Brooklyn Theatre Fire, The [Laws G27]

DESCRIPTION: A large audience is in the Brooklyn Theatre (to watch a performance of "The Two Orphans"). The scenery catches fire and the crowd panics. The next day the theatre is a charred ruin packed with bodies. A mass funeral is planned
AUTHOR: P. J. Downey
EARLIEST DATE: before 1882 (Wehman broadside reproduced by Cohen)
KEYWORDS: fire death funeral disaster
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Dec 5, 1876 - 295 (?) people die in a fire at a Brooklyn theatre
FOUND IN: US(Ap,MA,MW,So)
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Laws G27, "The Brooklyn Theatre Fire"
Randolph 688, "The Brooklyn Fire" (1 text)
Peters-FolkSongsOutOfWisconsin, p. 243, "The Brooklyn Theater Fire" (1 text, 1 tune)
List-SingingAboutIt-FolkSongsInSouthernIndiana, pp. 324-329, "The Brooklyn Theater Fire" (1 text, 1 tune)
Bush-FSofCentralWestVirginiaVol4, pp. 78-80, "The Two Orphans" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, pp. 114-116, "The Two Orphans, or, The Brooklyn Theatre Fire" (1 text plus a broadside print)
Owens-TexasFolkSongs-1ed, pp. 285-287, "The Two Orphans" (1 text, 1 tune)
Owens-TexasFolkSongs-2ed, pp. 82-84, "The Two Orphans" (1 text, 1 tune)
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 107-108, "The Two Orphans" (1 text) (p.86 in the 1919 edition)
Newman/Devlin-NeverWithoutASong, pp. 266-268, "The Two Orphans [Brooklyn Theater Fire]" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT 640, BRKLYNFR*
ADDITIONAL: Harold Nestler, "Songs from the Hudson Valley" (article in _New York Folklore Quarterly_, Volume V, #2, Summer 1949), pp. 104-105, "The Brooklyn Theatre" (1 text)
Roud #3258
NOTES [280 words]: In the mid-nineteenth century, theatre fires were a standard occupational hazard in New York. According to E. J. Kahn, Jr., The Merry Partners: The Age and Stage of Harrigan and Hart, Random House, 1955, p. 224, "A couple of surveys made in 1878 and in 1882 revealed that one out of every four theatres burned within the first four years of its construction, and that the average flame-free life expectancy of any theatre was a mere twelve years."
On p. 227, Kahn says, "The worst toll exacted by any theatre fire occurred on December 6, 1876, when the Brooklyn Theatre, then barely five years old, burned. The Two Orphans was playing there.... Twelve hundred people were in the audience that night, and the play had nearly ended, when fire broke out in the fly gallery. At first the flames were visible only to the cast and backstage crew, and the actors, after hesitating momentarily, went on with their lines, while the stagehands tried ineffectually to stop the blaze. Since there were neither hoses nor buckets on hand, there wasn't much they could do. Then the audience spotted the fire, and a stir of apprehension swept through it." One of the actresses, Kate Claxton, tried to calm the crowd so they could exit calmly, but then the fire exploded. Many managed to escape, but after the fire died down, many bodies were found in the wreckage. Kahn, p. 228, says that there were 289 deaths in all.
Kahn, p. 228, adds that Claxton continued to perform in "The Two Orphans" for another two decades, and watched half a dozen theatres burn during her career, eventually becoming so traumatized that she would never go more than one flight of stairs away from street level. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: LG27

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