The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1883-03-07
Disastrous Cennarrations.

According to Folsch and Warden, who
have maele extended special researches
every theater is doomed sooner or later
to be destroyed by fire, the average "life"
Of such building being something under
twenty-three years Opera houses, by
reason of the greater amount of superb
cial show which performances require,
are still more liable to destruction, and
it is worth noticing that in classical times
the rate of loss was quite as high, as il
instanced by the fact that the Circus
Maximus, in Rome, was destroyed by fire
thrice between the years q and "a.
From 1777 to 1880 there were burned,
252 theaters, with loss of 4,37O lives,
!, ,S99 other persons being seriously in
jured. OF these, five had not been
opened, while three had entered upon
their second century Of existence. Thir-
ty-seyen were burned twice, eight thrice,
four four times, and one-the National
Theater of Washington-five times On
an average nowadays thirteen theaters
are burned every year. The first quar-
ter of the year is naturally the most
fatal, and the Sth, 18th and 22d
are the most unlucky days of the
month. As rule, fires at theaters
break out in the middle of the week. OF
the 252 cases Just mentioned, in only
thirty six did the flames break out dur
ing the performance Sixty-one per cent.
of the theaters burned down are burned
down in the daytime Of course fires
that begin at night ara the most destruc-
tive of life; on the other hand, during
the performance, there are eyes to watch
for an outbreak, and hands to check it in
its earliest stages. Between 1910 and
1882, according to another set of sta
tistics, 523 theaters have fallen q prey to
the flames OF confagrations in the Old
World, the most terrible were those at
aragossa-l77S-1S7 lives; according to
second authority" 600, and, accord
ing to third, 1000; at Capo d'Istria, in
1874, 1000; at st. Petersburg, in 1886,
500, or, according to the Russian papers,
5000; at Canton, in 1S45, ], ,760 and ], 700
wounded; at Carlsruhe, in 1S47, 63 and
200 wounded; at Leghorn, in 1857, 100,
and 200 wounded. The discrepancies
between the various statements show the
difficulty of obtaining anything like a
trustworthy body of statistics. In recent
years the two great catastrophes have
been those of Nice and Vienna. At
Nice, on the 2Sd of March, 1881, the
Italian Opera House was burned, sixty
one lives being lost, and at Vienna, on
the 9Th OF december, 1881, the Ring
Theater was destroyed, 3S4 people per-
ishing in the flames. At least partial
justice was done in this case by the con-
viction of the manager and two en-
ployes of contributDry negligence, their
sentence to brief terms Of imprisonment
f6ur and eight months. Compensation
to the survivors was provided for in the
sentence, but, as the machinists were PEN
niless, and the manager had loss all his
property, the order was Intellectual. A
memorial chapel has been erected on the
site of the theater. Of the American
"horrors" one of the earliest and for
many years the most terrible, was the
burning of the theater at Richmond, Va,
December 26, 1911, when sixty-seyen
persons were killed, including Governor
G. w. Smith, while many Others were
seriously injured. June II, 1876, the
old Chateau ST Louis, At Quebec, which
had been converted into theater, was
set on fire by an exploding lamp, when
forty-si persons lost their lives. But by
far the most fatal of all theater fires in
the New World was that of December 5,
1886, when by the destruction of the
Brooklyn Theater 295 lives were lost
N. y World. E-. sIfs -e.