At 3:00pm on the 16th of June 1883 a children's
magic show began at Victoria Hall, a theater in Sunderland,
England. The venue was packed with children of
all ages - as many as 1,500 boys and girls had paid
a penny each to see the show.
As the entertainers took to the stage and the magic began,
none present in their seats knew that almost one
in seven of the audience would not leave the theatre building
alive.
Victoria Hall was built just over 10 years before the disaster.
It was an imposing brick building constructed
in a gothic style that was popular at the time.
The main auditorium housed a stage and three levels of seating:
the ground floor (or "pit"), the dress circle, and the gallery high above.
Due to its high capacity it quickly became a popular venue for public
meetings, religious gatherings, and all different
kinds of entertainment. Variety shows, theatrical performances,
and concerts all had their place at Victoria Hall.
A children's magic show was, thus, not at all an unusual offering for this venue.
This particular show was orchestrated by a travelling showbiz couple from out of
town: Mr and Mrs Fay.
Flyers distributed before the event boasted that there would be
conjuring, talking wax works, living marionettes,
and something known as the Great Ghost Illusion... among other wonders.
Additionally it was promised that every child entering the room
would stand the chance of receiving a handsome present
in the form of a small book or toy. Few young people who saw that flyer
could resist the lure of such a show. Hundreds of children delved into their
pocket money or pestered their parents for the penny they'd need to gain
admittance. When the Fays took to the stage on the
16th of june it was to a crowded and lively theatre.
The show itself went smoothly. The Fays had performed their magic
many times before and in many other venues,
delighting thousands of children across England.
Most shows had been without major incident
and (until the very end) this was no exception.
Indeed the most noteworthy thing that happened was almost comical:
a puff of smoke from one of the illusions didn't agree with some of the
kids in the front row, and caused one or two of them to be sick.
This aside the audience, almost entirely comprised of children with very few
adults present, was delighted by the performance.
As the final act concluded the Fays announced that children holding tickets
with certain numbers on them would be awarded a small prize as they
exited the theatre. At the same time they started throwing
handfuls of toys and sweets into the crowd.
This is when everything went wrong.
The Fays were throwing their treats into the ground floor seating area,
with none reaching the dress circle or gallery above.
The children seated in these upper areas were, quite naturally,
dismayed by this, and many left their seats
to run down to the ground floor and grab their share of prizes.
These children were excited - hyped up after an exhilarating show that for some
of them would have been far more dramatic than
anything they'd seen before. They were without adult supervision, and
they were young. For the most part their ages were
measured in single digits.
All these things being the case the children knew
no restraint. They charged down the stairs in a mass,
and as fast as they could. At the bottom of these stairs a swinging
door gave access to the ground floor auditorium.
On this day the door had been bolted into position
only partially open, leaving a gap of just 50 centimetres (or 20 inches)
through which these excitable children could pass.
This had been done, presumably, to allow tickets to be checked on the way into
the auditorium at the start of the show. Now
this narrow doorway became a death trap. As the children piled in it wasn't long
before one tripped and fell. More stumbled over
their fallen friend all while hundreds of other kids pressed
in from behind. Within the space of minutes fallen
children were stacked like cordwood in the doorway,
with the ones at the bottom of the pile being crushed by those above.
Some reports state that the pile of bodies in the corridor
reached 20 deep from floor to ceiling. This horrendous situation was worsened
by the fact that there was a turn in the staircase.
The children at the top could not see what was going on below,
and so continued to surge forwards, further crushing and suffocating those
trapped at the front.
William Codling Jr, a survivor of the crush,
later gave this particularly haunting statement:
"Soon we were most uncomfortably packed, but still going down.
"Suddenly, I felt that i was treading upon someone lying on the stairs, and I cried
"in horror to those behind, 'Keep back, keep back! There's someone down!'
"It was no use. I passed slowly over and onwards with the mass and before
"long I passed over others without emotion."
Few adults were present throughout this horror.
One of the first to become aware of what was happening was the theatre caretaker
Frederick Graham. This man did his best to haul children to safety through the
narrow opening, but found that they were packed
too tightly for him to be able to free them.
He instead ran up another staircase and led approximately 600 children to safety
through an alternative exit. With some of the pressure relieved, other
adults who arrived on the scene were able to start pulling children to safety.
The door itself was eventually wrenched from its hinges,
and within half an hour every child, alive
or dead, had been removed from the stairwell.
The survivors were rushed to hospital while the dead were laid out on the
pavement. There were a great many casualties, and
many were in terrible condition, having been
suffocated and crushed extensively. As news of the tragedy spread, parents
descended on the theater to look for their children.
Many only found what they were looking for in the rows of the dead.
Reports tell of at least one man who, having walked the length of these rows,
collapsed in tears, lamenting out loud that he had lost
not just one child but his entire family. Separately it was discovered that the
incident had claimed the lives of every single child in one class
at a local Sunday school.
In total 183 children were killed in the crush,
most from asphyxiation. The incident made headlines around the
country, and even reached the ears of reigning Queen Victoria.
The Queen sent along her condolences, along
with a hefty contribution to a fund that had been set up in the wake of the
disaster. This money was sufficient to pay for the
funerals of all 183 children, which took place
over the course of an entire week. Businesses in Sunderland remained shut
throughout this time as a mark of respect for the dead.
An inquest was held into the disaster, but it failed to find
anyone to blame. A second inquest, prompted by public outrage, had the same
result. Nobody knew who had bolted the door shut
to leave such a narrow gap, or who had failed to unbolt it after
tickets were taken. Despite the specter of the tragedy, the
theatre continued to stand and to operate for more than 50 years.
It would ultimately be destroyed by a German parachute mine
during World War II. The building, which by then was
considered both ugly and an unpleasant reminder of a
tragic disaster, wasn't badly missed by locals.
The Fays were criticized during the inquest, but were not blamed for the
disaster. Once the furore had died down they
continued to work as travelling entertainers,
although they never again put on a children's show,
and never returned to Sunderland.
A memorial to the victims was erected in Mowbray Park,
close to the site of Victoria Hall. The marble statue depicts a weeping
mother cradling the body of her child.
Over the years it has undergone several restorations and movements,
but it remains standing. You can find it in Mowbray Park,
protected from vandals by a glass canopy, the only visual reminder of the disaster
which took place nearby.
There is however one other legacy of the Victoria Hall stampede.
Robert Alexander Briggs, a young boy living in Sunderland
at the time of the disaster, was so shocked by the incident
that he resolved that no such thing should ever happen again.
Just eight years later, having studied and become an engineer,
he patented a special type of bolt that would keep a door secure from the
outside, but would always allow anyone inside the
building to escape. It was the first iteration of the crash
bar that we now see fitted to almost every
emergency exit in a public building.
This invention, over the many years it has been in use,
has saved not just hundreds of lives, but thousands. In that sense it is,
perhaps, the best possible tribute that anyone could make
to the children who died in Victoria Hall
on that day in 1883.