Victoria Hall Disaster - SAMPLE TEXT
'It is a melancholy satisfaction to believe that the piteous catastrophe which last Saturday evening destroyed in a few moments, under circumstances of peculiar horror, the budding life of little short of two hundred little ones in Sunderland, was caused by a conjunction of circumstances that can very rarely occur. The facts are, to some extent, known, and will no doubt be entirely revealed at the forthcoming official enquiry. When two thousand or more merry and unreflecting children are crowded together in a public building, it would only be reasonable to expect adequate guidance and supervision. But in the gallery of Victoria Hall, Sunderland, on that ill-fated evening, there seems to have been only one foreman and a few mothers to look after a thousand juveniles who were witnessing the performances of an itinerant conjuror. Mr. Fay's assistant was sent thither from the stage with a basket of toys, which proved to be indeed a fatal gift. The children descended the flights of stairs and, pressing onwards with a combined force that momentarily increased, the unhappy man seems to have striven to arrest the living tide and save himself by partially closing the door on the landing. And while the merry throng in the area were receiving their gift-toys, those running down from the gallery were unwittingly crushing each other to death. Happily, the struggle, though deadly, was brief. The heart sickens at the thought of the terrible scene. Hundreds of fathers and mothers in Sunderland are mourning their lost ones, whose tragic fate has as usual brought messages of tender sympathy from the Queen, sent a thrill of sorrow throughout the land, and supplied an awful warning to the managers of public buildings which it would be criminal to neglect.'
