The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1893-06-10
A FALL TO DEATH.
Terrible Disaster at the Old
49,. Ford's Theater.
TWENTY -FOUR ARE DEAD.
Half a Hundred More Receive
Serious Injuries.
ARRAIGNING THE GOVERNMENT.

At Public Meeting to ~rovide Relief
for the AFFLICTED Families of tho Victims
Unclo Sam Is Charged with Indirect
Responsibility for the Catastrophe.
Mon Compelled to Work in Building
which Had Been Pronounced Unsafe
for Documents and Skeletons.
WASHINGTON, June 10-Another tragedy
less national in character, but involving
the loss Of many moro lives and much
more human suffering, has stained the
walls of the old Ford theater, Washington,
where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated
by J. Wilkes Booth in April, 1866. 1t is n
coincidence also, which will not escape at
tention that this second tragedy occurred
on the very day when the remains of the
great tragedian, whose life was so darkcncd
by his brothers crime that he never visited
Washington afterwards were being laid
to rest in Mount Auburn cemetery.
The house in which Lincoln died on the
other side of the street from the theater
where he was shot, and which is still SEN
timentally kept intact, as it was that fatal
night looked down yesterday upon a scene
of agony, excitement and grief which even
the great crime of 1885 could not parallel.
means lossened by the knowledge that
blunder, surely in this case almost worse
than n crime,' had caused the death of
more than twenty persons, and inflicted
maimings and injuries upon fifty or sixty
more,
The evidence as found in official records
appear conclusive that as long ago as 1885
this building, which the government pur-
chased after the assassination and used as
an army museum, was officially proclaimed
by congress an unsafe depository for even
the inanimatc skeletons, mummies and
books of the army national museum, for
which safer place of storage was provided
by nc of congress. But notwithstanding
the fact that in the public press and in con-
gress also continued attention was called
to the bulging walls of the building and
its darkness and gen eral unreliability and
insecurity, it continued to be used for the
offices of 500 government clerks of the pen
81 IN record division of the war office.
With refinement of discrimination,
however, between what could be replaced
and what could not be so easily supplied,
while the clerks were trusted in the un-
safe building, the original records were re-
tanned in tho substantial iireproof war
department building. So the comforting
official assurance is given that whilo
many clerks have been killed, the pension
records are all safe and uninjured.
The building collapsed in the midst OF
an i'll judged effort to remedy some of its
defects The moral of the disaster, il
there is any, is emphasized by the fact
that there arc known to be at least two
great government buildings-the printing
office and the Winder building annex of
the war rdepartment-each containing more
employes than were Gagged in the Ford 8
theater death trap, which are in an equally
dangerous condition. -,
The hour of the disaster was Very shortly
after the departments had settled down
for business. The workmen whose opera
tlons under the building were the imme-
diate cause of the catastrophe, had been
tinkering upon it for two hours or more
Half IN hour earlier and few lives would
have been lost.