On 30 December 1903 fire swept the new Iroquois Theater in Chicago during a crowded holiday matinee of Mr. Bluebeard, and more than six hundred people, most of them women and children, died behind locked and jammed exits. Rushed out in 1904, this memorial volume gathers survivors’ and rescuers’ narratives, the coroner’s verdict, expert reports on responsibility and a history of earlier great fires.
A raw contemporary record of the deadliest single-building fire in American history and the safety reforms it provoked. Download the free EPUB.