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As flames leaped from windows and people
fell to their deaths around him, Deforest Stratton made his way
down a lengthy set of metal fire escape stairs on
the north exterior wall of the theater on Couch
Place. He thought his daughter Gladys and twelve year old
niece, Louise Alice Buschwah (b. 1891), were behind
him. When DeForest realized the
girls had become separated, he tried to
turn back up the fire escape stairs but the crowd
forced him down the stairs until he fell to the
alley floor in Couch Place and others fell atop
him.*
Mattie Stratton had minor bruises and respiratory
difficulties. She was taken to the Thompson's
Diner next to the theater before being taken home.
DeForest was taken to St. Luke's Hospital
with multiple head cuts and later released.
It was December 30, 1903 at Chicago's Iroquois
Theater, scene of America's worst theater disaster.
Louise became one of nearly six hundred victims,
mostly women and children, when a backdraft
propelled a stage fire into the auditorium.
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Deforest (1865–1946) and Gladys "Mattie" Stratton
(1892–1970) lived in Alpena, Michigan where DeForest
owned Huron Handle & Lumber Company, a manufacturer
of broom handles.
He was married to Alice Brecher Stratton (1869–1954).
Louisa was a student at the Nettelhorst elementary school.†
She was the only child of Mathilda Brecher
Buschwah (1858–1942) and cabinet maker Jacob
Buschwah (1854–1926).‡ They'd married in 1884, and
in 1903 lived with Mathilda's father, Gustave A. Brecher
(1833–1918) § at 1810 Wellington Ave. Gustage was an 1864
immigrant from Germany. In 1900 Louisa
and her parents lived in Chicago with Gustave
Mathilda's sister, Alice Brecher Stratton, was married to Deforest A.
Stratton (1866–1946) who chaperoned the theater
party, maybe giving sisters Mathilda and Alice time
to visit or prepare for the upcoming New Years
festivities. Cousin Mattie (1892–), possibly
nicknamed after Louisa's mother and Mattie's aunt,
Mathilda Brecher Buschwah, was eleven years old,
though newspapers reported she was fifteen.
Seven years earlier Louise and Mattie had been
flower girls in their uncle Oscar Brecher's
wedding.
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Louise may have first been taken to Passavant Hospital
prior to the morgue. She was eventually identified by
E. K. Robinson (of unknown relationship to family). Following a service at Congregational
Church of the Redeemer on Saturday, January 2, 1904 Louise was
buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago where her parents and
grandfather would later be interred.
In the years after the fire
In 1912 DeForest's company, Stratton Company, became associated with a sawmill
at Atlantic Mine, Michigan. In 1923 the plant was destroyed by fire.
Mattie Stratton married Melville
Fuller Taylor and they had a daughter named Alice.
They lived in Pittsburgh, Dallas and Rye, NY.
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Discrepancies and addendum
Newspaper reports made a mess of the Stratton and
Buschwah stories. Louise's name was sometimes
spelled as Bush, other times as Bushway. Some
reported that Louise survived and Mattie died,
others that both girls survived, many that Louise
and Mattie were sisters rather than cousins.
Louise's name may have been miss recorded with that of a
fifteen-year-old "Lewis Busback" reported as
having been severely burned and crushed. Their
addresses on Wellington are similar with Louise living
at 1810 Wellington and Lewis at 810 Wellington.
St. Sebastians catholic boys school was located at
810 so Lewis could have been a student there but
there weren't any fifteen year old boys named
Busback, Busbach, Bausbach or Bausback in the whole
country.
* The final rung of fire escape stairs from
the balconies were hinged so they could be swung up and
out of the way to permit passage of delivery wagons
along narrow Couch Place. They were eventually
lowered by people on the scene but many of the first
escapees to arrive at those landings were forced to jump
fifteen to twenty feet to the ground. They suffered
broken limbs and, as in the case with Deforest
Stratton, were sometimes fallen upon by
people jumping from higher landings.
† The Nettelhorst school was previously known as the
Evanston Avenue school. Two other Nettelhorst students,
Agnes Lange and Johnny Washington, were also
Iroquois Theater victims.
‡ Birth/death dates shown are as reported on
Jacob's death certificate and vary from 1852–1928
inscribed on gravestone.
§ Louise's grandfather, Gustave Brecher, a retired shoe
manufacturer, owned his home on Wellington Avenue
and left an estate of over $100,000 (inflation
adjusted $1.7 million). The spelling of Gustav's
and Mathilda's surname varies. In the 1900 census it was
spelled Precher; in 1910 Brecher. On Louise's
birth certificate it was Brecker. Brecher is
used on gravemarkers for Gustav and Mathilda's
sister, Alice.
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