SCOTLAND.
A dreadful accident has occurred at the new Theatre in Dunlop Street, Glas- gow. Between seven and eight o'clock on Saturday evening, when the house was pretty full, there was an alarm of fire: gas had escaped from a pipe passing through the upper gallery, and, as it is surmised, it took fire from a snatch which a man had been using to light his pipe and had then thrown down. The audience began to leave the house; but the fire was soon extinguished, and many persons who had remained in the pit and boxes expected the performances to be resumed. The box company who had left the theatre had leisurely retreated by spacious entrances; so had the people in the "pit: the crowd from the lower gallery closed upon themselves the outer door, and there was snaring and danger for a time; but the windows having been broken for air, and the door opened a little while after, no life was lost. But on the staircase of the upper gallery there was a fear- ful loss of life. The door opened inwards; the terrified crowd, in the effort to escape, had shut it, and those nearest it were exposed to a fatal pressure. Vain efforts were made to open the door from the exterior; the firemen had hastened to the place on the first alarm, but their services were not needed to extinguish the fire—they were now put in requisition to break down partitions and extricate the suffocating people. This was quickly done. At first, some were got out who had only received a few bruises and whom the fresh air speedily restored; but as the
men advanced in their labours, their discoveries became appalling—sixty-five corpses were taken out! Many of the victims were greatly bruised, but in al- most every case suffocation had been the cause of death. Most of the bodies were those of lads, but there were also several females and elderly men. Three brothers were found dead. A man of forty perished with his daughter, a girl of seventeen, and an infant child.
Gardner, a young mechanic of Glasgow, has been the object of a murderous at- tack on the highway. As he was returning from Paisley at night, a man sprang over a hedge and stabbed him with a knife: Gardner received several gashes in the head and neck, but eventually he wrenched the knife from the assassin's hand and stabbed him in the body; and, hearing a whistle as from another robber, he ran off to Paisley. The police hastened to the spot: they found a great deal of blood on the earth, but the wounded man could not be traced.
A fire at Aberdeen has caused a good deal of alarm, as it broke out in a wing of the Royal Infirmary which contained sixty fever-patients. But the sick were all safely removed; and though the fire lasted for some time, it does not appear that the damage was very extensive.
Previous page
