Two grave disasters in places of public entertainment have occurred
during the past few days,—one in England and the other in the United States. Last Saturday afternoon at Barnsley, West Yorkshire, children were crowding in great numbers into the Public Hall, where a cinematograph exhibition was to be given. The gallery is reached by a tortuous staircase, and when it was announced that the gallery was full, and that the children must go to other parts of the hall, there was a rush of those near the top to descend. Meanwhile more children were pressing in from below. Part of the stairs was almost instantly piled up with struggling children who had fallen. When the confusion was ended it was found that sixteen children had been crushed to death or suffocated and that over thirty were injured. The disaster in the Rhoades Opera House at Boyertown, Pennsylvania, on Monday night was even more serious. A fire was caused by a cinematograph explosion. In the panic which followed, the footlights were overturned and set fire to the scenery. The rest was an indescribable stampede. Scarcely five minutes after the explosion all the inside of the building was blazing and part of the floor collapsed. A hundred and sixty-seven persons were killed and seventy-five were injured. The lessons to be learned in both cases are obvious, and we only hope that the responsible authorities will profit by them.
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