Frederick Dillon

In the years after the fire, Fred Dillon married, had two children, and became a lighthouse inspector in South Carolina. He served in the Coast Guard during both World War I and World War II and was buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington.

Seventeen-year-old Jessie M. Dillon (1886-1911), her father, fifty-six-year-old Frank Dillon, and two brothers, nineteen-year-old Frederick Dillon (1883-1965) and nine-year-old Haradon "Harry" Dillon (1894-1931), were sitting in the second floor balcony in the Iroquois Theater.

Jessie was first in her party to see the fire and called it to the attention of her father and brother. They shushed her, saying it was part of the performance. Many in the audience made that mistake in the early minutes of the fire.

When the entire curtain was blazing, her father picked her up in his arms, Frederick picked up Harry, and the foursome headed for the exit.

Among the last to escape that balcony, the Dillons did not encounter a problem until reaching the front lobby, where two of nine doors were locked. The crush of the crowd pushed Jessie through one of the doors into the vestibule.

The Dillon family owned their home at 416 West Seventieth Place in the Englewood area, and the children probably attended Englewood High School. Francis "Frank" Marion Dillon (1847-1943), a mail agent, and his wife, Alice Experience Merrill Dillon (1854-1941) had married in 1879. All the family members were Illinois natives. Francis and Alice's eldest son, twenty-two-year-old Edgar, did not attend the theater with the family.