Burning of the Brooklyn Theatre: The Ruins

Description

This engraving depicts the reduced ruins of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire, which devastated New York City on Tuesday night, December 5, 1876. The news report and image, published in the January 6, 1877, issue of The Illustrated London News, depicted the dramatic atmosphere of destruction and rescue efforts that followed the fire. The news text is as follows; " THE FIRE AT BROOKLYN THEATRE - What playgoer has not read and trembled at the details of the terrible fire and panic which threw New York into mourning on the night of Tuesday, Dec. 5 last? The melodrama of “The Two Orphans” had attracted about 900 persons to the Brooklyn Theatre on the night in question, and the fire caught the flies during the last act. Three hundred perished. The gallery contained 425 persons. These, in rushing down a narrow staircase, broke away the balustrade, and were precipitated in a heap to the cellar of the building, where most of them miserably perished of suffocation and fire. More than 200 bodies were found in one charred heap, hardly recognisable. This was in the lobby of the theatre, to which the gallery stairs descended. Two actors, Mr. Claude Burrows and Mr. H. S. Murdock, perished. In one case an entire family was lost, leaving the house absolutely vacant. In another case, one man who is lost leaves a family of eight, quite helpless. A nurse, who had been permitted to take two small children with her to the theatre, was found with them tightly clasped in her arms, all three burned to a cinder. The scenes at the two Morgues were indescribably horrible and affecting. Thousands of persons stood in a line before the doors eager to enter to identify friends who, it was feared, had perished. Within, there were as many as the rooms would hold—men, women, and children—bending over the charred remains in the hope of identifying some one. Fully one half of the entire number burned were, however, beyond recognition, and in some cases persons disputed the possession of a body. The bodies of the unrecognised victims had a public funeral on Saturday, Dec. 9. One hundred and three bodies were buried in a large circular grave on Battle-hill, in the Greenwood Cemetery, and there were also thirty private funerals. One thousand and one persons, in a large civic procession, escorted the hearses bearing the coffins. Buildings were generally draped with mourning emblems, and business was entirely suspended. A relief committee in New York reported 177 cases of destitution among the relatives of the victims. Large subscriptions were made for their benefit. A monument will be erected in Greenwood Cemetery. The bodies of Murdock and Burrows, the actors, who were burnt in the theatre, were buried on Sunday, the 10th ult., the theatrical profession attending."