Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1876-12-16
THE BROOKLY CALAMITY.
Bodies Still Being Taken from the
Ruins

{ Horrible scenes at the MOrgues
! A Police OiIleer's Vivid Description 0
the Disaster.
! NEW YoRK, Dec. THE dimen
: sions Of the awful calamity which hai
befallen the city of Brooklyn IN the
: destruction of its principal theatre BY
fire and the consequent loss oflife, ha,
! not yet been realized. Enough ii
| known, however. to make it certain
that the catastrophe ranks among the
most fatal of the kind ever recorded
, According to the statementofal parties
: who profess to know anything as to
! the origin of the fire it began on the
, stage. The business manager, Mr.
Rogers, says that a piece of canvass
out of which the trees, etc., are made,
, was broken from its fastenings and
hung from the flies" Immediately
over one of the border lights near the
centre of the stage. The canvass had
to crackle, and the carpenter was di-
and remove the dangerous object. He
could barely reach it with his hand,
and as be drew it hastily up, the rapid
motion through the air of the half-ig-
nited and highly infamable canvass
caused it to burst into flames, which
rapidly spread to adjoining material
equally susceptible, and all efforts to
extinguish the flames were abortive,
and the carpenter had to retire to save
his own life.
THE SCENE IN THE GALLERY
after the alarm was raised is described
as something horrible even to contem-
plate. Until noon to day 315 bodies
had been recovered. Of these SO are
identified, some by remnants Of cloth
ing remaining, others by watches,
chains and such articles, and butfew by
features. The two actors, Claude Bur-
roughs and Harry S. Murdoch, are
among the identified. What are ac-
cepted as the bodies of the actors are
simply two black cinders. Around the
trunk of one was a sooted and seorehed
buckskin undershirt, and beside the
other was piece of braid, apparently
portions Of stage dress.
THE SEARCH IN THE AUDITORIUM.
! u
will be set to work to clear away all
the wreck in the auditorium. Hither-
to their labors have been confined to
the place formerly occupied by the
lobby and stage. Its feared that when
careful search is made in the audito-
rum the bodies of good many men,
who leaped in their frenzy from the
galleries, will be discovered. The
police allow no person to enter within
the walls of the theater, with the ex-
ception of the men engaged in the
search for the dead. The small parts
of the ceilings and floors of the theater
yet remaining are in an unsafe condi-
ton.
THE NUMBER IN THE THEATER.
A. M. Palmer one of the lessees of
the theater, gives the following state
ment of the numbers of persons in
the theater Tuesday evening: 405 per-
sons in the upper gallery; 300 persons
in the parquette; q actors speaking
people 70 supernumeries; 10 stage
hands; II musicians; total, 118, or in
cluding dressers and other subordi-
mates IN all, abou 150 persons.
FAULTY CONSTRUCTION.
A fault in the construction of the
burned building and to which there is
reason to believe the dreadful loss of
life in the gallery is in large measure
attributable, was the use of paint
ed cloth for ceiling. The canvass
caught easily and burned rapidly. OF
course the flames followed it to the
ventilation at the top, making it fun
mel of fire right over the heads of the
people in the gallery. 1t seems proba-
Bile that the smoke and fire in the
midst of which they were thus placed,
destroyed the lives of many persons
might else have escaped even by the
inadequate stairway provided for them.
The evidence of this officer is the
clearest description of the terrible
struggle by the audience to escape
from the burning building which has
yet been.
THE MORGUE.
There was even larger crowd around
the Morgue this evening than yester-
day. A surging mass of people occu-
pied the sidewalk in front Of the dead
house, and stretched into the middle
of the street, and men and boys clam
bered upon fences and wagons in the
neighborhood. Yesterday the people
who congregated in the neighborhood
of this building were orderly and quiet.
day there was spirit of levity per-
ceptible. The fire was an event two
days old. No permits of admisson
we're demanded of those persons who
could satisfy the officers that they had
lost friends or relatives by the fire.
They were allowed to enter from time
to time, passing in the front door and
through q room on the right hand
which contained about thirty bodies
living on the floor, none identified, and
so on through the smaller room at the
farther end of the building back to
the left hand room, in which some of
the corpses were lying on marble
slabs and tables in the center, Upon
such bits of clothing as remain on the
bodies numbers written hastily with
lead pencils on bits of paper have been
pinned, and when the body has been
recognized, the name and address are
added to the number. Then, upon re-
ceipt of the COroner's permission, the
corpse is placed in plain deal coffin
and driven to the address given by the
persons WHO nave Cidlucu lIs hOiO
are very few indentiications however.
1t is impossible that there can be
many. The features are for the most
part unrecognizable. Trinkets and
such things were many of them lost
in the crowd, and the clothing has
been either&all destroyed or burned
into mere rags.
: THE IMPROVED DEAD-HoUsE.
At Adams street morgue, formerly
known as the old Foulton market, the
scene was horrible in the extreme.
On the floor lay large number of
charred bodies, but in many instances
) it was impossible to tell whether they
T had formerly been male or female, hu-
; man or animal. In some cases the
, mass was only about handful of
! chared bones and flesh, without rem
! nant of clothing or other property that
, could possibly lead to Identification.
In other cases the clothing was either
torn from or burned off the bodies,
, leaving but the charred and blackened d
! remains, bodies they cannot be called.
! MY God, said one poor woman, as
. she gazed on charred mass of bones,
: that may be my boy, but who can
' prove il" Among the bodies not SO,
r badly burned was one ofa man who had
l.