The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1883-06-23 00:00:00

FEARFUL CATASTROPHE AT
SUNDERLAND.

NEARLY TWO HUNDRED CHILDREN
KILLED.

On Saturday afternoon a most appalling catastrophe,
in which about 190 children were crushed or trampled
to death and 100 more injured, occurred at the
Victoria-ball, Sunderland, The disaster caused a most
profound sensation in the town, no fatality approach.
ing to its fearful dimensions having ever before taken
place in Sunderland,—We take the following account
of the calamity from The Times of Monday :

During the past week a public entertainer named
Fay, stated to be resident in Newcastle, had published
announcements of his intention to give a day perform-
ance of natural magic, ventriloquism, &c, in the
Victoria-hall, on Saturday afternoon. Mr. Fay visited
most of the schools in Sunderland with tht object of
securing patronage for the entertainment, and the
charge for admission of children was fixed as low as
one penny, BO as to give even the humblest in the
schools a chance of attending. The result was a very
large attendance in the cheap portions of the Victoria.
ball. This building has a double frontage, the main
façade being upon the Toward-road, and the other
facing Murton-street. The gable points to the
Borough-road. The building is an exceedingly hand-
some and capacious one, and well suited for popular
entertainments generally. It has been officially in-
spected and certified, and at one time it narrowly
escaped becoming the Town-ball of the borough.

The interior of the house may be roughly said to be
divided into three parts—the body of the hall, which
seats about 1,000 perscns ; the gallery, in which 1,500
persons have been packed, but which had sitting
accommodation for 1,100 only; and a spacious dress
circle. The entire house will hold about 3,500 persons.
The dress ci,cle, which is handsomely equipped, was
almost entirely ent pty. As a matter of fact the only
occupants were a woman and her child. The gallery
was crowded with children of tender age, and a very
great number of the same:description of visitors occu-
pied the pit also to overflowing. It is quite possible
that no fewer than 1,500 children were in the gallery
during the performance.
The entertainment proceeded smoothly and satisfac-
torily until just upon its close. The time that the
occurrence that led to such lamentable results had its
origin was, as nearly as can be ascertained, ten minutes
past five o'clock. The performance was just then
concluded, and what to the children was the most im-
portant part of the programme had commenced. Mr.
Fay had promised to make a distribution of toys to
the young people, and in fact the announcement under
the head of prizes promised that every child would
stand a chance of receiving a present. Thus when the
distribution commenced there was great excitement
among the young people both in the body of the hall
and the gallery. It is stated that Mr. Fay began to
scatter prizes to the youngsters in the body of the hall,
while those in the gallery had had no toys 2ent up to
them. This created great excitement among those up
alof t,who believed that they were running a great risk of
losing the chief inducement which had led them to visit
the entertainment.

The gallery is a noble amphitheatre, in every way
superior to the average accommodation of such por-
tions of ordinary places of entertainment. It is. ap-
proached by a aeries of steps and corridors, waich
have been contrived with a special view to prevent
blocks, rushee, and risks of falling in case of panic. The
flights between the street and the gallery are four in
number, and are sepaarated by short corridors and
broad stairheads, which gave resting places, and seem
admirably calculated for the purposes which we have
just named.
When the children in the gallery saw that the distri-
bution of prizes was about to begin, a report spread
among them that they were not going to get their
share of the good things. Some children, under this
belief, rose from their seats and hurried to the door.
They were followed by others, and in a few seconds a
stream of children had rushed through the folding
doors at the head of the gallery stairs and were in full
burst down to the bottom door, which leads to the
body of the hall, where the distribution of toys had
commenced. They passed down a flight of 25 steps,
turned to the left, gained the corridor at the entrance
to the dress-circle, and kept steadily on, finally rushing
down the flight of 14 steps leading to the door which
separates the gallery stairs from the lobby. This
door, for the convenience of the money-takers, was
only open to the extent of 18 inches, being fastened by
means of a bolt so as to pass only one person at a
time.

Whether any children got through the narrow open-
ing at this door or not we cannot tell, and we can
only surmise how the first block occurred. It is
probable, then, that two children attempted to
pass through the 18. inch outlet at once, that they
stuck in the narrow way, that others pressed upon
them from behind, and that perhaps a third child
was blocked in the opening. The place was then
impassable, and while it was so, the children, eight
or nine hundred strong, came bearing down from
the gallery behind them. Nothing stopped their
course. There was no panic, no alarm, no shout
of fire or thieves; it was simply a rush down to
gain the desired presents, without any controlling
force to regulate it, and ivithout any thought AB
to the consequence of the proceeding. The door pre-
vented the egress of any of the children from below,
and the hundreds coming fast from the corridors
above set up a block on the small landing between
the door and the flight of fourteen steps. It was here
the loss of life took place, and it is lamentable to think
of the small compass in which it occurred. Within
four yards of this spot there was absolute safety for
the children, and hundreds of children stood there in
comfort ; but at the bottom of the flight of stairs the
small open space intervening between it and the walls
and door was a veritable shambles. Children were
tumbled head over heels, one on the top of the other.
Shrieks and screams vibrated through the stair-
cases. More still pressed down from above. The
children at the bottom of the stairs got packed as it
were in a well. The heap of writhing and rolling
humanity became higher and higher until it rose above
the heads of those who were first jammed in the door-
way, and became a mass of struggling and dying chil-
dren over six feet in height. The fearful struggle in
which the children pulled and tore for bare life was
all within a space of about 12ft. square. The densely.
packed mass of humanity only rose to the fourth of
the fourteen steps leading to the next landing, and
these four steps, with the square landing-place below,
were the shambles on which all these victims met
their death.

In the meantime the audience in other parts of
.the
house were entirely ignorant of what
.was passing.
The noise of the screaming and the horrible light for
life going on among hundreds of children in the con-
fined space of the gallery stairs did not reach the
street, nor did it even reach the body of the hall. A
confused murmur, or what some called a roaring noise,
was all that was audible, and this gave no token of
what was going on within a score of yards of hundreds
of people, who would have been only too happy to
have rushed to the rescue. We believe that the °coil.
pants of the gallery were entirely children with the
exception of about 20 mothers who had come with
their youngsters. None of this little band of adults
had joined in the rush down the stairs, and thus there
was no one to help, guide, or direct any operations
for the clearance of the fatal block at the lower door.
The first to learn what had happened was Mr.
Frederick Graham, the manager of the hall. Mr.
Graham makes the following statement :

"It is ray custom to give an eye to the gallery stairs,
and to all the outlets when an audience is leaving the
house, and as I thought the entertainment was about
to close I went towards the gallery stairs. When I
approached the lower door I heard fearful screams,
groans, and noises' of struggling. I rushed to the
door and attempted to open it, and found I could not
do so, the bolt was in the socket, about 21t. from the
door frame, and the opening was jammed up nearly
as high as my head with the bodies of children. I
was horrified. After doing my utmost to push in I was
compelled to rush round by the dress circle, which I lost
no time in doing, spreading the alarm as I went. Two
or three gentlemen joined me, and we came out of the
dress circle door which opens upon the gallery stairs.
We found the door open and the window open. The
corridor between the dress circle door and the stairs
was filled with children. We had no difficulty in get-
ting through them, but when we turned to the steps
leading down to the lower gallery door the children
were massed in a body the whole of the way down the
steps, and at the bottom a sickening spectacle was
presented, the poor things being crowded together sft.
and 61t. high in a struggling heap. We pushed
our way through the steps, getting the children
pushed back and driven on to the corridor leading
to the dress circle, and then through the dress
circle lobby down to the open porch, We
lost no time in pushing through the children on the
steps, and reaching as near the bottom as we could
get. When we reached the fourth step from the bottom
we found the children packed in a mass from that place
over the whole of the landing below. There seemed
to be hundreds of them. At first I did not not think
that any were dead, but when we came to attempt re-
leasing them I discovered my mistake. Police-con-
stable No. 51 (Bewick) rendered me the greatest assis-
tance. I tried at first to take out children from the
thickest of the mass, but they were so tightly wedged
in that I could scarcely move them without risk of
further injury to their poor limbs, so I began by
picking out those little ones from the top who groaned,
moved their limbs, or showed other signs of life.
Two gentlemen, one named Itaine, quickly came to
my assistance, and we handed the injured children
through the window or the door to Bewick, who ran
with them to the porch of the building, and placed
them in the open air. We worked very hard, but the
children were lying wedged together eight deep, and it
was very difficult to get at them. I carried five or six
of the little ones to my own room, where I brought
them round, and my wife was successful in restoring
four or five. The children were mostly suffering from
suffocation, although many of them were much bruised.
The floor of the landing and the stairs were covered
with torn clothing, caps, shoes, &a.'

•
By about a quarter to six o'clock the news of the
disaster had spread in every direction, Among the
Ent to arrive at the spot were the medical men of
Sunderland. A strong force of pollee aa soon
gathered, but the time being a very difficult one at
which to take the guardians of the streets from their
duties, the force was by no means equal to the occa-
sion. A dense crowd speedily encompassed the
building.
In this juncture the Mayor, Alderman M'Kenzie,
and Councillor Howarth held a consultation, and it
was resolved to invoke the aid of the military force
stationed at the barracks. A request to this effect
was forwarded at once to the commander of the
garrison, and in a quarter of an hour a company of the
Durham Regiment, the old 68th, under the command
a Lieutenant Gales, was despatched to the ball.

Within the hall the work of rescuing the survivors
and of identifying and removing the dead was being
proceeded with, and the most heartrending scenes
were witnessed. As each child was extricated from
the heap it was examined by the medical men in
attendance, and if it was living steps for restoring the
injured little one to consciousness were at once taken.
The poor children pronounced to be dead were first
taken into the body of the hall, and laid in rows upon
the floor. Over 20 of those that had been carried
outside of the buildings for air were also found to be
dead, and presented a pitiable spectacle as they lay on
the ground. Other bodies, again were ranged in the
principal lobby, and the lobby of the dress.c,rcle was
also used for this purpose, while some were carried
direct from the wtithing heap of humanity as soon as
they were extricated to the house of Dr. John Potts,
who placed his residence at the service of the rescuers.
Fourteen were carried to the Palatine Hotel, where
they were medically attended.

A gentleman named Raine has communicated the
following statement :—" Hearing of the accident I at
once ran to the ball, where I found Mr. Graham and
Police-constable Bewick busy attempting to rescue the
children heaped up behind the gallery door. Mr.
Graham handed the children out to us, and we
placed those that we thought alive outside in the
open air on the flags. There seemed to be hundreds
of children lying on the landing behind the door, and it
was a most terrible sight. We all exerted ourselves
to the very utmost to get the poor things from the
door and give them some chance of being brought
round again. Several people rushed in, but when
they looked through the open space at the door and
saw the mass of children dying and dead, some fainted
and others were struck with horror and rushed out
again without giving any help. After the lapse of a
few minutes, however, from half-a-dozen to a dozen
people were got to work. We went round from the
dress circle, along a short corridor, and down the steps,
reaching most of the children from above, dragging
them out and passing them through the windows and
doors into the dress circle lobby. We tried to pull the
little fellows from amongst the writhing mass who
were most pressed down at the bottom of the heap,
but they were so terribly crushed that they failed to
get hold of them in such a way as to enable us to
release them without further injury. We were afraid,
in one or two cases, that we might pall the bodies to
pieces, so we went steadily to work, lifting off the
children from the top of the heap, and working down
to those at the bottom. By far the greater portion of
the children were dead, and therefore we gave a pre-
ference to any in the heap showing signs of life. Some
few moved, others gave vent to low groans, and these
were as expeditiously as possible got out and taken
either into the open lobby or into the body of the hall.
Hera they were arranged in rows, and the medical
men, who were quickly on the spot, attended them."

A spectator asserts that quite twenty children were
blocked up one above another in the aperture where
the door was open 24 inches. The sum of £4 17s. 6d.
had been taken in pennies, so that 1,170 children had
paid for admission to the gallery.
On Sunday morning all the bodies had been iden•
tified with one exception, that of a boy, aged about
seven years.