Year: 1876

Danger to Life in Theatres.


Public opinion will imperatively demand
| of the authorities and of the directors OF
enforce the necessity Of adequate provisions
for the safety Of lite in edifices to which the
people arc invited to witness dramatic en-
tertainments. There is no aspect in which
the event that led to the solemn ceremony
of yesterday is not heartrending and terri
| BILE: but it teaches US lesson Of the gravest
consequence. our timely improvement Of
which may save many thousands of lives in
the future. How many other theatres are
precisely like the Brooklyn Theatre in those
features which made the calamity sooner or
later inevitable, only depending for the date
OF its occurrence upon some trivial accident,
as the flap of loose curtain into the flame
of every rational creature and we are afraid
the conscientious answer must be that
there is not one theatre in our great cities
that is absolutely safe.


Theatres are, Of all edifices known to us,
those in which conhagrations are always
most imminent they arc precisely those in
which confagrations can do most harm by
the destruction of human life. All that
world behind the scenes is limbo of in
flammable material, and this material is
constantly arrayed, disposed, faunted in
contact with fire. 1t might almost be said
that it is miracle every night that n spec
tacular play is performed without the de-
or cf <ha Nv, Gra In hot
pasteboard world they fight battles, they
explode mines. they present ships and
houses on fire F; and all in a tnder box.
Scenery made of light wood, dried out till
it will catch a flame as readily as brim-
stone match, and saturated before it's desic-
cation by oil and turpentine; thousands of
square feet of this material exposed every
night with ranks of flaming gas jets only o
few inches distant, and blue fire and burn
ing wads scattered almost indiscriminately-
these are the common conditions. All this
is within four walls which may be said to
constitute a kiln, and within the same en-
closure, only few feet away, are seated in
joyous Inconsistencies of danger the pride
and hope and loved ones of a thousand
homes-fathers and mothers, with their
beautiful girls and treasured boys, all hilar-
ity as they sit in what in two minutes may
be disclosed as an inevitable death trap on
gigantic scale.


Is this danger of wholesale incineration
a necessary condition of the existence of the
theatre? Assuredly not. There are hardly
any given conditions of danger that archi-
tectural and engineering science together
cannot overcome in the construction of an
edifice, and the requirements of the theatre
do not present to the ingenuity of builders
really great obstacles. But to construct a
theatre in such way as would make it
scarcely possible to destroy the audience by
fire would be expensive, and as in our
country these edifices are always the prod
ucts Of private enterprise the element Of
cost is primary consideration. They are
put up cheaply-not TO be safe, but to be
made to pay. We would not be understood
as saying that any protector Of new enter
prise of this sort wantonly disregards the
safety of the public whose patronage he
counts upon; but he does not give this con-
sideration a sufficient Importance in his
scheme and even in so far as he considers
it he persuades himself, perhaps in the
presence of an inadequate purse, to meet
the case with we'll intended expedients that
never operate effectively.