The 19th century saw a spate of theatrical disasters that prompted both headlines and calls for legislation to make these popular venues for entertaining Victorian safer. Many theatres crammed their audiences in; although some seats might be numbered, meaning that only one person could sit in the seat marked with that number, limiting the audience to the designed number, in other cases, people might share seats, or even stand – and if not in a seat, they might be allowed to stand in the aisles or gangways. There was little national guidance or legislation to make management create safe environments; instead, local building regulations varied from place to place, resulting in a patchwork of regulations that were inconsistently enforced. Safety measures might also be poor or non-existence either out of a lack of awareness, or a desire to save money: so there were not always safety (fire-proof) curtains, or fire buckets or hydrants, or rails and safety barriers on stairways. The lack of such measures contributed to the series of horrific incidents that occurred over the course of the century.

One Tuesday in 1848, the Victoria Theatre in South London was the scene of one disaster, which resulted in the deaths of two boys. The theatre had been busy that afternoon, with many people queuing to get into the theatre prior to the show. Long before the play was due to start, the stairs became thronged with people, who became increasingly claustrophobic in the crowded conditions. Some needed fresh air, but couldn’t move, wedged in amongst other people. Some became bad-tempered, and in their attempts to get out, shoved others who fell down and were soon trampled on by those around them. The problems were most acute on the staircase landing. Two boys – 11-year-old William Phillips and 15-year-old John Castillo – died. William had suffocated due to being tightly wedged in between adults; John had been stunned by something heavy hitting his head, causing him to collapse to the floor, where he was then trampled on. It was found that the Victoria had no barrier or rail on the stairs, and it was soon announced that one would now be constructed. A horrific disaster also occurred in Sunderland in 1883, when a stampede at the Victoria Hall after a variety show resulted in the deaths of nearly 200 children.

Fire, or even the simple fear of fire, could also cause theatre tragedies. In Glasgow in 1884, and again in Gateshead eight years later, audience panics were behind disasters, in both cases because someone had shouted “fire”. In the Scottish case, James Turner was charged with culpable homicide after he shouted the word in the Star Theatre of Varieties, causing a stampede that killed seven people, and seriously injured another 14. Of course, fire was a real threat to these Victorian theatres, thanks to their tendency to be lit by gaslight.

In 1887, the Theatre Royal in Exeter was the scene of a particularly newsworthy disaster. It was packed with theatregoers for a production of Wilson Barrett’s melodrama Romany Rye on 5 September; however, when its gaslights set fire to some gauze backstage, people panicked; smoke filled the theatre, but the audience struggled to get out of the small number of exits from the gallery. As a result of the fire and the subsequent panic, 186 people died, and the theatre, which had been built over 60 years earlier, was destroyed. A public appeal was made for donations for the victims’ families, raising over £20,000; its longer-lasting impact was to increase calls for better safety measures to be introduced to theatres.

Worldwide issue
Of course, it was not just British theatres that were subject to fires and destruction – cases were reported from across Europe and further afield. On 5 December 1876, the Brooklyn Theatre in New York was destroyed by fire. Around 300 people died, although only some died as a result of the fire itself – many were killed after being crushed by other panicking theatregoers rushing for the theatre vestibule. Most of those who died were in the highest tier of seats, where families commonly sat together. Unfortunately, this area was served by just one stairway, which rapidly became both stiflingly hot and smoky. One press report noted: ‘Amid the shrieks of the women and the curses of the men, a rush was made for the door. It was all in vain that a few men, more self-possessed than others, endeavoured to calm the fears of the affrighted crowd.’ Horribly, it was said that men, women and children were all huddled together ‘in one writhing, shrieking mass…cries of despair and shrieks of agony rent the air on all sides.’ Another paper noted that ‘everyone seemed intent upon saving himself, regardless of what might befall anybody else. It was the law of self-preservation asserting itself in selfish struggles to escape.’

In December 1881, the Ringtheater in Vienna was also destroyed by fire, in a disaster that killed over 400 people, who were all about to see a performance of The Tales of Hoffman, by Offenbach. A former city Burgomaster, Dr Newald, was later charged in relation to the fire but acquitted. Ten years later, there was a fire at a theatre in Philadelphia; six people died at the scene, with another five later dying as a result of their injuries; and in 1897, a further fire took place in Paris, killing 124.

Safety measures
Closer to home, in September 1896, the People’s Palace in Aberdeen was burned to the ground by a fire within two hours of it starting; it was caused by a gas jet setting fire to scenery on the stage. Although the theatre was rebuilt, at a cost to its owners of £15,000, legal action was still continuing three years after the disaster, when Mrs Elizabeth Littlejohn, a widow, took action against the proprietors and lessees of the theatre, the Livermore Brothers, for £500. Her 13-year-old son, James Fraser, had gone to the Palace that night, and had been severely burnt when he tried to escape the fire. He died later, at the Royal Infirmary. Mrs Littlejohn argued that the gas jet causing the fire had been defective, and that there weren’t enough men employed to look after the lighting arrangements in the theatre. In addition, there was no fire-proof curtain by the stage, which could have helped cut off the stage from the auditorium. Neither were there enough hydrants, hosepipes or fire buckets, and the passages, staircases and exits were too few and too narrow. The case showed the common problems of Victorian theatres; they were built on the cheap, or for an earlier time; they could not safely accommodate a swell of Victorians to whom a theatre trip was a popular diversion. Safety measures cost money, and so might not be implemented properly or sufficiently; some proprietors took the risk that saving money was more important than improving safety.

When theatres were the locations for disasters, a call for change would inevitably follow. After the Vienna Ringtheater fire, for example, a law was passed regarding the provision of safety curtains and fireproofing in theatres. However, in England, following the Exeter theatre disaster, one newspaper was critical of the calls for legislation that inevitably followed theatrical disasters, as it could lead to rushed laws that might hinder affairs rather than help them. The Edinburgh Evening News noted that the Exeter fire ‘made it imperative that the Home Secretary should try his hand at theatrical legislation next session’, and that the disaster was so fresh in the minds of both parliament and public that it would act as a warning to other theatre managers to get their house in order. One public figure, in particular, called for action after Exeter; this was Captain Sir Eyre Massey Shaw (1828-1908), the superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment, and then Chief Officer of its successor, the London Fire Brigade. Captain Shaw, as he was commonly known, called for every theatre to be licensed to accommodate a set number of people, and if one was examined and found to have more people than it was licensed to hold, it should be subject to a fine. The Edinburgh paper backed Captain Shaw’s suggestion, because he was such a ‘well-known authority on the best means of securing the safety of the public from fires in theatres’.

The localised ‘systems’ of legislation continued although a restructuring of local administration did increase standardisation somewhat. From 1888, London County Council took over the responsibility of registering public entertainment premises, and granting licences, doing so through its Theatres and Music Halls Committee. Each November, the committee heard new applications for licences, and throughout the year, it would grant licence renewals. The granting of such licences was dependent, among other things, on an annual inspection by the city architect, chief engineer, and chief officer of the Fire Brigade, who would offer their opinions on the theatre’s structure, how it had been maintained, and how safe it was in terms of fire prevention; the focus of the committee was clearly on public safety (see here for more information).

In 1908, though, the Theatres and Music Halls Committee of London County Council noted that due to recent incidents in local theatres and other places of public entertainment, ‘it had felt it its duty to send to all licensees of premises licensed by the council a circular suggesting the necessity for taking special precautions to secure the safety of the audience whenever such entertainments were held.’ But this circular had no legal standing; indeed, the committee was frustrated by the fact that the law, as it stood, did not allow them to take any steps to increase the safety of the fledgling picture houses and other entertainment premises that weren’t licensed by the council. Instead, all it could do was write to managers stressing the ‘grave responsibility’ they bore for preventing ‘danger to life from fire or panic.’

Elsewhere, other newly established county councils took on a similar role to London County Council and its Theatres and Music Halls Committee. When William Morton applied to renew his licence for the Hull Theatre Royal in 1903, he got into an argument with the Hull Licensing Committee, who wanted to know why he had not carried out the improvements they had previously requested to improve the theatre’s safety. Morton argued that a test had been carried out to see how quickly audiences could safely get out of the theatre, and it had only taken three minutes to empty. This meant, he believed, that the theatre ‘was as safe as it was possible to make it. A large amount of money had been spent in improving the building, and if he for one moment considered it unsafe, he would be the first to say, “Close it up altogether.”’ In this case, Morton was told to install two gangways in the gallery of the theatre to further improve safety, to get the changes approved by the City Architect – and then he could have his licence renewed. Morton did something right at the Theatre Royal, however; from being a loss-making establishment when he took it on in 1895, it became a successful, family-run theatre (both his son and son-in-law had roles there).

In Scotland, the last two decades of the 19th century saw safety regulations introduced into the building of new or improved theatres, and safety and fire prevention measures introduced to those theatres that already existed – Paul Maloney has a very informative section on the Scottish improvements made as a result of the disasters not only in Aberdeen and at the Star, but also in similar events at the Glasgow Theatre Royal in 1849, and at Dundee nearly 20 years later, in his book, Scotland and the Music Hall, 1850-1914 (Manchester University Press, 2003).

These new regulations were issued by city magistrates, who, in the 1890s, saw music hall licensing introduced along the same lines as the existing theatre legislation in terms of public safety and construction issues.

A series of Public Health Acts were also passed over the late 19th century and during the 20th century that gradually transferred power from local authorities to central government, thus improving the regularisation of standards (there is a fascinating article on this by Don Gillan at www.stagebeauty.net/th-tsafe2.html). But change was a while coming, and in the meantime, there continued to be disasters in theatres throughout the early 20th century, and it was only in the 1960s that safety precautions in theatres really started to become uniformly satisfactory.