The River Falls times. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1894-1933, 1896-06-02
AN AWFUL PANIC DURING THE
MOSCOW FESTIVITIES.
Hundreds of Thousands of People
Make Rush to Secure Food and
Presents. and at Least Thousand
Men, Women and Children Are
TrampIed to Death-Many Ladies
of High Rank Killed.
Copyright, by Associated Press.)

| the trampling to death of about 1000
| persons, including a woman who was
! delivered of a child during the excite
ment. In anticipation of the grand
holiday and popular banquet on the
| KhodijnSkOji plain, tens of thousands
of people began trooping toward the
| Petrovsky palace, in front of which the
| plain is situated, during the earliest
hours of the morning. Thousands
reached the ground the evening before
and camped there or in the immediate
vicinity during the night in order to
make sure of good positions.
By dawn the mass Of peasants about
the tables was really enormous and
they were all desperately hungry. some
of them having tasted, by choice of ne
costly, for nearly twenty-four hours.
The police did everything possible to
keep back the crowd, but suddenly the
masses, controlled by some ineXplica-
bic impulse or impatient to get at the
food, pressed forward and swept every
thing before them and overturned ta-
bles and benches as if made Of grass,
trampling hundreds under foot and
crushing the life out of a great number
of them. The old and the weak natur-
ally suffered most, and the poor woman
who gave birth to child during the
excitement was trampled to death.
The infant is believed to have shared
the fate of it's mother. The police and
military eventually succeeded in re-
storing order, carted away
The Dead and Injured,
and preparat tons were made to pro-
coed with the banquet as if nothing I'M
usual had happened. Among the dead
found on the plain were ladies' evident
~ Nf l. tr.11 i11 Il fsV1Ne
silk and adorned with the richest jew
els. The police barracks, to which the
bodies of the dead were taken by the
authorities, are besieged with persons
beseeching for news of friends and
relatives. The scenes at the barracks,
while the process of identification is
going on, are terrible in the extreme.
The remains of the dead will be con-
veyed during the course of the night
to the cemetery, where large morgue
is located
The disaster was due mainly to the
absence of the police who had not ar
rived so early i'll the morning at the
scene where the festivities We're sched-
uled to take place. Fully 100000 per-
sons of all grades of society had
gathered on the plain at the time. Only
about thousand attendants We're in
charge and they seemed unable to
control the mob. Hoping to lessen the
pressure of the assembled thousands,
all moving toward common center
they tossed the packages and presents
into the midst Of the crowd. This
seemingly precipitated the panic, since
a scramble to obtain possession of the
gifts ensued and the hollow piece of
ground near the center formed
a TTssRT
for the thousands. The buildings on
all sides of the plain, where, by the
way Napoleon concentrated his troops
before moving upon this city, are i'll
many cases being used as temporary
hospitals, and the soldiers have been
rendering great service in removing
the dead and caring for the wounded.
Further time must elapse before ac-
curate figures as to the number actu-
ally killed and the number of persons
who were victims Of the disaster, but
who are only sufferers from injuries,
is ascertained, but there is no doubt
that the official estimate of 1000 vic
tins cannot be far from right, although
one report places the number at $500.
The disaster occurred between 5 and 6
o'clock in the morning. 1t was intend
ed that the banquet should commence
before noon, but the immense thrOng
which had gathered around the sheds
where the mugs We're to be presented
and the food distributed, became so
dense that the attendants were over
powered and thrown to the ground in
the mad struggle which commenced
for food and the gifts, many of these
attendants being numbered among the
dead. The small force of police pres
ent made desperate attempts to con-
troll the people, but all their efforts
were futile, and men, women and chill
dren were trampled upon by hundreds,
The Skrieks and GrOans
of victims being heard affair." For a
time the officials in charge of the ban
Quet lost their heads entirely. The
crowds seemed to have gone mad with
rage and excitement, shouting and
cursing as they pressed onward over
a path strewn with dead and dying
human beings. Eventually. however,
the troops and firemen, who were hasti-
ly summoned, restored order to some
extent. and then began the work of
extricating the dead and injured, rang
ing them on the ground III groups of
ten, twenty and thirty at every humid
bred yards or SO, and diSpatching to
the city as speedily as possible in the
military transport wagons, furniture
vans, food wagons, etc, the injured,
giving preference at first to the wo-
men and children.
Some terrible, heart-rending scenes
were witnessed among the survivors,
whoswere seeking relatives among the
victims The latter were mostly peas
ants. and few of them Ii We as yet
been identified They We. lying in
ho hoe 1si0 tod