|
The Rhoads Opera House Fire occurred on Monday evening, January 13, 1908 in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. The opera house caught fire during a stage play sponsored by nearby St. John's Lutheran Church. The fire started when a kerosene lamp being used for stage lighting was knocked over starting a fire on the stage. In short order the spreading fire ignited a mixture of lighting gas & oxygen from a malfunctioning stereopticon machine being used to present a magic lantern show at intermission. Audience members waited for the fire to be extinguished by theatre personnel, wasting the precious minutes they needed to escape safely. The stage and auditorium were located on the 2nd floor and the few emergency exits available were either unmarked or blocked. Two fire escapes were available but were only accessible through latched windows whose sills were located 3 & 1/2 feet above the floor. Of the approximately 400 men, women, and children either in attendance or associated with the performance of the play 171 perished in various ways as they tried to escape the conflagration. In the panic to escape many were crushed in the narrow main entrance stairway as well as against the jambed main exit swinging doors of the 2nd floor auditorium. In a few instances entire families were wiped out. One firefighter William Graver, was also killed while responding to the incident. ==Play== The play being performed on this Monday night,"The Scottish Reformation" was authored by Mrs. Harriet Earhart Monroe. Mrs. Monroe, a resident of Washington, D.C., was a traveling producer of religious stage plays. She provided the scripts, the stage props and the costumes used in her plays. The sponsor, in this case St. John's Lutheran Church, supplied the performance venue, the actors and the stage hands. Mrs Monroe and her sister, Mrs. Della Mayers, reheased the production's singers and actors, and directed the play. The profits from the ticket sales were divided between Mrs. Monroe and the sponsor. A slide (magic lantern) show and accompanying lecture was included at the intermission periods to provide historical background for the stage play. Mrs. Monroe had authored the "The Scottish Reformation" sometime prior to 1894. It had been performed a few dozen times at venues in the northeastern states before its final, tragic 1908 performance in Boyertown. Approximately sixty persons were involved in the performance of the "The Scottish Reformation", some of these served non-acting support functions. All actors were either St John's parishoners or Boyertown residents. There were no professional actors in the performance. The play was to be performed twice in Boyertown, once on Monday night and again on Tuesday night. 312 seat tickets were sold for the Monday night performance. The exact number of audience members is unknown because no official entry count was taken. According to a number of written accounts there were also a large number of standing patrons. However, the figure of 312 is generally used as an approximation of patron attendance in the various renditions of the events of that Monday night. Mrs. Monroe was not present for the fateful Monday night performance. Her sister Della perished in the catastrophe. Mrs. Monroe was subpoenaed to appear before an official inquest which was held a few weeks after the fire to determine its cause and assess blame. She refused to appear. Although accused of employing an inadequately trained young man to operate the steriopticon slide projector, the inquest's jury found her innocent of any wrong doing. Private lawsuits were brought against Mrs. Monroe by the families of several victims. The result of these lawsuits is unclear from the surviving historical records. Mrs Monroe's, and her sister Della's, maiden name was Earhart. They were the paternal aunts of famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart. Della Earhart Mayers is buried in Boyertown's Fairview Cemetery. Mrs. Monroe died in 1927 in Washington, DC. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rhoads Opera House Fire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|