother, Dr. George
J. Tobias (1860–1948), recognized her footwear. She was buried in Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.
This unfortunate photo comes from a scan of a picture grouping that appeared on two pages of a magazine.
Florence's picture was across the "gutter" area so a center portion wasn't captured in the scan.
It's bad but may be the only extant picture of the woman so I was glad to find it.
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Florence was an Illinois native and lived
with her mother and sister at 1182 Fournoy St. in Wilmette. Her
mother, Matilda Gothrop Tobias (1851–1930), a New Jersey native widowed by the death of Daniel J. Tobias in 1900,
had given birth to eight children. Florence's sister, also a school teacher, was Mary J. Tobias (b. 1872).
Daniel had worked as a ship carpenter.
In 1902 Florence's name appeared on a list of
teachers who had not yet reported for work that year
and were therefore transferred to a list of
unassigned teachers. It is not known if Florence returned to teaching or was on the unassigned list at the time of the fire.
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In the years after the fire
George J. Tobias became president of the Iroquois Memorial association.
He had degrees in both medicine and law. He and his wife, Ada, had three children,
Oliver, George J. and Mabel. The family lived at 850 W. Monroe in Chicago, later moving to the Detroit
area.
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Discrepancies and addendum
* Information about Florence's date of birth is conflicting, some official sources estimated 1866, others 1865 and
1873. In the 1870 U.S. Census the family reported her age as five, making her year of birth 1865 and her age at
death thirty-eight. In the 1900 Census Matilda reported her birth year as 1873.
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