Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1883-06-22
TILE MORST YET.
over 200 children KILLED IN q Panic
In a RmIlIlr InmIl In England.

over 200 children HiIIed in q Panic
ina Public Hall in England.
disaster which seems to reach q climax
of horror among other late horrors Of it's
kind, occurred in the town Of Sunderland,
county Of Durham, England, last Saturday
night Victoria hail was filled on that even
ing with an audience Of children, several
thousand in number who gathered to SEQ an
entertainment by ooniurer. The children
wcro mostly under . years Of ago. The
show was over and tho body Of tho hall had
been cleared Of its occupants, when some
1900 Of the little ones came rushing down
stairs from tho gallery. At the top Of the
first flight Of stairs there was door which
opened only 20 inches and thus but one child
was permitted to pass through at a time. At
this point while the mass of children were
pushing forward, ono of them fell and was
unable to rise owing to tho others crowding
on her, and the result was that great num-
Der were pushed down, tramped on and suf-
located. The scene was terrible, and no ef-
fort could stop the mad rush of the afIrighted
children. They came on pell NELL, though
strangely without much shouting and soon
1SG of them were knocked down and sufTo-
Gated to death by others trampling upon
them. The greater number of the bodies
which were badly mangled from the tramp
ling, laid seven or eight deep. Many of the
victims and others who were not killed had
their clothing torn from their bodies.
The stairway from the gallery, at the top
landing of which occurred the pressure
which led to the accident, was a winding one
from five to six feet wide, and the gallery
door, through which the children were allow
ed to pass only one at a time, was fitted with
a bolt which lodged in a hole in the floor,
thus narrowing the passage way for the pur-
pose of facilitating the Undertaking. To
this circumstance the calamity is directly due.
Those who went to the rescue of the un-
fortunate sufferers found the work of remov-
ing the heap Of bruised, crushed and suifo-
Gated bodies no easy task. Two hundred
children were rescued from the pile who were
practically uninjured. Many others were
found in an unconscious condition, but of
these several were restored and Immediately
taken to their homes. Nearly all of those
who were dead with number whose wounds
were regarded as fatal, were laid out in the
main hall, where the local doctors in attend
auce used every effort to restore those in
whom a spark of life could be detected
Many of those who came to assist in remov-
ing the dead and rescuing the living were ut
terly overcome by the distressing sight of so
many dead and dying children.
The rescuers' first efforts were directed
toward reaching children who were appar-
jammed together that it was regarded as dan
gerous to drag them out of the helpless mass
lest the effort would result in pulling of the
limbs of the living children us well as mutt
lating the dead; they therefore proceeded
steadily and Systematically to lift off the top
most A few of those who were beneath had
survived, and their meanings and low cries
of pain could be distinctly heard amid the
excitement and cries of beroaved parents and
friends who were thronging the adjacent
streets.
The scene when the parents began to
throng the building and there recognize their
dead children--n some cases three in one
family-was painful beyond description.
Up to Wednesday morning the deaths from
this disaster had reached POP. Eighty-fve of
the victims were buried Tuesday. The streets
were crowded with sympathetic people, most
of whom were dressed in mourning The
church in which the funeral services were
held displayed black flag hung at half-mast
One hundred free graves were opened in one
cemetery for the reception of bodies of vic
Tins.