Kernan, J. Frank. Reminiscences of the old fire laddies and volunteer fire departments of New York and Brooklyn.

(New York :  M. Crane,  1885.)

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^nmus^nces'of the Old Fire Laddies.
 

The conflagration at Campbell and Thayer's Linseed Oil Works
was another red-letter day in the history of Brooklyn's great fires.
In May, 1877, the works were almost wholly consumed, the owners
placing their loss at $225,000.

On the evening of December 5, 1876, the Brooklyn Theater, in
Washington Street, near Johnson Street, was burned, and two hundred
and eighty-one people perished in the flames. The fire, according to
the fire marshal's report at the time, was caused by the borders (a por¬
tion of the scenery) taking fire from the border-lights. These lights
were covered with tin on the side facing the audience, and with wire
netting on the other side. When the newspapers went to press the
next morning, it was not suspected that more than two or three
persons had perished in the flames,
and even this was doubted. The
last man within the burning build¬
ing had looked around the lower
auditorium, and saw no one there.
But in the extreme end of the
topmost gallery there were im¬
prisoned several hundred souls,
suffocated by the volumes of
smoke that poured down from the
burning roof, and who gave no
sign that they were miserably
perishing there. It was not until
the morning of the 6th, when the
flames were under control and the
firemen began their search among
the ruins, that the exploration of
a dreadful pit, just beyond the door leading into the street, discovered
the sight which made strong men pale and faint, and disclosed a
scene which is to be recorded as almost unparalleled in history.
There, piled one upon another, in every attitude of struggling des¬
pair, was a mass of charred and agonized figures, just as they had
fallen with the end of the gallery, above where they had met all
together their horrible deaths.

It is clear that the first flames caught in the inflammable material
above   the   stage.     Thence   it  rapidly communicated   to the stage
 


 

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