On the 6th of July, 1944, the circus came to Hartford, Connecticut. Excited residents crowded
into the big top to watch a performance unrivaled in that day and age: trained lions and tigers,
daredevil stunts, a menagerie of exotic creatures and a series of acrobatic marvels.
Around 7,000 people filed into the huge canvas enclosure to enjoy the show,
but before the afternoon's entertainment could draw to a close one of the worst
temporary building fires in US history would claim the lives of nearly 170 of the audience.
In the 1940s, circuses were rather different than they are today.
The Ringling Brothers Barnum And Bailey Circus was one of the biggest in the country.
It traveled all over the mainland United States by train, setting up and performing for a few days at
a time near major population centers. Its big top was among the biggest in the world at the time,
with capacity enough for 9,000 spectators around three parallel rings. The appearance of the circus
was, for many residents, a rare treat. The Second World War had been raging for several years,
and so chances for fun were few and far between.
Anyone who wanted to visit would have had to make use of rationed gasoline to get there,
and might have struggled to find time out from demanding work for the war effort.
Because many men were serving overseas it was mainly women and children in attendance that day.
The circus itself was also impacted by war. Resources were scarce and transport was often
disrupted: the movement of munitions and supplies for the war took priority over everything else.
In fact, the Ringling Brothers Barnum And Bailey Circus had planned to arrive in Hartford and be
set up by the afternoon of the 5th for their first show. Because of transport delays they
had to cancel this performance, something which many circus folk considered a bad omen
they must have breathed a sigh of relief when the evening show on the 5th of July
went off without a hitch. It wasn't until the next day that disaster would strike.
The 6th of July was a hot dry day, with temperatures inside the big top stifling.
Nevertheless people flooded into the circus - more than 7,000 of them. Crowds filtered
in through a small number of main entrances and took their seats on bleachers all around
the performance area. Nobody knows, even to this day, how the fire began.
It may have been deliberate arson or a discarded match or cigarette.
Whatever the cause, the flames began licking at the southern side of the tent not long after the
performance began. The fire resisted the attempts of ushers to put it out with buckets of water,
and spread from near the ground to the top of the canvas sidewall of the tent.
There it licked against the roof and began to spread with incredible speed.
The spread was, in fact, so rapid that many survivors describe it as a fireball or explosion.
While we don't know what caused the initial fire, we do know what caused it to spread so fast.
The big top was made of two types of canvas. The sidewalls were plain fabric
and had no fireproofing at all. The roof, on the other hand, was made of fireproof canvas...
but fireproof canvas which had been soaked in a mixture of paraffin and gasoline in order to
protect it against rain (a waterproofing process that was quite normal and accepted at the time).
A fire was not a totally unexpected possibility. In fact the circus had suffered several in the
past, although miraculously none had resulted in human fatalities.
A terrible fire had wiped out most of their animal menagerie just two years before,
and on another occasion a circus tent of theirs had burned to the ground... although
thankfully without a single casualty. Circus staff were aware of the possibility of fire.
To mitigate it, "seat men" were positioned under each set of bleachers, where there were also large
buckets of water. Whenever a dropped match or cigarette set a sidewall smoldering they
would quickly put it out. This precaution was, it's clear in retrospect, totally insufficient.
When it was just the sidewall burning the evacuation was relatively orderly.
The circus band quickly started playing "Stars And Stripes Forever" - a pre-agreed emergency
song which served the dual purpose of calming the crowd and alerting all circus staff that something
was wrong. Ushers moved people towards the exits as quickly as they could. Getting all 7,000 people
out seemed manageable... until the fire reached the roof and rippled across the paraffin-soaked
canvas in a giant fireball. The remaining audience members suddenly found themselves trapped under a
vast, burning sheet that threatened to collapse at any moment. Panic ensued.
You might think that a circus tent is a relatively easy building to escape from.
And many people did, indeed, manage to get to safety by crawling under the canvas sidewalls.
In this particular case, though, escape wasn't necessarily easy for everyone. Many people were
seated high up on bleachers and had to jump to the ground before they could squeeze under a sidewall.
The main exits quickly became horrifically crowded. There were only a few of these available;
several others were blocked by large metal tunnels which had been fed in from outside the tent
so that circus animals could be safely moved into the ring. These long metal cages would have been
removed just minutes later, but the fire developed so rapidly that there was no chance to do so.
Many people had to clamber bodily over the tunnels in order to get to safety.
Elsewhere, unsecured wooden seats became a chaotic jumble that tripped people trying
to escape. As the fire spread and burned through support ropes, poles began to fall.
Within a very short space of time the whole roof of the tent collapsed down onto anyone
who had not escaped. From the beginning of the fire until total destruction was less
than 10 minutes. By the time many fire engines arrived on the scene it was already too late.
The death toll recorded in the aftermath of the fire was 168 - a number which included one
recorded death to cover a collection of partial remains that could not be attributed to an
individual human. Three more people died of their injuries in the months which followed, and many
survivors bore both physical and psychological scars from the event for the rest of their lives.
Even taking place in wartime the Hartford Circus Fire was a shocking disaster.
These were ordinary people, many of them children,
who had been enjoying one of the very few forms of entertainment still available to them.
One death which particularly captured the attention of the public was that of "Little
Miss 1565", an eight-year-old victim who could not be positively identified and so was named for the
number on her mortuary tag. Her picture appeared in papers across the country, but it wasn't until
decades after the fire, in 1991, that she was finally identified as Eleanor Emily Cook,
and her remains were moved to a plot beside her brother, who had also died in the fire.
Another image also circulated widely after the tragedy - that of clown Emmett Kelly. He was
putting on his makeup when the fire began, and is pictured in his full costume hauling buckets
of water to damp down the flames. While many performers and circus staff were injured in the
fire, none were known to have died. Likewise the performing animals, a vital part of the circus,
mostly escaped unscathed. The lions had just been herded off stage when the fire began,
and so were saved with only minor burns. Had the incident begun just a few minutes earlier
the presence of panicking animals would have added considerably to the chaos of the evacuation,
and no doubt increased the already terrible human cost.
As it was, camels, zebras and elephants had to be led away from the circus lot into surrounding
streets to keep them from taking flight as fire engines arrived to put out the flames.
Naturally, an investigation followed the disaster. It was found that Hartford was
not lax when it came to fire safety. Indeed, they had recently invested hugely in installing
new fire escapes in the city. However, the circus seemed to have gone by under the radar.
There had never been a problem with fire there before (as far as Hartford officials knew)
and so it wasn't something they planned for. The big top had been inspected to ensure
that it was of sound construction, but had not been assessed for flammability or fire safety.
The cause of the fire was never officially determined.
Many circus folk were convinced it was arson, while others blamed a sparking spotlight. However,
multiple investigations concluded that the most likely cause was a dropped match or cigarette.
Several members of the circus were charged with involuntary manslaughter
and were given prison terms of up to five years apiece.
All of them were released early due to good behavior or for medical reasons.
The circus itself, while it did not accept responsibility, was eager to provide compensation,
and for almost 10 years willingly set aside all profits so that they could pay Hartford
whatever amount the city deemed fit to pass onto victims of the fire for their loss and suffering.
When the circus did go on to other performances it was with many modifications: local authorities
across the country now required proof that circus tents were fireproof, and threw their
weight behind enforcing smoking bans - something they'd never particularly cared about before.
Fire inspectors started routinely turning up to check on circuses,
even in cities where they never previously had. The fire, although terrible, had made
the country aware that such a disaster could happen and that steps were required to prevent it.
A permanent memorial to the disaster was put in place around the 50th anniversary of the fire.
A metal plaque marks where the center of the main ring once was, and a circle of trees outlines what
was the footprint of the big top. Current fire safety standards make it likely that, in the US
at least, this is the last memorial to the victims of a circus fire that will ever need to be built.