Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello and Welcomed. This Day in History Class
a show that honors the dead by sharing their stories
with the living. I'm Gay Bluesier and in this episode,
we're reflecting on an infamous tragedy that transformed what should
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have been a joyful day into a waking nightmare. As
a warning, today's episode deals with an accident involving children
and includes descriptions that may be upsetting to some listeners.
The day was June eight, eight three at Victoria Hall
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in Sunderland. The rush to receive free toys left one
hundred and eighty three children dead. The tragedy occurred during
a performance by the Phase of Tynemouth, a touring variety
act that had been billed as the greatest tree eat
for children ever given. More than two thousand tickets had
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been sold for the Sunday performance at Victoria Hall, and
most of the seats were filled with children, many of
whom had attended unsupervised. At the end of the show,
a prize giveaway was announced. Each child would receive a
free toy as they exited the hall. Unfortunately, the distribution
was poorly planned and little was done to prevent the
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eager children from crowding toward the exit and the stampede
that followed, Nearly two hundred children between the ages of
three and fourteen were killed. In the nineteenth century, the
port city of Sunderland in northern England was home to
a massive concert hall that hosted all kinds of events
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and shows. On that fateful day in eighteen eighty three,
the visiting performers where Alexander Faye, a self described conjurer,
and his sister Annie Faye, the enchantress the Hand and
bills for their show promised talking wax works, living marionettes,
and something they touted as their great ghost Delusion. The
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show was an easy sell thanks to its mere one
penny ticket price, but to really seal the deal, the
Phase also advertised that every child in attendance would receive
a free toy. On the day of the show. The
excited children of Sunderland turned out on mass, filling the
undred seat hall almost to capacity. Most parents let their
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kids attend unaccompanied, and while that was against theater policy,
they were seated anyway. The Phase enthralled their young audience
and the performance ran smoothly. Then for their final act,
the magicians performed a hat trick. They began pulling toys
from a hat and throwing them out to the audience.
Of course, the phase could only reach the children nearest
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to the stage. Those seated closer to the exit or
in the upper gallery were told to collect their prizes
as they left the building. With few adults around to
encourage patients, the children in the upstairs gallery ran to
the nearest staircase All at once. They pushed and squeezed
past one another, anxious not to miss out on the
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rare treat of a new toy. One six year old
boy named William Coddling made it safely out of the
hall that day. He later recalled the early moments of
the disaster, saying, quote, I raced through the gallery as
fast as I could, scrambled with the crowd through the doorway,
and jolted my way down two flights of stairs. Here
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the crowd was so compressed that there was no more racing,
but we moved forward together, shoulder to shoulder. Soon we
were most uncomfortably packed, but still going down. Coddling didn't
know it at the time, but the crowd had slowed
because the doorway at the bottom of the stairs was
only half open. The inward opening door had been partially
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opened and then bolted to the floor. This left a
gap of only about two feet for the children to
pass through. The door's position may have been an attempt
to make ticket checking easier at the start of the show,
but there was no staff member station there at the
end of the show. That meant there was no one
present to remove the door bolt, or even to organize
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an orderly line. The first kids to reach the door
easily passed through the gap, but as more and more
children made their way downstairs, those in front couldn't get
through fast enough, and the exit became blocked. As the
stampede continued, some children fell to the floor and were
trampled beneath the way to the crowd. William Codling remembered
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that terrible moment, saying quote, Suddenly I felt that I
was treading upon someone lying on the stairs, and I
cried in horror to those behind, keep back, keep back,
there's someone down. It was no use. I passed slowly
over and onwards with the mass, and before long I
passed over others without emotion. At last we came to
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a dead stop, but still those behind came crowding on.
By that point, the adults in the theater had realized
what was happening. They tried to unfasten the door bowl,
but they couldn't. The door only opened inward anyway, and
there were too many kids piled against the other side
for it to open any wider. Other adults ran up
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a different staircase and urged the children still in the
gallery and on the stairs to exit that way instead.
This action likely saved dozens of lives, but again the
damage was already done in the end. One hundred and
eighty three children died in the crush, one hundred and
fourteen boys and sixty nine girls. The entire country was
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devastated by the event, and a collection was quickly raised
to pay for the children's funerals. Queen Victoria was among
the contributors, and she sent personal indolences to each of
the families as well. About five thousand pounds was raised
for the fund, the equivalent of nearly six hundred and
fifty thousand pounds today. The money left over was used
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to construct a memorial statue and Mowbray Park just across
the road from Victoria Hall. The hall itself continued to operate,
but its reputation would never recover from the tragedy. Some
people said the towering Gothic structure was quote shaped like
the coffin it once was, and many residents vowed never
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to go inside again. As a result, that option was
removed altogether in April of nineteen forty one, when Victoria
Hall was destroyed in a German air raid during World
War Two. The big question that lingered after the disaster
was who was responsible, who would locked the exit door
in that deadly position and why. Parliament launched two investigations
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into the events of that day, and any of the
surviving children offered eyewitness testimony. Unfortunately, their accounts were contradictory,
and in the end, the person who had bolted the
door was never identified. That said, the second inquest did
find fault in several parties, including the phase, the theater
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staffed and management, and the parents and relatives of the children,
all of whom were blamed for neglecting the safety of
their young charges. However, the jury ultimately decided that their
negligence didn't constitute active endangerment, and so no one was prosecuted.
It's often said that to raise a child takes a village,
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because although kids are smart and brave and resilient, they
still need guidance and care from the adults they're entrusted to.
The Victoria Hall disaster is a reminder that the success
of that venture depends on everyone working together to provide
a safe environment. When any link in that chain of
care failed for any reason, the results can be devastating.
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In times like that, holding those responsible to account is important,
but even more so is looking for ways to prevent
similar tragedies in the future. If there's any silver lining
to the story of Victoria Hall, it's that the English
government did exactly that. The inquiries led to new laws
requiring all places of public entertainment to install a sufficient
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number of exits, including doors that could be easily opened
outward without needing to be unlocked. This rule directly led
to the invention of the pushbar emergency exit, also known
as the crash bar. The wide scale adoption of the
pushbar saved countless lives in the century that followed, and
it remains a nearly universal feature on emergency exits today.
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Statues and prayers and speeches are all admirable ways to
grieve and honor the victims of public tragedies. But the
most bidding tribute, the greatest show of respect for the
lives lost, is to examine what went wrong and to
do everything possible to keep the same misfortune from befalling others.
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I'm Gay, Bluesier, and hopefully you now know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd
like to keep up with the show, consider following us
on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t d i HC Show.
You can also rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts,
or you can email your feedback directly to me at
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this Day at I heart media dot com. Thanks to
Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another Day
in History class