Mabel Norris

On December 30, 1903 mother and daughter, Libby and Mabel Norris,  attended an afternoon matinee at Chicago's newest luxury playhouse, the Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street.  It is unknown if others of the Norris children also attended the Mr. Bluebeard matinee. Only Mabel perished with her mother. The seven and a half mile trip from the Norris family home at 5124 Dearborn would have taken twenty to thirty minutes on a streetcar or train.

Libbie and Mabel's double funeral was held on Sunday at St. Andrew's Methodist Episcopal church on 50th and Wabash under auspices of the Columbia chapter of the 210 Order of Eastern Star. Libby was a past matron of the chapter and organist of Pyramids, Harmony Council No. 179.  Reverend W. H. Holmes and Reverend Frank Gardner of the Boulevard church conducted the service, attended by over five hundred friends and family. Interment was reportedly at Mount Hope, with the bodies transported via a special train from the 47th Street station.

Seventeen-year-old Mabel Amelia Norris (b. 1887) was one of five children born to Chicago policeman Henry T. Norris (1846–1934) and Abba Elizabeth "Libby" Breed Norris (b.1853). Henry emigrated from Ireland as a young teenager, and Libby was a native of Massachusetts. Note: Marshall Everette's disaster book reported Mabel's age as twenty, but the 1900 US Census reported her birth date as February 1887. Based on the census report, she was two months away from her seventeenth birthday at her death. That said, her name was not included in lists of Chicago student fatalities which could mean she had already graduated, or maybe she left school before graduating.

Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1871-1998
Name Mabel A Norris
Sex Female
Age 17
Address 22 Adams Str
Death Date 30 Dec 1903
Death Place Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States
Birth Year (Estimated) 1886
Marital Status Single
Occupation School Girl
Race White
Event Type Death
Entry Number 29127