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I believe this Daily Times▼1 story, including the witness, was
fabricated and relied for information not on a witness interview
as pretended but on stories that had appeared in 1903 versions of supermarket tabloids.
Shock journalism had been popularized in New York City just a few years before
this 1904 story was published. As two newspaper publishers competed for
circulation-dependent ad sales, they replaced ethical reporting with lurid headlines
and half-truths. Some historians attribute the newsstand war in NYC as the birth of
Yellow journalism,
aka tabloid journalism.
Rewriting stories from other newspapers had become common place in
journalism and this isn't the first such Iroquois disaster story I've found.
The author, probably a reporter-editor named James Hardman, likely didn't know he was spreading
inaccurate information, and maybe didn't place much importance on
attributing it to a make-believe source.
I did not find the Gagnor story in any other newspapers and hours of of searching did not
turn up an F. Gagnor of a plausible age or circumstance in Chicago, Illinois or Iowa. Nor
was anything published in later years about someone named Gagnor's Iroquois experience.
That alone doesn't constitute evidence of deception but it contributes to my sense that this
story was fabricated. Such was interest in the Iroquois disaster that much attention was given
to stories from survivors and first responders — in 1904 and for decades after. For many
it became a lifelong identity association reflected even in their obituaries.
A few of the errors:
No one worked "far into the night" helping carry bodies from the
Iroquois theater because the theater was emptied of bodies by 6:30 pm.
The only people who worked late that night were 1.) policemen who controlled
crowds at mortuaries and in police stations, and who updated lists of
the missing from reports coming in from morgues and hospitals, 2.) mortuary
staff members, who shuffled bodies and kept toe tag information updated, and
3.) Chicago newspaper people who composed victim lists and contacted family
members of the deceased in hopes of obtaining information and photos.
According to testimony at the coroner's and fire department inquests
by first responders there were a only a half dozen corpses still in
their seats when the fire was over, not a balcony full, and the
first row of the balcony was not filled with dead children. The lie
about a balcony filled with corpses still sitting in their seats was
not published in Chicago newspapers. In addition to having ample
reason to respect their city's victims, there were hundreds of first
responders in Chicago who knew that story was hooey.
There were no explosions▼2 and doors were not held
shut by ushers. Ushers could not open the doors because at each
interior auditorium door was a mass of people on the auditorium side
being crushed against the door, immobilized by desperate and terrified
people pushing at them from behind. Those at the back of each mass did
not know what was going on at the front, only that the heat and flames
were coming closer and they were afraid for the lives of themselves and
their companions, oftentimes including their children and other loved
ones. As smoke and heat increased, they pushed and struggled harder
to reach the door at the front of the mass. Many of the doors
incorporated bi-fold construction and folding them to an open position
was impossible under the circumstances.
The ushers, though young and untrained, did not lack courage or
will. What they lacked was a tool with which to break
through the thick beveled-glass panes and wood muntins in the
doors. Most important: there was nothing in the theater after the
fire that a first responder could have observed that would have
revealed the actions of ushers during the fire. Condemnation of the
ushers came from a handful of witness reports to reporters
immediately after the fire and diminished to even fewer in courtroom
testimony.
The characterization of Chicago's police officers as easily bribed by alcohol
was the stuff of dime novels and anti-Irish immigrant ridicule that
oftentimes included characterizations of the Irish as drunks.
Left unaddressed is why Gagnon was compelled to enter the theater at
all. There were hundreds of first responders on the scene. No
shortage of more qualified men, no need whatever for a traveling
salesman to bribe his way into the theater. Am thinking the Iowa
newspaper editor assumed readers would be so caught up in gruesome
details that they wouldn't question the omitted explanation for why
he was inside the theater at all.
Discrepancies and addendum
1. On December 31, 1903 The Daily Times devoted its entire front page to the Iroquois
disaster, as well as the majority of page two. The newspaper had begun as the
Davenport Times around 1890, adopting the Daily Times title in May of 1903,
seven months before the Iroquois Theater fire. It ceased publishing under that title in 1964,
remaining until 1974 as the Times-Democrat. Emanual. P. Adler (1872–1949) was the publisher
and James E. Hardman (1871–1922) the managing editor. Average daily circulation: 8,700.
The Daily Times was one of ten newspapers in the Lee Syndicate controlled by Adler and his
son. The Adlers later became important philanthropists in Davenport.
2. Reporters sought interviews with escapees and family members at hotels and
stores near the theater. Since a majority of those who had been sitting in the
balconies were deceased or hospitalized, thus not represented at the hotels to chat
with reporters, and a majority of those who did survive to chat with reporters had
been sitting
on the first floor (that contributed to fewer than one percent of the fatalities),
published stories from that evening's interviews were disproportionately skewed, giving the illusion of
broad commonalty to what were actually observations by a few minimally impacted participants.
So different was the experience of first floor occupants that many went home from the
theater that afternoon and were shocked the next morning to read of the massive number
of fatalities. Based on their own experience they could not imagine how hundreds
of people could have died. As people do, they speculated. Some, those
who had not left their coats behind, milled around on the street outside the theater
briefly (temperatures were below zero so they soon fled the scene), finding other members
of their theater party and comparing experiences. When the multi-ton loft
crashed to the stage floor, producing a thunderous booming vibration that could be felt and
heard in adjacent buildings, a gas explosion joined a list of inaccurate first-day speculations
about the cause of the fire. Some of the misinformation resulted from simple semantics and
telephone-story type inaccuracies that occur when stories are retold. The
crashing loft had made an explosive sound, and the giant belch of backdraft-propelled fire
exploded from the stage into the auditorium. Abracadabra, next time story is
told it includes an explosion. Days of testimony during subsequent
investigations, however, substantiated that there were no gas explosions at the
Iroquois Theater. Devil's in the details. Unfortunately for historical
accuracy, some speculations made it to the next day's newspapers to be found over a
century later by readers who have limited familiarity with the Iroquois disaster,
including journalists. I've found the gas explosion and aerial wire snagging
myths in 2010-ish news stories. One of the worst originators was a
Philadelphia newspaper who I suspect bought a story from a Chicago stringer.
Some of the biggest whoppers use phrases that seem to come directly from that
Philadelphia story.
Fulkerson and Rothmann looked after city
All 3 Harbaugh sisters
were Iroquois
Theater victims
Ruth and Helen Dyrenforth
Other discussions you might find interesting/p>
Story 3028
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.
