Burning of the Brooklyn Theatre Part 1

Burning of the Brooklyn Theatre.

by Anonymous.

BURNING OF THE BROOKLYN THEATRE.

The destruction of the Brooklyn Theatre, on the night of Tuesday, December the 5th, was the most terrible calamity of its kind that has occurred in this country. What was first deemed to be an ordinary fire, naturally involving serious financial loss to the owners, the lessees and the actors, was really a catastrophe of the most heartrending character, causing, as it did, the loss of upwards of three hundred lives. No theatre fire on this continent had so much horror lent to it. Even the most stony-hearted were touched by the awfulness of this great calamity.

Three hundred human beings of both s.e.xes and of all ages were thrust into eternity through an agonizing and painful death. They were thus doomed at a moment of pleasure and mental excitement over the mimic troubles of the dramatic personages in a play possessing features that touched the hearts of those who followed the scenes on the stage. At a moment when every eye was fixed on the painted scene, and every ear strained on the utterances of the several characters, the dreadful cry of "Fire!" was raised, and, in a few moments after, the entire building was filled with flame and smoke, and hundreds of men, women and children were suffocated and burned to death, and their charred and disfigured remains buried beneath the ruins.

Such is the simple and terse record of this most dreadful occurrence, and these few sentences afford such outline and visible form to the picture that it scarcely needs the shocking details that necessarily follow to give it color and ghastliness. That so much horror should attend the burning of a theatre sent a thrill of pain through every heart in the land. The full scope of the calamity and the dreadful scenes attending it are depicted in the accounts that follow.

No more awful moment can be imagined than that when the fire was discovered. The full moon of the fatal evening had tempted upwards of twelve hundred people from their homes, and lighted them to the brilliant entrance of the theatre. The famous play of the "Two Orphans," with an excellent cast, mainly from the Union Square Theatre, of New York city, was the attraction, and had renewed its fascinations over a public long since familiar with its story. The audience was characteristically a Brooklyn gathering. Many well-known citizens were there: among them the family of Mr. William C.

Kingsley, the Hon. Henry C. Murphy, Edgar Cullen and ladies, E. B.

d.i.c.kinson and ladies, and Henry Beam. The following was the distribution of characters in the play, and, with the exception of Miss Morant, Miss Vernon and one or two of the minor characters, all the members were in the theatre at the outbreak of the fire:

Chevalier De Vaudry Mr. C. R. Thorne.

Count de Linieres, Minister of Police Mr. H. F. Daly.

Picard, Valet to the Chevalier Mr. Claude Burroughs.

Jacques Frochard, an Outlaw Mr. J. B. Studley.

Pierre Frochard, his Brother Mr. H. S. Murdoch.

Marquis de Presles Mr. J. G. Peakes.

Doctor of the Hospitals St. Louis and Salpetriere Mr. H. B. Phillips.

La Fleur Mr. H. W. Montgomery.

Officer of the Guard Mr. John Mathews.

Martin Mr. L. Thompson.

De Mailly Mr. J. Clements.

D'Estres Mr. George Dalton.

Footman Mr. E. Lamb.

Antoine Mr. R. Struthers.

Louise, { The } Miss Kate Claxton.

Henriette, {Two Orphans.} Miss Maude Harrison.

La Frochard Mrs. Farren.

Countess de Linieres Miss f.a.n.n.y Morant.

Sister Genevieve Miss Ida Vernon.

Marianna, an Outcast Miss Kate Girard.

Julie Miss Ethel Allen.

Cora Miss L. Cleves.

Sister Therese Mrs. L. E. Seymour.

The play had proceeded to the last scene of the last act. The curtain had just been rung up, revealing a scene of exciting and pathetic interest to the audience. It was the interior of the hovel boat-house on the Seine. The blind _Louise_ (Miss Claxton) lay on a bed of straw; _Mme. Frochard_ (Mrs. Farren) was sc.r.a.ping a carrot; the cripple was at his wheel, and _Jacques_ was about to emphasize his brutality with a threat. As was natural from her reclining position, which enabled her to see the flies, the first flame caught the eye of Miss Claxton.

Mr. Murdoch (_Pierre_) was delivering his speech when the two heard a whisper of "Fire" from behind the scenes, and, looking up, saw flames issuing from the flies. Mr. Murdoch stopped, but Miss Claxton whispered to him, "Go on, they will put it out, there will be a panic--go on," and he resumed. So far the audience had not noticed anything out of the way, and the two played the scene through, Mrs.

Farren (_Frochard_) entering meanwhile. The carpenters were all the while trying to stop the progress of the flames, unnoticed by the house, and Miss Claxton delivered her little speech to _Jacques_: "I forbid you to touch me," which was greeted with applause. Meanwhile the audience had begun to suspect something, and with Miss Claxton's words, "I will beg no more," the actors were forced to move from fear of falling timber, and the audience rose to their feet. Mrs. Farren and Mr. Murdoch stepped to the footlights and waved to the people to resume their seats, while Mr. Studley and Miss Claxton went forward to do likewise. Mr. Studley shouted: "Ladies and gentlemen, there will be no more of the play, of course; you can all go out if you will only keep quiet." Miss Claxton, at the other end of the stage, begged the people to keep cool, adding: "We are between you and the flames."

By this time the fire (which seems to have originated by some of the "short drops" blowing against the "border lights" in the flies, and so communicating to the scenery) had made so much headway that the actors had to look out for themselves. They had held their ground as long as it was possible, and, seeing from the panic which started immediately in the gallery and spread all over the upper part of the house, that the worst had begun, they began their retreat, the ground floor being already almost cleared. Mr. Thorne had gone. Mr. Burroughs was up-stairs in his dressing-room, from which he escaped only to meet his death. Mr. Murdoch was never seen again. Miss Claxton and Miss Harrison rushed one way; Miss Girard and the minor people another.

The sight of fire seemed to paralyze every one for an instant, and just as they recovered sufficiently to act, Mr. Studley's sudden coming to the front of the stage and a.s.suring them that there was no cause for alarm caused another pause of a second. It was for a second only. The blazing fragments began falling thick and fast, contradicting the actor's well-intentioned deception. The audience arose as by one impulse and made a rush for the doors. The entreaties of Miss Claxton and Mr. Murdoch were unheeded. The fierce struggle for life had begun.

The ushers for the most part preserved their presence of mind and endeavored to enforce order among the rus.h.i.+ng crowd, as did also the police in attendance. Mr. Rochfert, the head usher, broke open a small door at the farther end of the vestibule and increased the facilities of exit into the open air, which regularly consisted of two doors five feet wide, opening upon Was.h.i.+ngton street. Mr. Rochfert also entered the auditorium and endeavored to quell the excitement, but without effect.

A fire alarm had been immediately sent from the First Precinct Station-House, which is located next the theatre, and a minute or two after a general alarm and also a call for the reserved force of all the precincts. But by the time the engines were in position and at work the fire was beyond control. The occupants of the orchestra chairs and parquet had had but little difficulty in making good their escape, but at least two-thirds and perhaps even a larger fraction of the audience were still in the dress-circle and gallery. The lowest estimate of the number in the gallery is that five or six hundred people were in that portion of the house, and from among these were most of the three hundred deaths. The exit from the first balcony was down a single flight of stairs in the rear of the vestibule. Down these stairs the people came in scores, leaping and jumping in wild confusion. The way out from the upper gallery was down a short flight of stairs starting from the south wall of the building, thence by a short turn down a long flight against the same wall to the level of the balcony, and from this floor down a cased flight into Was.h.i.+ngton street. The main floor and first balcony were soon emptied through their respective exits, but for the five or six hundred panic-stricken gallery spectators to pa.s.s safely through the tortuous pa.s.sage described was next to an impossibility. Every indication points to the belief that, suffocated by the smoke forced down like a wall from the roof, the ma.s.s of those in the upper gallery thronged about the entrance to the stairs and were either blocked there so as to make exit impossible, or were unable even to make the attempt to escape, and sank down, one upon the other, to fall in a ma.s.s into the horrible pit under the vestibule when the supports of the gallery were burned away. Those near the entrance of the stairs were, probably, the only ones who were able to escape from this terrible slaughter-pen. There was comparatively little outcry here, and this again would seem to indicate that suffocation had intervened to numb the sensibilities of the hundreds to whom death was to come by fire.

As soon as the flames reached the rear of the theatre, near the entrances, where the hundreds of people were contending wildly, the horror of the scene was increased tenfold. Some leaped madly from the gallery upon the orchestra chairs, and only a few were sufficiently self-possessed to lower themselves by the railings. One man escaped by the small window at the head of the gallery stairs, letting himself down upon the roof of the station-house. Another, who attempted the same escape, was suffocated or became insensible as he reached the window, and was seen sitting motionless there until swept away. A few lowered themselves from the second-story windows on the Flood's alley side. But the great ma.s.s stood helplessly blocked in. The smoke became unbearable, and the police and firemen who had been able to penetrate the crowd at all were obliged to retire. They seized as many of the paralyzed bodies as they could and dragged them into the street, pa.s.sing on their way out over piles of insensible men and boys.

Fifteen minutes after the fire broke out the interior of the theatre was wrapped in flames. Shortly after the roof fell in, and, at 11.45, a half an hour after the fire started, the broad east wall fell with a terrible crash. The few who had reached the first flight of stairs from the street were taken out and carried into the First Precinct Station-House. The crowd that had escaped from the theatre remained in the adjacent streets. Men without hats or coats, with clothing torn and faces bruised; women bonnetless and dishevelled, weeping convulsively--every face was a picture of woe and fright.

The crowd was quickly and largely augmented by the anxious throng of sight-seers, and to keep them within the proper limits required the efforts of nearly the entire reserved police force of the city. The Police Commissioners and Superintendent Campbell, and Inspector Waddy; the Chief of the Fire Department, Thomas F. Nevins, and Fire Marshal Keady, had been telegraphed for and came promptly to the scene of the conflagration, and did everything in their power to provide for the sufferers, for many had been brought out bruised and burned. The firemen had not fairly begun their labors before it became evident that it was impossible to save the theatre or any part of it; the entire attention of the force was therefore directed to the surrounding buildings, which meanwhile were seriously threatened.

Several small buildings on the opposite side of Flood's alley were partially destroyed, and at one time the First Precinct Station-House was in imminent danger. The fire was, however, confined to the theatre by the united exertions of the entire fire department. The interior decorations of the theatre were of such light and inflammable material that the fire was quite beyond their control, so far as the theatre was concerned, and the roof being equally light and inflammable, it required constant exertion to keep the fire from spreading.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLAUDE BURROUGHS. H. S. MURDOCH.]

At about three o'clock in the morning the fire had been nearly extinguished, and the major part of the throng of sight-seers had gone to their homes, ignorant of the fatal consequences of the conflagration.

The flames had subsided sufficiently to permit the firemen to make an investigation near the main entrance of the theatre. Chief Nevins pa.s.sed over the trembling floor of the hallway toward the inner doorway. Inside the doors the flooring had fallen in, leaving a deep pit of fire and flame, from which a dense smoke and steam ascended.

Here a sickening spectacle met his horrified gaze. Close up to the flaming furnace, and clinging to the splintered verge of the demolished flooring, was the body of a woman. Her hands clasped the frame-work of the door in a desperate grasp. She had fought hard for life. Evidently she would have escaped had not the flooring given way beneath her. All the clothing was burnt off, and the features were so blackened that she was unrecognizable, and the body was removed to the Morgue.

At 4 o'clock in the morning the flames were put out, and the heap of debris was black and cold. From the vestibule platform the firemen saw a most horrible spectacle. The mound that had at first appeared to be simply a heap of ashes proved to be almost wholly composed of human bodies. Heads, arms, legs, shoulders, shoes, and here and there entire human remains protruded through the surface of the mound. Policemen and firemen hesitated for a moment before leaping down upon the sickening heap. An inclined plane of plain deal boards was hastily constructed to reach from the tender vestibule platform to the pit, and upon this a ladder was rested. Upon the ladder the men went to and fro. Upon the plane, coffins were hauled up and down. At first the firemen lifted the bodies from the debris, after having carefully dug around them and loosened them, and ten minutes was consumed in exhuming each body. But as it became apparent that there were scores and scores of human remains, and that a day, and perhaps a night, would end before the last corpse was taken out, less tender means were used in the operation, and the work a.s.sumed a more earnest and energetic character. Instead of five men, ten men set at work among the ruins, while on the vestibule platform a dozen st.u.r.dy firemen manned the short ropes by which the coffins, laden with human remains, were drawn up and dragged to the sidewalk. All the bodies were bent into horrid shapes, a.s.sumed in the struggles of death by suffocation and by burning. Nine out of ten of the corpses had an arm upraised and bent to s.h.i.+eld the face. Something was missing from every one. This one lacked a head or a foot, this a nose, an ear, or a hand, another its fingers or the crown of the skull. Very many broken limbs and protruding bones were found, and there were gashes in the upturned faces or fractures in the smooth-burned skulls, so that each corpse as it was dragged into the light was a new revelation of ghastliness. A few l.u.s.ty pulls disengaged each body. Two or three men seized its stiffened limbs and pressed them into a coffin, a pair of sharp-pointed tongs clutched the coffin, and the firemen overhead dragged it even with the street, where a cloth was thrown over the coffin, and it was dragged to the dead-wagons, which kept coming and going all day long.

Opera gla.s.ses, chains, studs, purses, and even watches were found under and on the bodies, and were thrown to one side upon a spread-out newspaper. Opposite the main entrance at the rear of the theatre other firemen and police officers delved in the ashes and brought forth corpse after corpse to be boxed and carried away to the Morgue, with the same rapidity as at the other door. At four o'clock, when a hundred and forty-seven bodies had been exhumed on the Was.h.i.+ngton street side, fifty-three had been carried from the alley-way in the rear. Moving among the firemen, either as spectators or supervisors of the ghastly work, were Chief Engineer Nevins, Police Commissioner Hurd, Fire Commissioner McLaughlin, a.s.sistant Engineer Farley, and ex-Police Superintendent Folk.

Surrounding the ruins, in Was.h.i.+ngton, Johnson and Adams streets, were throngs of people who stood close together on the sidewalks and left only room enough for one vehicle at a time to traverse the roadways.

The dead-wagons continually pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing, kept this pa.s.sage way clear, and were themselves the objects of the most interest.

During the entire day there were continual quarrels between the police officers and the over-curious people. Pickpockets--nearly all boys--were numerous, and were brought into the First Precinct station two at a time. In the station were coats, and hats, canes, shawls, bundles, valises filled with costumes, and numerous other articles taken from the ruins of the theatre.

When the first wagon, laden with the dead from the fire, halted in front of the Morgue, the gathering pressed forward and crushed its way between the wagon and the doorway. The police officers appealed to the people to be calm, and at length the bodies were taken into the building.

Daylight had not set in when the arrival of the dead bodies was announced. It was thought at first that the first was the remains of a young woman, but a vest displaying a watch and chain was revealed.

About nine o'clock the second body, that of a young man whose hands were clasped, and who wore a plain silver ring and a gutta percha ring, was received. Nicholas Kieley's remains were next, and the Rev.

Father Kieley, who wept as though his heart was broken, recognized his brother.

Upon the body of the fourth corpse was a gold open-faced watch, to which was attached a thin gold chain. On the back of the watch was the words, "A mother's gift." The fifth body was that of a stalwart man, whose hands were fixed over his face. Then there was a negro whose features were beyond recognition. Following was a body whose head had been nearly consumed, and next one whose arms had been burned away. On this man was a bright gold collar b.u.t.ton. Then there were the remains of a young woman. The limbs were drawn up, the body was twisted, and the features could not be recognized.

The remains of a boy about fourteen years of age were next carried in.

A man with a checked s.h.i.+rt was put at his side. The bodies of three young boys and three girls were next received. On one of the bodies was a hunting-case silver watch, 76,744, with a gold chain and a piece of the h.e.l.l Gate telegraphic wire as a charm. The timepiece was in good order and marked the correct time.

Before 3 o'clock seventy-eight bodies were strewn about in the Morgue, and a long line of men and women were constantly pa.s.sing in and out of the building. Nearly every person had permits from the Coroner's office, and the women visitors were in the majority.

A most shameful and vulgar feature of the inroad upon the Morgue was the vast number of women who, through mere curiosity, insisted upon entering the building. Women who were naturally nervous and hysterical forced their way in and risked good clothing and head dress in their wild attempts to hover over the bodies. They began to sob and gesticulate long before they reached the hallway in which twenty-three blackened corpses were in line on the marble floor.

When the women reached this scene they shrieked as though bereft of all their kindred, but the majority of them were forced to admit that they knew no one among the dead. Occasionally some agonized mother or wife recognized the charred remains of a loved one, and the woman wept as only a woman can weep.

Keeper McGuire, who has witnessed much sorrow in his place, and who is supposed to have a heart of adamant, wiped tears from his eyes, and then tried to excuse himself by saying: "This is too much. I am almost unnerved."

Occasionally some plain, methodical person entered, and, through close searching, discovered one who was known to him. In a business-like way the discoverer pinned a card or a slip of paper, bearing the man's name, to what remained of the clothing. Young and giddy girls, who should have been chastised for their impudence, flaunted themselves in the presence of distressed visitors, and seemed to enjoy their trip through the Morgue.

On each side of the building is a yard, and there are many windows.

Small boys and stalwart men peered through these windows and indulged in expressions that were unseemly. This outside rabble became so unruly that an additional force of police was called upon to prevent a crush into the building.