Send us Fan Mail

A capsized ship at a Chicago dock should not have happened. Except, it did.

Today, we go looking for the people who translated that shock into a demand for justice while the city was still counting its dead: the editorial cartoonists. Their names rarely appear in modern accounts of the Eastland disaster, but in 1915 their drawings exposed hypocrisy, challenged officials, and said what polite prose often would not.

We also return to the story of Willie Novotny, the child known for days only as “No. 396,” and why his identification prompted such a powerful outpouring of sympathy. From there, we read a 1915 Cartoons Magazine article that points to lax inspection laws, questionable safeguards, and a system seemingly more interested in protecting itself than protecting ordinary workers, women, and children. It is a vivid snapshot of how Chicago wrestled with grief, accountability, and the fear that the investigation would end in a whitewash.

Finally, we meet three essential artists: Luther Daniels Bradley, John T. McCutcheon, and Bob Satterfield. Bradley asks the blunt question, “Whose safety first?” McCutcheon skewers the familiar pattern of investigations that come “too late,” and Satterfield’s on-the-scene sketching gives historians and genealogists a rare primary source from the riverfront itself.

If you care about the Eastland disaster, Chicago history, political cartoons, or the way public memory gets edited over time, this story belongs in your feed.

Resources:

Cartoons Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 3, September 1915. H. H. Windsor, editor and publisher. Chicago. Digitized by Google Books.

Bradley, Luther Daniels. Cartoons by Bradley: Cartoonist of the Chicago Daily News, with a Biographical Sketch and an Appreciation. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1917. Internet Archive.

• Book website: https://www.flowerintheriver.com/
• Substack: https://nataliezett.substack.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-z-87092b15/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zettnatalie/
• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
• Medium: Natalie Zett – Medium
• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
• Other music. Artlist

Send us Fan Mail

As we get closer to the 111th anniversary of the Eastland Disaster (July 24, 1915) in the Chicago River, we learn what careful writers actually put on the page--and what modern revisions often leave out.

We look at why poets and journalists who wrote about the Eastland disaster, such as Edith Wyatt, Agnes Lee, Olive Carruthers, Carl Sandberg, and others, are mostly missing from today’s accounts. We also focus on one key figure: Great Lakes reporter and maritime historian Dwight Boyer. In his chapter “Who Speaks for the Little Feller?” from True Tales of the Great Lakes (1971), Boyer draws on primary sources, courtroom records, and interviews to tell the Eastland's story with accuracy and respect for the victims as real people.

At the center of Boyer’s account is “Victim 396,” a child dressed in Sunday clothes who remained unidentified for days. Eventually, two of his friends and his grandmother recognized him as Willie Novotny (Vilém Novotný).

Next, we look at how the legal aftermath dragged on, with responsibility reduced to technical details and salvage value. We also mention Michael Schumacher’s Along Lake Michigan: Shipwreck Stories of Life and Loss (2025), which explains why it was so hard to determine the death toll in such chaos, especially when children were not always counted and survivors moved between hospitals without clear records.

If you want to dig deeper into Chicago history, the Eastland disaster, genealogy research, and learn how historical accuracy gets built, broken and restored, this conversation is for you.

Resources:

• Michael Schumacher, Along Lake Michigan: Shipwreck Stories of Life and Loss (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2025).
• Dwight Boyer, “Who Speaks for the Little Feller?” in True Tales of the Great Lakes (Michigan: Thunder Bay Press, 1971), 27.
• Natalie Zett, “Who Speaks for Dwight Boyer? The Storyteller Who Remembered Them All,” Flower in the River, episode 126, August 7, 2025
• Natalie Zett, "Dwight Boyer: Forgotten Chronicler of the Eastland Disaster," Flower in the River, episode 125, July 31, 2025.

• Book website: https://www.flowerintheriver.com/
• Substack: https://nataliezett.substack.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-z-87092b15/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zettnatalie/
• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
• Medium: Natalie Zett – Medium
• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
• Other music. Artlist

Send us Fan Mail

Sometimes, a single newspaper article can pull lives back from the shadows. Today, I want to share the story behind one of my most treasured discoveries: writer and journalist Olive Carruthers. Her 1952 Evanston Review piece, “How Evanstonians Assisted in the Eastland Disaster,” brings the 1915 Eastland tragedy in Chicago into sharp, unforgettable focus. Long after the Eastland rolled into the Chicago River during the Western Electric picnic, Olive sought out Evanston residents, collected their memories, and wove them into a gripping narrative that saves names other histories have let slip away.

We step into the raw moments Olive refused to soften: the frantic surge of rescuers, the dread that someone you love might be lost, and diver Enoch Moberg plunging into a world turned upside down, filled with ladders, darkness, wreckage, and the unthinkable. We trace the aftermath through Catherine O’Reilly’s desperate search for her brother Patrick, the jolt of grief and hardship that struck survivors’ families, and the wave of community relief that rose up in the days that followed.

Then Olive steps out from behind the byline and into the spotlight. We follow her journey from Wisconsin to Chicago and Kentucky, exploring her life as a novelist and book critic. Gerald McMurtry offers heartfelt thanks for Olive saving his manuscript and for their partnership on Lincoln’s Other Mary. He also leaves us with a description for the ages: Olive as a “chain-smoking, gravel-voiced time bomb.” Some writers are memorable. Olive apparently came with a warning label.

I close with Olive’s own words on why Chicago held her and what it meant to write with real freedom.

If you love uncovering the hidden stories of the Eastland disaster, or if Chicago history, genealogy, and archival sleuthing spark your curiosity, this episode is made for you. Subscribe or follow, share it with a fellow history enthusiast, and leave a review to help others discover these long-lost tales.

Resources:

• Olive Carruthers, “How Evanstonians Assisted in the Eastland Disaster,” The Evanston Review (Evanston, Illinois), October 23, 1952, 37–38.
• R. Gerald McMurtry, My Lifelong Pursuit of Lincoln (Fort Wayne, IN: Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum, 1981).
• Olive Carruthers and R. Gerald McMurtry, Lincoln’s Other Mary: The Courtship of Mary Owens (Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1946).
• Olive Carruthers, We’ll Sing One Song (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1947).
• She Took the Call. He Dove for the Lost. She Wrote Their Story.

• Book website: https://www.flowerintheriver.com/
• Substack: https://nataliezett.substack.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-z-87092b15/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zettnatalie/
• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
• Medium: Natalie Zett – Medium
• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
• Other music. Artlist