Hearts Afire

THE TRUE STORY OF THE FIRE.

The Brooklyn Theater Fire was a catastrophic theater fire that broke out on the evening of December 5, 1876 in the city of Brooklyn, New York, United States. The conflagration claimed the lives of at least 278 individuals, with some accounts reporting more than 300 dead. One hundred and three unidentified victims were interred in a common grave at Green-Wood Cemetery. An obelisk near the main entrance at Fifth Avenue and 25th Street marks the burial site. More than two dozen identified victims were interred individually in separate sections at the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Theater Fire ranks third in fatalities, among fires occurring in theaters and other public assembly buildings in the United States, falling behind the 1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire and the 1903 Iroquois Theater Fire.

On the night of December 5, 1876, Kate Claxton was playing Louise, the poor blind girl “The Two Orphans” at Conway’s Theater in Brooklyn, The last scene of the last act of the play was The Boat house scene, it covered three sides of the stage, with a canopy roof above, midway between the Floor and the roof of the stage. At the back were two great doors, which at the climax of the story were to be burst open by the police, coming to the rescue of the blind orphan. At the drop of the curtain on the last act the stage is usually crowded with 30 or 40 persons of all degrees of importance in the play. Miss Claxton had just lain down on a pallet of straw, when she saw above her in the flies a tiny flame. An actor named 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.

To this little group, came the earliest suspicion of impending disaster. They heard but did not see it. One of the streamers which cross the stage, and represent either "sky” or “ceiling,’’ as occasion may require— was blown violently against a gas jet, and quickly ignited. The men aloft as quickly cut away the burning piece, and it fell— alas! Not to the stage, as they anticipated, but upon the painted canvas roof of the “boat house,” and rapidly burned through. The warning which had been heard in the rustling of scene was confirmed by the blazing of the scenery. Those on the stage had the presence of mind to rush forward to the footlights and warn the audience of the danger. They then sought safety in flight. Miss Claxton and Mrs. Farren escaped by an underground passage to the box office.

Miss Kate Claxton relates her harrowing escape. The back entrance was by this time a perfect hell of fire. Miss Harrison, on my call, rushed from her room and darted by me into a little subterranean passage, which led from the stage under the floor to the box office in front of the house. No such passage exists in other theaters. It was designed by Mrs. Conway when the theater was built, so that she could readily communicate with her treasurer. I rapidly followed Miss Harrison, and it seemed as if the fire, swept by the draught, almost licked the clothes from our backs as we entered the passage. As we fled through it I remembered that it was closed at the other end by a door with a spring lock, and was usually kept closed, one of the ushers carrying the key. As I reached the flight of three or four steps leading up to the door my heart stood still, and I hesitated to try it. I thought it might not open. The door fortunately was open, and we were in a second inside the box office. With the strength of despair we burst the door open against the struggling throng, and in an instant were in their midst. We had yet some distance to go; the fire followed us fast, and there was still a crowd of excited people to pass through. We got into the crowd and dashed along, heedless that now and again we felt that we had trod upon a human being. Once I looked down and saw a human face, horribly distorted and burned. Oh, my God! It was a fearful sight. I shall never forget it. Afterward I saw the injured man taken out. He was horribly injured, and I think, must be dead. As soon as we got into the street we dashed into the police station. There a gentleman loaned me his overcoat, and after a short stay in the station we walked around home.”

Mr. Studley escaped by other by other means, but Mr. Murdoch, seeking his dressing room to save some valuables, perished. The large majority of those on the stage waiting for their entrances made rapid exits by the rear doors, except two or three scene shifters who heroically remained behind to aid others, and suffered burns that would prove fatal.

The ushers for the most part preserved their presence of mind and endeavored to enforce order among the rushing crowd, as did also the police in attendance. Mr. Rochfert, the head usher, broke open a small door at the farther end of the vestibule and increased the facilities of exit into the open air, which regularly consisted of two doors five feet wide, opening upon Washington Street. Mr. Rochfert also entered the auditorium and endeavored to quell the excitement, but without effect.

The gallery was filled mostly by young men and boys. The only means of escape, was by a separate, angular stairway. Here the panic was the worst. A few got out in the first rush. A jam occurred at the second landing above the lobby, and the staircase was blocked by a massive human wall. Some jumped over the stair rail, others dropped into the parquet. Eventually the stairs gave way and all fell into the lobby, the crushed and bleeding men and women and boys bound and wound into a solid mass, were suffocated by the weight and the smoke. Those who escaped this awful death, bruised and maimed, and with clothing torn, scarcely knowing how they came forth from the falling stairway.

A fire alarm had been immediately sent from the First Precinct Station-House, which is located next the theater, and a minute or two after a general alarm and also a call for the reserved force of all the precincts. But by the time the engines were in position and at work the fire was beyond control. The occupants of the orchestra chairs and parquet had had but little difficulty in making good their escape, but at least two-thirds and perhaps even a larger fraction of the audience were still in the dress-circle and gallery. The lowest estimate of the number in the gallery is that five or six hundred people were in that portion of the house, and from among these were most of the three hundred deaths. The exit from the first balcony was down a single flight of stairs in the rear of the vestibule. Down these stairs the people came in scores, leaping and jumping in wild confusion. The way out from the upper gallery was down a short flight of stairs starting from the south wall of the building, thence by a short turn down a long flight against the same wall to the level of the balcony, and from this floor down a cased flight into Washington Street. The main floor and first balcony were soon emptied through their respective exits, but for the five or six hundred panic-stricken gallery spectators to pass safely through the tortuous passage described was next to an impossibility. Every indication points to the belief that, suffocated by the smoke forced down like a wall from the roof, the mass of those in the upper gallery thronged about the entrance to the stairs and were either blocked there so as to make exit impossible, or were unable even to make the attempt to escape, and sank down, one upon the other, to fall in a mass into the horrible pit under the vestibule when the supports of the gallery were burned away. Those near the entrance of the stairs were, probably, the only ones who were able to escape from this terrible slaughter-pen. There was comparatively little outcry here, and this again would seem to indicate that suffocation had intervened to numb the sensibilities of the hundreds to whom death was to come by fire.

As soon as the flames reached the rear of the theater, near the entrances, where the hundreds of people were contending wildly, the horror of the scene was increased tenfold. Some leaped madly from the gallery upon the orchestra chairs, and only a few were sufficiently self-possessed to lower themselves by the railings. One man escaped by the small window at the head of the gallery stairs, letting himself down upon the roof of the station-house. Another, who attempted the same escape, was suffocated or became insensible as he reached the window, and was seen sitting motionless there until swept away. A few lowered themselves from the second-story windows on the Flood’s alley side. But the great mass stood helplessly blocked in. The smoke became unbearable, and the police and firemen who had been able to penetrate the crowd at all were obliged to retire. They seized as many of the paralyzed bodies as they could and dragged them into the street, passing on their way out over piles of insensible men and boys. Fifteen minutes after the fire broke out the interior of the theater was wrapped in flames. Shortly after the roof fell in, and, at 11.45, a half an hour after the fire started, the broad east wall fell with a terrible crash. The few who had reached the first flight of stairs from the street were taken out and carried into the First Precinct Station-House. The crowd that had escaped from the theater remained in the adjacent streets. Men without hats or coats, with clothing torn and faces bruised; women bonnet less and disheveled, weeping convulsively—every face was a picture of woe and fright.

The crowd was quickly and largely augmented by the anxious throng of sight-seers, and to keep them within the proper limits required the efforts of nearly the entire reserved police force of the city. The Police Commissioners and Superintendent Campbell, and Inspector Waddy; the Chief of the Fire Department, Thomas F. Nevins, and Fire Marshal Keady, had been telegraphed for and came promptly to the scene of the conflagration, and did everything in their power to provide for the sufferers, for many had been brought out bruised and burned. The firemen had not fairly begun their labors before it became evident that it was impossible to save the theater or any part of it; the entire attention of the force was therefore directed to the surrounding buildings, which meanwhile were seriously threatened. Several small buildings on the opposite side of Flood’s alley were partially destroyed, and at one time the First Precinct Station-House was in imminent danger. The fire was, however, confined to the theater by the united exertions of the entire fire department. The interior decorations of the theater were of such light and inflammable material that the fire was quite beyond their control, so far as the theater was concerned, and the roof being equally light and inflammable, it required constant exertion to keep the fire from spreading.

At about three o’clock in the morning the fire had been nearly extinguished, and the major part of the throng of sight-seers had gone to their homes, ignorant of the fatal consequences of the conflagration.

The flames had subsided sufficiently to permit the firemen to make an investigation near the main entrance of the theater. Chief Nevins passed over the trembling floor of the hallway toward the inner doorway. Inside the doors the flooring had fallen in, leaving a deep pit of fire and flame, from which a dense smoke and steam ascended. Here a sickening spectacle met his horrified gaze. Close up to the flaming furnace, and clinging to the splintered verge of the demolished flooring, was the body of a woman. Her hands clasped the frame-work of the door in a desperate grasp. She had fought hard for life. Evidently she would have escaped had not the flooring given way beneath her. All the clothing was burnt off, and the features were so blackened that she was unrecognizable, and the body was removed to the Morgue.

At 4 o’clock in the morning the flames were put out, and the heap of debris was black and cold. From the vestibule platform the firemen saw a most horrible spectacle. The mound that had at first appeared to be simply a heap of ashes proved to be almost wholly composed of human bodies. Heads, arms, legs, shoulders, shoes, and here and there entire human remains protruded through the surface of the mound. Policemen and firemen hesitated for a moment before leaping down upon the sickening heap. An inclined plane of plain deal boards was hastily constructed to reach from the tender vestibule platform to the pit, and upon this a ladder was rested. Upon the ladder the men went to and fro. Upon the plane, coffins were hauled up and down. At first the firemen lifted the bodies from the debris, after having carefully dug around them and loosened them, and ten minutes was consumed in exhuming each body. But as it became apparent that there were scores and scores of human remains, and that a day, and perhaps a night, would end before the last corpse was taken out, less tender means were used in the operation, and the work assumed a more earnest and energetic character. Instead of five men, ten men set at work among the ruins, while on the vestibule platform a dozen sturdy firemen manned the short ropes by which the coffins, laden with human remains, were drawn up and dragged to the sidewalk. All the bodies were bent into horrid shapes, assumed in the struggles of death by suffocation and by burning. Nine out of ten of the corpses had an arm upraised and bent to shield the face. Something was missing from every one. This one lacked a head or a foot, this a nose, an ear, or a hand, another its fingers or the crown of the skull. Very many broken limbs and protruding bones were found, and there were gashes in the upturned faces or fractures in the smooth-burned skulls, so that each corpse as it was dragged into the light was a new revelation of ghastliness. A few lusty pulls disengaged each body. Two or three men seized its stiffened limbs and pressed them into a coffin, a pair of sharp-pointed tongs clutched the coffin, and the firemen overhead dragged it even with the street, where a cloth was thrown over the coffin, and it was dragged to the dead-wagons, which kept coming and going all day long.

Opera glasses, chains, studs, purses, and even watches were found under and on the bodies, and were thrown to one side upon a spread-out newspaper. Opposite the main entrance at the rear of the theater other firemen and police officers delved in the ashes and brought forth corpse after corpse to be boxed and carried away to the Morgue, with the same rapidity as at the other door. At four o’clock, when a hundred and forty-seven bodies had been exhumed on the Washington street side, fifty-three had been carried from the alley-way in the rear. Moving among the firemen, either as spectators or supervisors of the ghastly work, were Chief Engineer Nevins, Police Commissioner Hurd, Fire Commissioner McLaughlin, Assistant Engineer Farley, and ex-Police Superintendent Folk.

Surrounding the ruins, in Washington, Johnson and Adams streets, were throngs of people who stood close together on the sidewalks and left only room enough for one vehicle at a time to traverse the roadways. The dead-wagons continually passing and re-passing, kept this passage way clear, and were themselves the objects of the most interest. During the entire day there were continual quarrels between the police officers and the over curious people. Pickpockets—nearly all boys—were numerous, and were brought into the First Precinct station two at a time. In the station were coats, and hats, canes, shawls, bundles, valises filled with costumes, and numerous other articles taken from the ruins of the theater.

When the first wagon, laden with the dead from the fire, halted in front of the Morgue, the gathering pressed forward and crushed its way between the wagon and the doorway. The police officers appealed to the people to be calm, and at length the bodies were taken into the building.

Daylight had not set in when the arrival of the dead bodies was announced. It was thought at first that the first was the remains of a young woman, but a vest displaying a watch and chain was revealed. About nine o’clock the second body, that of a young man whose hands were clasped, and who wore a plain silver ring and a gutta percha ring, was received. Nicholas Kieley’s remains were next, and the Rev. Father Kieley, who wept as though his heart was broken, recognized his brother.

Upon the body of the fourth corpse was a gold open-faced watch, to which was attached a thin gold chain. On the back of the watch was the words, “A mother’s gift.” The fifth body was that of a stalwart man, whose hands were fixed over his face. Then there was a black man whose features were beyond recognition. Following was a body whose head had been nearly consumed, and next one whose arms had been burned away. On this man was a bright gold collar button. Then there were the remains of a young woman. The limbs were drawn up, the body was twisted, and the features could not be recognized.

The remains of a boy about fourteen years of age were next carried in. A man with a checked shirt was put at his side. The bodies of three young boys and three girls were next received. On one of the bodies was a hunting-case silver watch, with a gold chain and a piece of the Hell Gate telegraphic wire as a charm. The timepiece was in good order and marked the correct time.

Before 3 o’clock seventy-eight bodies were strewn about in the Morgue, and a long line of men and women were constantly passing in and out of the building. Nearly every person had permits from the Coroner’s office, and the women visitors were in the majority.

A most shameful and vulgar feature of the inroad upon the Morgue was the vast number of women who, through mere curiosity, insisted upon entering the building. Women who were naturally nervous and hysterical forced their way in and risked good clothing and head dress in their wild attempts to hover over the bodies. They began to sob and gesticulate long before they reached the hallway in which twenty-three blackened corpses were in line on the marble floor.

When the women reached this scene they shrieked as though bereft of all their kindred, but the majority of them were forced to admit that they knew no one among the dead. Occasionally some agonized mother or wife recognized the charred remains of a loved one, and the woman wept as only a woman can weep.

Keeper McGuire, who has witnessed much sorrow in his place, and who is supposed to have a heart of adamant, wiped tears from his eyes, and then tried to excuse himself by saying: “This is too much. I am almost unnerved.”

Occasionally some plain, methodical person entered, and, through close searching, discovered one who was known to him. In a businesslike way the discoverer pinned a card or a slip of paper, bearing the man’s name, to what remained of the clothing. Young and giddy girls, who should have been chastised for their impudence, flaunted themselves in the presence of distressed visitors, and seemed to enjoy their trip through the Morgue.

On each side of the building is a yard, and there are many windows. Small boys and stalwart men peered through these windows and indulged in expressions that were unseemly. This outside rabble became so unruly that an additional force of police was called upon to prevent a crush into the building.

None of the bodies were put on the slabs. All were on the flooring. The faces were so blackened by the fire that they could not be recognized, and it was only through clothing or jewelry that any were identified. The undertakers of Brooklyn combined together and volunteered their services in behalf of the sorrow-stricken families. They were of very great assistance to the police in preventing professional mourners from robbing the dead. One woman recognized her brother when she discovered a stud in his shirt bosom. Another woman, with a small piece of cloth and a piece of shirt bosom, identified her husband, and saying, “He has $100 in his pockets,” put her hand in his vest pocket and took therefrom that amount.

The arms of nearly all the dead were fixed as though shielding their faces, and one woman had drawn her clothing over her face and clinched her hands above her forehead. Two young men were grappled together as though they had had a personal encounter in an attempt to escape from the theater. Others lay on their sides in the manner of persons who thus slumber. Their watch chains and other jewelry were beautifully bright, and the clothing of all was blackened through the fire.

In only about one-third of the cases were the limbs exposed through the torn and burned clothing. Uplifted hands, whose fingers were shining bones, bore golden rings, and shoeless feet glistened in their whiteness. The hair and whiskers were gone, and faces were terribly scarred. A few of the bodies were burned to a crisp, and these were put into rough pine boxes, and all hope for their identification was given up.

Until late in the afternoon, men, women, and children flocked to the Washington street station to tell of fathers, husbands, brothers, and children who had not returned to their homes since the evening previous. Hour by hour the list of missing persons increased in numbers until it comprised nearly 200 names. All who made inquiry for friends or relatives were necessarily disappointed, for the blackened, charred bodies were few of them in a condition to be identified. Strong men, who had kept up both heart and hope, broke down and sobbed like women when they learned their own flesh and blood might never be discovered from out of the scores of shapeless trunks that were being exhumed from the ruins. Women came in sobbing and went away convulsed with grief. The policemen themselves often surrendered their forced self-possession and sobbed aloud.

In the evening the work was continued by the aid of calcium lights. It was thought best to discontinue the removal of the bodies from the rear through Theater alley to Myrtle avenue. Sixty-seven in all had been taken out that way. The main entrance, with the ghastly burdens still regularly coming out of it, was thrown into bold relief. The burner and lantern had been knocked off the street lamp over the way, and a great flame of gas blazed and flared into the air, lighting up the scorched and splintered doorway and the upturned faces of the throng. A calcium light on the sidewalk near the door illumined the corridor to the point where the floor had broken, and there another was fixed whose rays shone directly into the deep pit in which the earlier search had discovered the horrible mass of charred human bodies.

This pit was the cellar of the main corridor, and its ruins were separated from the debris in the auditorium by the strong foundation wall that had borne the gallery columns. It was not until nine o’clock that this cellar, about twelve feet wide, and running through to the foundation wall on the alley side, was cleared. Over one hundred and fifty bodies had been removed from it.

Toward the rear fewer were found, and those were evidently not from the gallery, as fragments of kid gloves could be seen on the fingers of the blackened hands, some of which still clutched opera glasses. These bodies were more thoroughly calcined than those first found, and not unfrequently the firemen were able to put two or three into one box.

After dark the orders against admitting outsiders to the ruins were more strictly enforced. Among those admitted was the foreman of the Grand Jury, W.W. Shumway. A calcium light from the alley wall shone over the ruins of the auditorium, and here the firemen began work shortly after nine o’clock. In addition to the lime light, oil lamps with reflectors and lanterns were used.

In this fitful glare the firemen, their faces pallid from fatigue and hunger, toiled on without a word. The first body found in the auditorium was on the Theater alley side. Its position indicates that the victim had reached a window when he was struck down.

Some friends of Mr. Murdoch were very anxious that an early effort should be made to recover his body. His mother was expected to arrive in the city during the evening, he having sent for her a few days before. About nine o’clock a stream of water was put upon the ruins in the northeast corner to cool the immense pile of bricks under which the body was thought to lie.

The firemen were greatly impeded by the clouds of steam. They made their way from the southern end toward the stage. The broken wall lay in great lumps of brick and mortar. About halfway toward the stage shapeless human flesh was found crushed between two huge masses which had protected it from the flames that had consumed all the rest of the body. It was long before the bricks could be sufficiently cooled to admit the removal of this fragment. It was feared all the bodies in this part of the ruins had been similarly or more thoroughly consumed, owing to the intense heat from the inflammable stage fixtures.

The interior of the Adams Street Market presented at night a weirdly horrible sight. Disuse had made the place grimy. The gas fixtures had been removed, and candle light had to be used. The bodies were in rows that reached the entire length of the long apartment. On the breast of each was a lighted candle held in a small block of wood. Candles were also stuck on the hooks that had once been used to hang meat on, and lanterns helped to illuminate the spacious place; but the combined light was not sufficient to rid the corners of dark shadows. The bodies were in strained shapes, as though death had stopped them in a writhing struggle. Their arms were raised to their faces in most instances, the gesture suggesting suffocation or warding off heat. The charring made them appalling to look at. At an old counter officers added to lists the names of the few who were from time to time identified.

Articles taken from the bodies were in a basket, enveloped and numbered, and corresponding numbers were written on slips of paper and pinned to the rags that still clung to the corpses. Men and women passed from body to body, seeking friends or relatives, examining the bits of clothing, holding the candles close to the blackened faces, and looking for scars or other marks that might make recognition possible. They were wonderfully composed in manner, the only outbreaks of feeling being when a search was successful, and that was very rare. They were in the main of the poor class, such as occupy the galleries of theaters. They were persistent in their sad task, going along the rows of ill-shaped remains without missing a thing that promised identification. In several instances importunate appeals were made for permission to remove recognized remains, but the coroners decided not to grant that privilege until the next day.

On the next morning (December 7th) the confusion was less at the scene of the awful catastrophe, but the solemn gloom was deeper than before, the excitement was nearly as great, and the under-currents of sympathy more intense. There was a gloom in Brooklyn which could be felt even in the streets. There was but one topic of conversation. Men, women, and children thought and talked of little else than the Brooklyn Theater and the burned dead beneath its ruins. On the sidewalks, in the street cars, on the ferry-boats, there was one and the same subject of interest. In the neighborhood of the theater itself the excitement was at its height. But there was little to be seen that could either stimulate or gratify curiosity. Two or three undertaker’s wagons with the ugly coffins from the dead-house, were in attendance, but the uninterrupted procession of corpses, which was so horrible a feature of the scene on Wednesday, ended late at night, and on this morning there was nothing to see save the smoldering ruins of the theater. There was only the great void where the theater had stood, a mere rim of crumbling walls, scarcely breast high, enclosing immense heaps of brick and rubbish, from which columns of steam arose in the air.

A surging mass of people occupied the sidewalk in front of the dead-house, and stretched into the middle of the street, and men and boys clambered upon fences and wagons in the neighborhood, and gazed intently at the blank walls of the building. Policemen guarded the main entrance and the iron gateway before it. No permits for admission were demanded of those persons who could satisfy the officers that they had lost friends or relatives by the fire. They were allowed to enter from time to time, passing in the front door and through the room on the right-hand, which contained about thirty bodies, lying on the floor, none of them identified; so, through a smaller room at the further end of the building, back to the left-hand room, in which some of the corpses were lying upon marble slabs and tables in the center. Upon such bits of clothing as remained upon the bodies, numbers, written hastily with lead-pencils on bits of paper, had been pinned; and where a body had been recognized, the name and address were added to the number. Then, upon receipt of the coroner’s permission, the corpse was placed in a plain deal coffin and sent to the address given by the persons who had claimed it.

On Friday morning (December 8th) the work of removing and examining the ruins was suspended, it being deemed unsafe to proceed any further while the walls remained in such an unsafe position. The dangerous parts of the walls were, however, braced, and the firemen resumed their labors in the afternoon.

During Friday night and early Saturday morning a large number of small pieces of bodies, and several heads, were discovered, and the trunk of a body which was identified as that of Mr. Murdoch. The remains were taken in charge by an undertaker.

Many of the bodies were so mangled and charred that it was impossible to identify them, and it was determined by the Board of Aldermen to bury these at the public expense. The scenes at the Morgue and the old market on Saturday morning were, if possible, more heartrending and horrible than anything that had occurred in those places since the burning of the theater. The undertakers wagons rattled up to the door of the old market by dozens, and the coffins of stained and polished wood, studded with silver nails, were ranged in rows on the market floor, beside the black, gnarled things that had been human bodies. Outside a motley crowd of men, women, and boys pressed close to the doors and tried to get past the police lines in order to witness the work of putting the stiffened and distorted bodies into the narrow coffins. Wandering among the ghastly rows was the usual throng of sight-seers and mourners searching for friends.

Soon after one o’clock the last coffin was taken from the old market, and the driver who carried it hurried away after the others. The crowd around the door took a last glance at the blackened floors inside, as though the horrible place had fascinated them, and then chased the wagons and carriages that were going to join the procession.

The funeral services were held in the Church of “The Little Church Around the Corner.” The services were very impressive, and the attendance was very large. Dr. Houghton conducted. The remains of Mr. Burroughs were placed in the receiving vault of the Second Street Cemetery, and those of Mr. Murdoch were taken to Philadelphia, and buried on Monday in Woodland Cemetery, the funeral services being conducted in St. Peter’s P.E. Church.

Stuart Campbell Hand, a young reporter on the staff of the Commercial Advertiser of New York, is among the victims of the calamity. He is known to have visited the theater on the night of the fire, and has not been seen since. He was only eighteen years old.

William L. Donnelly, another young reporter, left his home on the evening of the fire to visit the theater, and was never seen alive again. He had just returned to New York from a journalistic trip to the West. Among the charred remains his stepfather felt assured he had discovered poor Donnelly’s body, identifying it by several articles of clothing; but as these articles were partly divided between two crisped trunks his mother declined to acquiesce in the identification, for fear of receiving the wrong body.

Mrs. Caroline Berri and her mother, Mrs. Martin, were undoubtedly trampled upon by the panic-stricken audience, and then fell victims to the flames. Mrs. Berri was the wife of Officer Richard Berri, of District-Attorney Britton’s office. He accompanied her and Mrs. Martin to the theater; but when the cry of fire rang through the house, and the audience became uncontrollable, he was standing in the vestibule. He tried to push into the theater to rescue his relatives, but was carried by the rushing crowd out into the street. His wife and her mother undoubtedly perished together.

Officer Patrick McKean, of the Central Office Squad, who was detailed to preserve order in the gallery of the theater, is among the dead. He was a good officer, and had been made a member of the Central Squad for his exemplary conduct. He was seen working bravely in the vestibule of the theatre, trying to get the panic-stricken people to move out in an orderly manner. Just before the fatal blast of smoke and gas filled the entire building it was noticed that he was exhausted by his hard labors; that he had lost his hat, and that his coat was torn from him by the surging crowd. It is supposed that he was precipitated, when the flooring gave way, into the horrible pit from which so many dead were taken on Wednesday. Officer McKean was a young man—about thirty years of age, and the support of a widowed mother.

John McGinniss, an old employee of the Brooklyn Eagle, was among the killed, with two lady friends whom he had escorted to the theater. He was about thirty-five years old, and was well known in Brooklyn. It is likely that he bravely remained with his lady friends until the last. He was an old fireman of the former volunteer department, accustomed to battling with flames, cool-headed, and rapid in decision, and if he had been alone would undoubtedly have found means of escape.

The body of Nicholas F. Kelly, aged twenty-two, was taken out of the theater early Wednesday morning. As it was being placed in an undertaker’s wagon a young man standing by glanced at the corpse, and after saying, “My God, that’s Father Kelly’s brother,” fainted away. The body was afterward identified by Father Kelly himself, who is the pastor of the Church of the Visitation, and one of the best-loved and most eloquent priests in Brooklyn.

Coroner's Report

The King's County coroner, Henry C. Simms, convened a jury on the disaster which heard testimony through December and January 1877. When it was published at the end of January 1877, it was especially harsh on the theatrical managers, Sheridan Shook and A. M. Palmer. The jury held Shook and Palmer responsible for failing to take adequate precautions against fire, failing to train stage hands in either fire prevention or the management of incipient fires, failing to establish clear chains of command in the theatre's management, permitting the stage to become cluttered with properties and failing to maintain in good working order firefighting equipment and emergency exits that had originally been installed. The jury found lesser fault with the design of the building, observing that the five-year-old structure had better exits than many other public buildings in the city. Fault was found with the stairways leading to the family circle and the auditorium, which lacked a firewall between the audience and the stage. In delivering the verdict, the jury reported that death occurred mainly through suffocation in the dense smoke that prevailed in the gallery.

Fire Marshall's Report

Police Fire Marshall Patrick Keady interviewed sixty two people directly connected with the fire in the week following the blaze and delivered his report on December 18, 1876. He had been forcibly struck by the lack of use of water in any form of conveyance, though a two and a half inch pipe serviced the hydrant near the stage.

He was also forcibly struck by a certain laxness in the management of theatre by Shook and Palmer, especially in comparison to Sara Conway's management prior to her death. Many witnesses reported that Conway had insisted on filled water buckets to be positioned in various places back stage or in the rigging loft and kept the fire hose maintained. In contrast, Mike Sweeny could recall using the hose only once, and was not certain of its condition on the day of the fire; many of his colleagues thought the hose leaked and was up in the painter's gallery in the roof above the stage.

Postscript

In 1879, Haverly's Theatre was erected on the same site but was razed eleven years later to make way for new offices of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. After the Eagle closed, in the mid-20th century, the entire block was subsumed by the urban renewal project which gave rise to Cadman Plaza. The approximate location of the theater is north of the New York Supreme Court Building in a tree-covered area.