PREVENTION OF FIRES IN THEATRES.
WE are in the midst, seemingly, of one of our recurrent panics about fires in theatres. It is natural, because play-going has immensely increased of late years among the classes which can create a panic at will ; and the recent disaster at the Opera Comique has brought home to them the horrible possibilities which every theatre has in reserve. Consequently, even the suppression of the agrarian terror in Ireland is found to yield in importance to the suppression of a danger to which the very men who are legislating for Ireland may any day find themselves and their families exposed. Mr. Dixon Hartland has on the stocks a Bill, designed to deal with fires in theatres, and if he should come to the heroic resolution of moving the adjournment of the House next Monday, in order to press upon the Government the need of passing it, it is understood that far more than the requisite forty Members will rise in their places to support him. We are certainly not going to say any thing in disapproval of their zeal. The want of any adequate protection against a danger at once so terrible and so common is patent enough to justify Mr. Dixon Hartland in using every means he can command to get his Bill to the front. We shall watch, however, with much curiosity—and with some scepticism—the duration of the feeling which has given the Bill this sadden accession of importance. These panics are not new, and up to the present time they have not been fruitful. We have been horribly frightened at something that has happened, and declared in speech and print that not a moment shall be lost in taking precautions to prevent its happening again. Yet a good many moments have been lost—in fact, all the moments between then and now—and Mr. Dixon Hartland still finds the ground unoccupied. Other terrors take the place of the terror of fire, and so everything goes on as before until; some fresh calamity sets the familiar process in motion once more. Will it be so this time? Possibly not. Possibly the fire at the Opera Comique is the occasion, and Mr. Dixon Hartland the man, that are to make 1887 the exceptional year,—the year of action as opposed to the years of talk that have preceded it. But in the interval the doubt will recur, and all the more that the question is surrounded with more difficulty than may at once appear.
The first notion of preventing fatal fires in theatres usually limits itself to the provision of a sufficient number of doors of the right size and opening the right way. It is very natural that this should be the thing first thought of, because it is undoubtedly the most conspicuous defect in the arrangement of most theatres. Moreover, there are cases which this one improvement would go a long way to meet. In churches, for example, where a fire at present would often be quite as disastrous as in a theatre, it is the doors that are the weak point. Half -a-century ago, the difficulty of escaping from the galleries must have been added ; but, for the most part, there are now no galleries to escape from. The congregation are all on the floor of the church, and there is not mush to hinder their progress to the entrance. It is when they get there that the dangers begin. In the first place, there is the general dis- like of English architects of all schools and all ages to build their doorways big enough. Next, there is the equally general dislike of English officials to open the doors there are to their full extent. And, thirdly, there are the curious erections through which a door has commonly to be approached from the inside. When the great doors of a foreign cathedral are thrown open, it almost seems as though the whole west front had been removed, and there was nothing interposed between the congregation and the space outside. The great doors of an English cathedral bear a very much smaller proportion to the size of the building, and even this proportion is in many cases reduced by the doors themselves being not nnfrequently closed, and people left to find their way in and out by means of a wicket cut in them. No doubt they could be thrown open to their full extent in the event of a panic ; but things are seldom done.in a panic that are not done at other times. The means provided for egress in moments of danger should be means with which the officials and all in the habit of attending the church are familiar. The woret risk of all as regards churches lies in that network of inner doors which, though intended only to keep out cold, would be equally effective in keeping in people. The simplest way of guarding against all danger of fire in churches would be to make a custom of opening every door to its fullest extent, and using nothing but curtains to keep out the cold air. If these were thick enough, they would answer that purpose quite well enough, and they would offer no obstacle to rapid egress.
When we come to theatres, the difficulties are very much greater. As regards existing buildings, they are probably in- surmountable ; and as regards new buildings, they could only be surmounted in part, and that by a radical change in construc- tion. At present, every source of danger exists, and exists in abundance. The doors are contracted, the passages leading to the inside of the house are labyrinthine, the differences of level in the interior make movement from one part to another impossible. The only improvements that can be made in the theatres we already have, are the widening and multiplication of doors. That these would do some- thing to remove the risk from fire may be conceded, but it would not be much. Supposing the crowd to have got as far as the doors, there would be lees likelihood of their being crushed to death in the effort to pass through them. But the chances are that the really fatal crush would have taken place long before, that those who reached the doors alive would have left many of their companions dead inthe narrow passages which connect the doors with the space in front of the curtain. If, indeed, a new theatre were being built, it might be shaped like an amphitheatre, with all the doors at the back, connected with the seats by straight, broad passages. If an alarm of fire were then given, the crowd would be less terrified, it would be in no doubt as to the direction it ought to take, and there would be no awkward corners to bar its progress. Even then, however, the danger would remain to some extent, and that an extent which no amount of experience would enable us to measure exactly. The action of a crowd in a panic cannot be predicted, and the slightest incident may become an occasion of very great danger. A woman faints or misses her footing, and the angle at which she falls may determine whether she is at once lifted out of the way, or left dead beneath a mass of struggling human beings.
The direction, therefore, in which there is most promise of safety is not the provision of better methods of escape from a burning theatre, but the construction of theatres in such a way as to make it impossible for them to burn. This is the conclusion to which Dr. Percy comes in his letter in the Times of Wednesday. Panic when a fire has broken out cannot be completely guarded against; the outbreak of fire can be so nearly guarded against as to make even an alarm of fire no longer really terrible. Formerly, Dr. Percy says, the coat of non-inflammable material would have been a difficulty ; but it is now only a difficulty of the past. Here, again, however, this consoling statement is only true of new buildings. Iron may be as cheap as wood when there is still a choice which to use ; but the substitution of iron for wood when the wood is there already is a different thing. If existing theatres are to be reconstructed on this principle, it will become a curious ques- tion how far their owners will deserve compensation for the expense incurred. If the community suddenly becomes so much more careful of the lives of its members that it insists upon the buildings provided for their amusement being made fire- proof, ought not the community to bear the cost We com- mend this inquiry to Mr. Dixon Hartland.
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