On the left, a theater manager is bribing an inspector during an inspection of fire prevention equipment, while the specter of the Grim Reaper hovers above. On the right, a female figure labeled “Public opinion” holds three diminutive men labeled “Politician, Manager, [and] Inspector” and points toward the remains of a theater following a fire.
Comments and Context
The context of this cartoon, with artist Ehrhart being as forceful as he could be, is not named… but was clear to every reader: the recent Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago. Still regarded as one America’s most devastating disasters, the fire on December 30, 1903, less than a month previous, claimed more than 600 lives. It was a fire that spread quickly — a broken arc light igniting the muslin curtain — and the nation learned of burned bodies, closed exits, and bodies of panicked patrons crushed sometimes 10-deep in aisles and doorways.
Puck, Life, and other publications had been attacking Broadway’s Theater Trust, for issues like ticket scalping and questionable morals on stage — and shoddy constructions of sets and theaters in general. Fire hazards as illustrated by the Iroquois Fire changed the discussion, however. Ehrhart’s cartoon was the opening salvo in Puck‘s subsequent crusade on the issue of fire safety. One of many reforms — or at least a prominent move to reassure the public — was to manufacture theater curtains of asbestos, and for years afterward, would assert the fact with the emblazoned word ASBESTOS on stage curtains.
