Book Review of The Richmond Theatre Fire, final part

Here is the final part of the book review.  Thanks to Debra for summarizing this book for us - it has been so fascinating and thought provoking to follow this tragic story of our cousin.  A cousin that we never even knew about until recently.

Also, it would be very exciting for me to read comments on the blog!  So please, add a comment!

Meredith Henne Baker’s book on the fire clearly lays the blame for this tragedy on poor design and  poor construction of the theater house itself.

There were narrow hallways and only one narrow staircase. The terrified people could not get down the stairs and crowded/pushed each other down---and then trampled those who fell.

The only exit door on the bottom floor opened INWARD, so that when everyone was jammed up against it in the packed, panicked lobby, no one could open the door at all. Many who were lucky enough to get to the door died there of carbon monoxide poisoning, smoke inhalation, or fire itself. They were wedged in and trapped.

The original spark came from a light/gas lantern on stage, suspended above the stage itself. A stagehand was supposed to extinguish the flame before raising the prop apparatus. Sadly, he did not put it out before raising the light fixture up into the ceiling. He panicked and ran. There, high above the stage, the flame contacted the various paper and cloth scenery panels, starting a blaze that caught everything it touched on fire. It spread wildly in minutes.

As the flame spread all along the theater walls, those in elite boxes had no exit except the crowded halls and the jammed staircases----death traps for many.  Most of the deaths were adolescent girls and women who could not fight their way down the narrow halls and stairs.

Thus those in the boxes---like Governor Smith and his family---had little chance unless they could fight their way out.

Many people gave up trying to get down the stairs, broke out the windows, and jumped. Some died from those injuries; many were permanently crippled.

Book Review of The Richmond Theatre Fire, Part 2 of 3 parts

Continuing with the review of this fascinating book:

December of 1811 was a momentous month for George William Smith. December 5^th saw him officially sworn in as governor of Virginia, after having served as interim governor for some months. On the day after Christmas, he decided to take his wife, Lucy, and several of his children for a special evening at the theater to celebrate.

So, on the evening of December 26, 1811, “the newly minted governor of Virginia, was among the audience with his family.” Seated in boxes seven and eight with other wealthy dignitaries and bejeweled gentry, the governor was dressed formally “with his tall collar secured with his distinctive stock buckle.”

This stock buckle proved to be important later. After the fire, Governor George William Smith’s body was one of the few identified. A Richmond resident who witnessed what was left of the governor’s body being carried from the smoking ruins wrote, ‘His remains I saw taken from the ruins were a crisped lump.’  The stock buckle he wore helped to identify that crisped lump as what was left of the governor’s body.

“Perhaps the greatest blow in 1811 for Richmond---and for the state of Virginia---was the loss of its leader, Governor George William Smith.”

“A collaborator and peacemaker, the former state legislator from Essex County took firm political stands while leaving ‘not one enemy behind,’ according to his heartfelt obituary.”

“Most accounts concurred that Governor Smith emerged from the fire alive. They also reported that he looked around in search of someone and then reentered the burning building, where he met his death. The person for whom the forty-nine year old father was searching remained unclear.”

Many believe he was looking for his young son and rushed in to save him, but whatever the governor’s reason for going back into the theater, that decision cost him his life.

[Note: The governor’s wife and his children survived the fire.]

“Without Smith’s guidance, the executive branch nearly fell apart in the week after the fire.”  There was much confusion about what to do about a new chief executive and how to proceed in the state government of Virginia.

 “Governor George Smith‘s family did not escape hardship after the fire. His wife Lucy F. Smith was left with eight children from his previous marriage to the deceased Sarah Adams, and she must have found it necessary to obtain an infusion of cash to sustain the household.”

“By January 28, Governor Smith’s valuables were scheduled for auction, as this announcement indicates:

All the Household and Kitchen furniture of the late GEORGE W. SMITH, Esq., consisting of  a tableboard, a Mahogany Settee and Chairs, Bed-steads with Curtains, Tables, Chairs, Table and Tea China, &c, &c. Three family slaves.

“This auction was deemed necessary despite an act of the Assembly passed on January 21 allocating monies to the Smith family---the only example of state aid to victims of the Richmond Theater fire.”

The legislature voted to pay Lucy F. Smith and the children of the deceased governor $1,946 for his earlier service as lieutenant governor and interim governor.

Book review of The Richmond Theater Fire, by Meredith Henne Baker (Part 1)

Hello everyone - sorry for the silence on the blog for the last few months.  But I was very busy painting my house and crafting paper flowers and getting my little girl married off!

Since the wedding ceremony was held at the Virginia Historical Society, Debra and Peggy took the opportunity to each buy a book from the gift shop there: 

The Richmond Theater Fire

By Meredith Henne Baker

This is the fire that we covered in a previous blog post, but this book is definitely worthy of a few more blog posts here on our family ancestry blog.  Debra has summarized the book for us, and over the next few blog posts, we will provide some of that information for you.

To refresh your memory, the governor of Virginia, George W. Smith, who died in this tragic fire was the son of our great-great-great-great-great uncle Meriwether Smith.

“The Richmond Theater . . . was among the largest in America, and its destruction by fire forms one of the striking events of early American history.”       Washington Post, January 3, 1994

 

Excerpt from the book:

“Monumental Church sits . . . like a domed white sepulcher” on the 12^th block of East Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia.

A state-issued historical marker there gives “a few clues to the astounding story of a tragedy that forever transformed the capital of the South.”  The monument’s marker reads as follows:

 

Virginia Governor George W. Smith died here in 1811. Several survivors owed their lives to the bravery of Gilbert Hunt, a slave blacksmith. A committee chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall raised funds for the church’s construction. Designed by Robert Mills and completed in 1814, the octagonal building served as an Episcopal church until 1965.

 

Once this location was the site of the Richmond Theater. On the night of December 26, 1811, the theater became a tomb.

 

In the subterranean vault of the Monumental Church is a crypt, rising as an enormous mound and forming a basement tomb.

The Historic Richmond Foundation used ground-penetrating radar to detect the location within this funeral mound of two oversized wooden coffins.

The contents of these coffins? Nearly a hundred charred bodies “in a cluttered heap, relics of those who attended the Richmond Theater one festive holiday night over two hundred years ago.”

The horribly burned remains of “slave, free, schoolgirl, gentry, governor, Jew, Catholic, father, actress” all mingled in this sad place.

Because it was impossible to separate and identify the ashes and the partial bodies of these fire victims, the decision was made to inter all of them together, on the site of the theater itself.

Here they died together and here they would rest eternally.