Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1888-04-20
GORED AND BURNED.
Many Women and Children Killed
at a Mexican Bull light.

Sunday afternoon about forty-five min
utes past four o'clock the bull-ring at CelaYa,
Mexico, was crowded with spectators of the
great national sport. The company Of bull
fighters from Leon was still playing with
the first bull when a fire suddenly
broke out on the sunny side of the plaza.
A panic seized upon the vast assemblage, and
a frightfUl spectacle was the result. The
plaza was constructed Of wooden mastS,
reeds, etc, and 1t was due to this fact that
the majority of the people escaped with
out injury, being able to force an open
ing permitting exits at different points,
but many women and children jumped
from the top, a distance of POO to 800
feet and over one hundred of them
were seriously wounded. Many people were
killed and injured by the wild bulls, liberated
through the cOwardlce and crlmlnalIty OF
their attendants, who ripped and gOred wO-
and children they had been trained
to play with the picadOreS.
slight wind was blowing which famed
the flames steadily the mating burning with
a loud cracking noise. All at once the
bulls, which had been confined in stalls, were
deserted by the boys having them in charge,
broke INTO the arena and in making for the
plaza they tramped ON about two hundred
persons who were trying to find exits. Fire
seems to have maddened these brutes to
frightful degree, for they gOred several
women to death and drove others to climb up
again to the lower tiers and risk death
from suffocaton rather than contact with
the Infatuated beasts. Details show that
eighteen persons were killed outright. Six
ty-eight persons were very badly burned, and
ten of them fatally. Fifty persons, in escap-
ing, were knocked down and trampled upon
by the panic stricken thrOng, and all were
very seriously but not fatally injured. Among
the eighteen dead were two women, who
were first gored to death by the bulls and
their bodies afterward burned A despatch
to leading journal in the City of Mexico
says: The scenes in the neighborhood of
the bull ring were sickening beyond descrip-
ton. Women and children, craZed with
suffering from their burns, ran aimlessly
through the streets, and could scarcely be
Overtaken collected by their friends.
Several persons lost their reason from the
severe mental shocks to which they were
subjected.
''The fire was incendiary. In the Celaya
Jail were a number of prisoners, army de-
serters, etc, who had obtained permission
from the authorities to attend the bul-fight.
One of the deSerterS SurreptitiOuSly struck
a match and ignited one of the dry petate
mats, and i'll an instant the Sol side of
the ring was ablaZe. In the confusion
and excitement the prisoners succeeded
in making good their escape, taking
society of Celaya was in attendance.
There was unusual number of ladies
and children there and these, as often is the
case in such events, were the sufferers No man
lost his life. The helpless little ones and
their mothers, who would not desert their
palling catastrophe. 1t is the saddest
tragedy that has ever occurred In
the three centuries of the city's his
tory. Hundreds of fine villas and splen-
did residences contain persons who were
either wounded or made sick by the fire. and
the bull fight of Sunday is likely to be the
last affair of the kind there for many years
to Gomez