No theaters were built on the modern plan until in the sixteenth century in France, and not until the seventeenth did any catastrophe worthy of record occur. When Shakespeare lived plays were generally produced in temporary structures, sometimes merely raised platforms in open squares, and it was after his time that scenic effects began to be amplified and the use of illuminants increased. Thus it was that dangers, both to players and auditors, were vastly increased.
In the Teatro Atarazanas, in Seville, Spain, many people were killed and injured at a fire in 1615. The first conflagration of this kind in England worth noting happened in 1672, when the Theater Royal, or Drury Lane, standing on the site of the playhouse in which "Mr. Bluebeard" was produced before it was brought to Chicago, was burned to the ground. Sixty other buildings were destroyed, but no loss of life is recorded.
Two hundred and ten people lost their lives and the whole Castle of Amalienborg, in Copenhagen, was laid in ashes in 1689 from a rocket that ignited the scenery in the opera house. Eighteen persons perished at the theater in the Kaizersgracht, Amsterdam, in 1772, and six years later the Teatro Colisseo, at Saragossa, Spain, went up in flames and seventy-seven lives were lost. The governor of the province was among the victims. Twenty players were suffocated in the burning of the Palais Royal in Paris in 1781.
In the nineteenth century there were twelve theater fires marked by great loss of life, and the first of these occurred in the United States. At Richmond, on the day after Christmas in 1811, a benefit performance of "Agnes and Raymond, or the Bleeding Nun," was being given, and the theater was filled with a wealthy and fashionable audience. The governor of Virginia, George W. Smith, ex-United States Senator Venable, and other prominent persons were in the audience and were numbered among the seventy victims. The last act was on when the careless hoisting of a stage chandelier with lighted candles set fire to the scenery. Most of those killed met death in the jam at the doors.
The Lehman Theater and circus in St. Petersburg was the scene of a fire in 1836, in which 800 people perished. A stage lamp hung high ignited the roof, a panic ensued, and there was such a mad rush that most of the people slew each other trying to get out. Those not trampled to death were incinerated by the fire that rapidly enveloped the temporary wooden building.
A lighted lamp, upset in a wing, caused a stampede in the Royal Theater, Quebec, June 12, 1846, and 100 people were either burned or crushed into lifelessness. The exits were poor and the playhouse was built of combustible material. Less than a year later the Grand Ducal Theater at Carlsruhe, Baden, Germany, was destroyed by a fire, due to the careless lighting of the gas in the grand ducal box. Most of the 150 victims were suffocated. Between fifty and one hundred people met a fiery death in the Teatro degli Aquidotti at Leghorn, Italy, June 7, 1857. Fireworks were being used on the stage and a rocket set fire to the scenery.
One of the most serious fires from the standpoint of loss of life was that in the Jesuit church of Santiago, South America, in 1863. Fire broke out in the building during service. A panic started and the efforts of the priests to calm the immense crowd and lead them quietly from the edifice were vain. The few doors became jammed with a struggling mass of men, women and children. The next day 2,000 bodies were taken from the church, most of them suffocated or trampled to death.
The Brooklyn theater fire was long memorable in this country. Songs, funeral marches and poems without number were written commemorating the sad event. Vastly different from the Iroquois horror, most of the victims of the Brooklyn theater were burned beyond recognition. At Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn there now stands a marble shaft to the unidentified victims of the holocaust.
Kate Claxton was playing "The Two Orphans" at Conway's Theater in Brooklyn on the night of Dec. 5, 1876. In the last scene of the last act Miss Claxton, as Louise, the poor blind girl, had just lain down on her pallet of straw, when she saw above her in the flies a tiny flame. An actor of the name of Murdoch, on the stage with her, saw it about the same time, and was so excited that he began to stammer his lines. Miss Claxton tried to reassure him and partly succeeded.
Then the audience realized that the theater was on fire, and a movement began. The star, with Mr. Murdoch and Mrs. Farren, joined hands, walked to the footlights and begged the audience to go out in an orderly manner. "You see, we are between you and the fire," said Miss Claxton. The people were proceeding quietly, when a man's voice shouted, "It is time to be out of this," and every one seemed seized with a frenzy. The main entrance doors opened inwardly, and there was such a jam that these could not be manipulated.