The Express.
London, England, 1858-12-29 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DEC. 29.

Title horrible affair at the Victoria Theatre is one
of the most frightful results on record of • pa•le
tenor suddenly seizing a densely packed crowd in •
cootined locality. The general outline of the facts
seems clear enough. There had been a crowded
morning performance, commencing at one o'clock.
The management, with creditable foresight,
had prepared for the arrival of the visitors to
the evening performance before those of the
morning had left the house. They had ac-
cordingly closed the door at the top of the
gallery stairs, so as to prevent either ingress or
'gram till the morning occupants of the gallery
should have cleared away. In order to facilitate
this operation a aide lobby leading down to the
boxes wee thrown open, the stream of people de-
sesodieg by which would have poured oat at the
principal entrance, without interfering with the
ascending crowd. As had been exposited, the
ga•aine mob of a Victoria Boxing-sight began
assembling very early at the doors. Long before
the morning performance wu over the gallery
entranse was besieged by an eager and ex-
cited crowd. It was not considered advisable
or seemsary to keep these people in the
street. They were admitted, and the gallery stair-
case, which does not appear to have been deficient
either in spaoe or strength, but which wee wholly
cut off from all available communication with any
other part of the house, became densely crammed
from the bottom to the top. No doubt the more kind
of thing has repeatedly occurred before. Now that
this frightful casualty has taken place, everybody
will be able to point out, and disposed it may be seri-
may te blame, the imprudence that could allow so
dense a crowd to be wedged for any length of time
in a space where accident must be IP likely, and
escape so impossible. It seems to have been a little
before five o'clock—while the people en the stain
were huddled together in a compact seat, rendered
denser every moment by fresh arrivals from below—
that an alum of Ire was raised in the upper part of
the staircase. The precise cause of this alarmism*
as yet doubtful ; it appears, however, to hare had
some ground in an escape, attended with a slight ex-
plosioo, of gas near one of the upper landings. Then
rose the fatal cry of " Fire!" wildly re-echoed in
every accent of agony and despair along the closely-
packed ranks of that helpless and panic-stricken
multitude. What follows can no more be described
than the crisis of • battle or the great horror of a ship-
wreck. The upper crowd precipitated themselves on
the lower ; the people about the doors, ignonat of
what was going ou above, continued, with the true
rut of • London mob for boisterous excitement, to
force their way upward and onward. The net result
was that whoa, after sea ten minutes or a quarter
of an hoar, the polies were enabled to clear • way to
the first leading, they found there a confused and
motionless heap of bruised and trampled human
bodies, among which no less than fifteen were
corpses.

inch, as far as they are yet known, were the lead-
ing facts of this very shocking affair, in whisk
it does not at present appear that any sae
was very greatly to blame. The manager name to
have been perfectly justified in taking the steps
be did for preventing the ingress of the evening,
before the ogress ee the morning, crowd. The
money taker and cheek taker would, as the event
shows, have doe. nen wisely by not allowing the
staircase to bees= thronged so long before the ter-
mination el the naming performance ; but nobody
who has ever witnessed the impatience of anus
Bull. on Boxing-night, even at theatres far more
select than the Victoria, will be at all inclined to eon.
meat harshly on the inability of these officials to resist
with proper firmness the pressure from without. The
fatal folly of these who inconsiderately raised, se
inconsiderately gave may to, the alarm of " pies'
is one which will never be eliminated from •
mind multitude eomprisiog among its ele-
ments, as every each multitude doss, the
servous, the hysteric•], and the rash. The rapid
ceatagion of panic is proverbial. Disciplined armies
give way to it. what then can be expected from a
ehanweellsesed and unordered mob? The doer-
keepers of the theatre seem to have done their duty
well. They prevented the groundless terror that
was so fatal on the thronged staircase from spreading
to the crowded house. Had they not bees vigilant
in guarding the enlists of the pit, the Sawn ripest
might have become general, and the oe•segssnes
tenfold worse than they were.

It doss not seem eiilierthat there was any very
noticeable &feet in the ocasstructioa of the staircase.
It was not a dark and narrow spiral, bat a eaccesaisa
of straight flights of steps of very tnlerabis bread*
provided with balustrades, lit with gas, sad wparatail
at no very long intervals by fairly spacious landing&