Theatre Design & Technology - Feb 1972 - 5

Three major theatre catastrophes spanned the
nineteenth century in America: the burning of the
Theatre in Richmond in 1811, where 70 died; the
fire at Mrs. Conway's Theatre in Brooklyn in
1876, which killed 285; and the worst of the
theatre disasters, the Iroquois Theatre fire in
Chicago in 1903, where 602 perished. These
were the worst disasters of a century during which
hundreds of theatres were burned, many thousands of dollars worth of property were destroyed,
and well over a thousand spectators lost their
lives in theatres across the United States.
Such conflagrations were part of a general pattern of fire losses in America throughout the
nineteenth century. As the United States expanded
with frame buildings in towns and cities tossed
together in any kind of haphazard way, the volume
of destruction by fire expanded as well. By 1907,
the annual losses from fire in this country were
equal to the burning of all the structures on both
sides of a closely built-up street running from New
York to Chicago. 1
Such conditions were not peculiar to the United
States. Great theatres in Europe burned with the
same regularity as did their American counterparts
and with the same hideous loss of life: 80 died
when the Opera House in Nice burned on
March 23, 1881; the burning of the Ring Theatre
in Vienna took 386 lives on December 8, 1881;
70 were killed when the Opera Comique burned
in Paris on May 25, 1887; the Exeter Theatre in
that city in England burned on September, 5, 1887,
with 166 dead. 2
The theatres of the world seemed doomed to
flame. The Paris Opera had, in fact, been on fire
four times in just over one hundred years: in
1763,1781,1871, and 1873.3 1fsmall theatres
appeared rarely to burn in Europe, no such rule applied in the United States where a great many
small theatres took fire quite readily. In the hundred years prior to 1880, 26 theatres burned in
New York, 21 in San Francisco, 17 in Philadelphia, 11 in Boston, 9 in Cincinnati, 8 in New
Orleans, and 6 in Baltimore. 4
The average life of a theatre in Europe was
about twenty years; the life expectancy of a theatre in the United States was much less. Nothing
seemed sufficient to prevent accidental fires from
getting started, and, once the fire had begun, it
could only rarely be brought under control. In practically every case, however, the general public remained indifferent to its own safety, and those
theatres destroyed by fire were rebuilt, reopened,
and presumably refilled almost immediately.

THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

FEBRUARY, 1972

A few deaths now and again in a burning theatre seem to have been accepted as a matter of
course. Theatre-goers generally were aroused to
the risks they were taki ng only when the casualty
Iists became enormously long. Even these periods
of concern were usually relatively brief and tended
to flicker out a few weeks after the event. Theatre
managers, the men most directly responsible for
audience safety, were of course not bloodthirsty
monsters, eager to roast their patrons alive. They
were, however, trying to make a living in a business which was exceptionally precarious financially. When a choice had to be made between
keeping a dollar in hand and investing it to prevent
an accident which might occur, the decision seems
most often to have been to hold the dollar and
trust to luck. Fi res and Iike catastrophes were
things that happened to the other fellow. Any manager was more than willing to puff the safety of
his theatre. He might even be persuaded to do a
little something tangible toward actually making it
safe-provided the cost wasn't too great.
Management carelessness contributed to the
tragedy at the burni ng of the Theatre in Richmond,
Virginia, on the night of December 26, 1811. That
fire was unique in two respects: first, the occupants of the gallery escaped with their lives; second, the effect of the disaster on theatre audiences
allover the country was fairly long lasting.
The Richmond Theatre was not large. An audience of just over six hundred was a capacity
crowd. Records for ticket sales on the night of the
fire showed that seats had been sold for 518
adults and 80 children in the pit and boxes. In addition, there were 50 people in the gallery, this
portion of the audience made up of slaves, indentured servants, and freedmen. A separate entrance
to the gallery had been provided to keep these
people from mingling with their betters. That bit
of snobbery saved the Iives of the gallery audience
on the night of the fire for they had inadvertently
been provided with quick, easy access from their
part of the auditorium to the ::;treet. The other 598
members of the audience, seated in the pit and its
surrounding boxes, had to pass through one single
entrance to safety. Seventy of these people were
burned to death. 5
The direct cause of the fire was one of those
pieces of officious lunacy not seldom found backstage. A batten carrying two lighted lamps had
been lowered, and one of the lamps had been extinguished. Someone then decided that things
were not going along quickly enough. The Richmond
Standard for December 27, 181 1, reported that

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Feb 1972