Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2003 by Martin, Arthur

Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903. By Nat Brandt (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003. Pp. Xxiv, 180. Illus., notes, bib., index. Cloth, $25.00).

When Oliver Wendell Holmes needed an example of the limitations imposed on a citizen's right to speak for his opinion for the Court in Schenck v. United States, 294, he put forth his famous dictum, "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." In doing so, he could be sure that the reference would invoke a powerful image, because theaters were notoriously fire prone and had, over the years, produced some spectacular conflagrations. The most spectacular of them all, lamentably, according to the author of Chicago Death Trap, and the deadliest fire in American history, was the one that broke out during the second act of the matinee performance at the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago on 30 December 1903.

As we near the one hundredth anniversary of that catastrophe, Nat Brandt has given us a readable and interestingly-illustrated retelling of the story; it describes not only the event, but the victim-identification process and mourning of its immediate aftermath. It also gives a good deal of information on the then just-opened theater and how and why it came to be built, on the performance being given that awful afternoon, and on the investigation and the litigation that followed. We find that Clarence Darrow had a behind-the-scenes role as advisor to the representatives of the theater who were among those that the state attempted to prosecute in the wake of the fire. The author also briefly sketches the careers of some of those principally connected to the Iroquois and the gradual dying away of the memory of the event. The introduction places the building of the theater in the larger context of the development of Chicago's Loop and the evolution of the business of presenting theatrical productions, and adds a perspective on the economic consequences of the fire to the local economy.

The most riveting part of the book is the telling of the story of the fifteen or twenty minutes from the moment of the first sparks starting to sputter from one of the floodlights above the stage until the nearly 2,300 people in the building were either dead or delivered from the inferno. This part of the story is much enhanced by the pictures of the theater in its prefire splendor, by the scenes of the devastation, by the portraits of the victims and, very importantly, by the floor plans of the building.

Brandt is in no doubt that the blame for the great loss of life lies mainly with the multiple failures of the theater to conform to Chicago's fire code, both in design and operation; this message is enforced by heading each chapter with an extract from a part of the fire code of which the Iroquois was in violation, in a typeface suggestive of the fire code's original printing. Such a judgment certainly seems more appropriate than attributing the great loss of life to the panic that resulted from the fire, which in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy some appear to have done. While the theater did have the code-mandated rooftop ventilators in skylights positioned over the stage (that were designed to bear fire and smoke up and away), they had been fastened shut when they were installed and were still in that condition three years later when the fire started on 23 November 1903.

The part of the book that deals with the aftermath of the fire is also interesting, but the author's treatment of this aspect of the matter brings out the crusading journalist in him, and historians may find much that warrants further study. Whether or not Chicago Death Trap is the definitive treatment of the legal and political aftermath of the event, the author has succeeded in telling a very readable story. In the process, he reminds us that tedious exercises like safety inspections and code enforcement proceedings really do matter. For 602 people a century ago, they were a matter of life and death.

Arthur Martin is a lawyer in private practice in Chicago, and is active in the work of the Illinois State Historical Society.