Sunderland memorial to Victoria Hall disaster is in Mowbray Park

ONE of the most moving monuments in the North-East stands in Mowbray Park, Sunderland.

It is sited near the site of the Victoria Hall Theatre where, tragically, on June 16, 1883, an incredible 114 boys and 69 girls died in a crushing incident caused by a door that could only be opened one way.

Sunderland will never forget how children queued for a carnival fun day which was billed as a great treat but soon became a great tragedy when many of them suffocated

On the morning of Monday, June 18, 1883, the columns of The Northern Echo were shrouded with thick, black and mournful borders, leaving readers in no doubt that a terrible tragedy had happened.

The Northern Echo’s report of Sunderland's 1883 Victoria Hall theatre disaster, before the exact number of deaths was known

Two days earlier, more than 180 lives were lost in – and every victim was a child.

It started innocently, with promises of conjuring tricks, talking waxworks, living marionettes and ghost illusions that created a mass of excitement and expectation among the children of Sunderland who were enticed to the Victoria Hall theatre, in Toward Road.

When the show started at 3pm, no one in their most sombre imaginings would have guessed the afternoon would end with the deaths of 183 children. The conjurers for all their wonderful tricks were powerless to save the victims.

The entertainers were the Fays, a troupe of travelling illusionists from Tynemouth whose tickets, according to The Northern Echo, were very freely distributed among the elementary schools of the town that week.

Each ticket promised the greatest treat for children and ensured admission to any number of children on its presentation and a payment of one pence.

Unaccompanied children were clearly the target audience, as parents with children were expected to pay eight pence if they wanted to go.

The tickets included a further enticement for the youngsters of Sunderland - a promise of prizes. It was this aspect of the event that proved to be the fatal end for many.

The ticket’s promise read as follows: every child entering the room will stand a chance of receiving a handsome present, including books and toys.

It was clearly an irresistible temptation.

About 2,000 expectant children attended the performance and 1,100 of them were seated in the upstairs gallery.

The children laughed, giggled and watched in wonder at the acts of ventriloquism and magic performed by Mr Fay and, although some had felt a little sick from a trick involving a mass of smoke, no one anticipated the dangers that would come.

As the performance drew to a close, at five minutes past five, the minds of many children turned towards the prizes.

Soon Mr Fay threw prizes to those children on the lower floor who possessed a winning ticket. It caused much jumping and pushing as children jostled to collect their gifts. The children on the upper level were losing patience, but then the announcement came that the lucky youngsters on the upper level could make their way downstairs to collect their prize.

Sadly, the winning tickets sealed the fate of many children in the upper level. Children aged between three and 14 charged down the stairs from the gallery in a state of mass excitement.

The stairs, consisting of four flights, were approached from the gallery through outward folding doors - through which the children ploughed at great speed. But it was at the bottom of the third flight of stairs that disaster struck.

The door opened inwards and it appeared to have been partially bolted into a hole, leaving a gap of 20 inches through which a steady flow of children had been admitted at the start of the show.

It is said that three of the stampeding children tried to push their way through this gap and blocked the entrance. But another report claimed a child had tripped as they reached the door.

It is not clear how anyone could really know exactly what happened, but soon children were crushed against the door and wall, tumbling over each other and suffocating.

The screams and panic of those at the front went unnoticed by the excited children at the back who continued to press forward in expectation of their prize.

The theatre’s caretaker was the first to realise that the bodies of dead children were piling up behind the door, but there was nothing he could do to save the children. The bodies were seven or eight deep in places, lying flat or compressed upright.

Help was called from across the town. The police and four doctors arrived, and soon griefstricken, and often hysterical, parents were wandering around the hall searching for news or the bodies of their loved ones.

Crowds of people, perhaps as many as 20,000, thronged the streets outside to hear the news or witness the macabre spectacle, while police escorted taxis through the hoards as they ferried the bodies to parts of the town.

There were 114 boys and 69 girls dead. About 40 of the dead were aged six or under and most of the remainder were ten years old or less.

Some families lost all their children in the disaster but few parents had been present to witness it. Among those dead were Michael and Margaret Allan, of Bridge Street, aged seven and 11, and Newrick and William Briggs, aged four and nine.

Mass burials took place throughout Sunderland that week and a disaster fund received contributions from across the nation.

It paid for funerals and the surplus went towards the memorial that can still be seen in Sunderland’s Mowbray Park, close to the site of the Victoria Hall. The hall has long since gone – a German bomb destroyed it in 1941.

Despite an inquiry, the responsibility for the disaster of 1883 was never established. And could anyone be blamed in hindsight for such an unprecedented event?

One good thing did, however, arise after the events at Victoria Hall – Parliament issued laws that required places of entertainment to include more exits and to only have doors that could easily open outwards. It was an important step but too late to save the lives of the Sunderland children of 1883.

* Thanks to David Simpson of the England's North East website - https://englandsnortheast.co.uk/ - for his help in compiling this article.