My novels often start with a little nugget of research and my second novel, ‘The Innocents’, was no different. Finding myself with time on my hands during lockdown, I came across a fascinating history of The Illustrated Police News by Linda Stratmann. And that’s where I read about the Victoria Hall disaster.
On 16 June 1883, at the Victoria Hall in Sunderland, toys and prizes were thrown into the stalls at the end of a children’s matinee performance. Those in the upper galleries saw they were missing out and rushed downstairs, but their way was blocked by a bolted door, leaving a gap of just twenty-two inches to squeeze through. Barely enough space for one child, never mind hundreds, and nobody realised in time exactly what was happening. The rush of children from the galleries resulted in the death by suffocation of 183 children. Frederick Graham, a caretaker on that fateful day, saved some 600 children by diverting them to another exit.
The Victoria Hall disaster was not a one-off. In 1849, at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow, 65 people died. In 1878 a false cry of ‘fire’ at the Colosseum Theatre in Liverpool led to the deaths of 37 people. Nine years later, a fire broke out at the Theatre Royal in Exeter and 186 people died.
One of the things that facilitated tragedies like these was the sheer numbers of people who attended theatres and music halls in the 19th century. For a long time there were no limits on how many people could be admitted, so a venue ostensibly for an audience of 400 might well pack in as many as 2000 people on a busy night. And if someone shouted ‘fire’, or if performers started hurling toys into the audience, there were no procedures in place to manage the crowds.
I started asking around, and almost no-one had heard of the Victoria Hall tragedy. Only people who lived locally, or who had a knowledge of theatre history, were aware of what happened. I wondered how such terrible events could be all but forgotten. The inquest into Victoria Hall found no-one responsible. Was this because music halls were seen as largely the province of the working classes? Some of the newspaper illustrations of the tragedy show the children as wild-eyed and manic in their rush to get down to the stalls, with the suggestion they were perhaps culpable in what happened.
It got me thinking about what it would have been like to survive such an incident, particularly when no-one was made to pay for their part in it all. The groundwork for ‘The Innocents’ was laid, where a series of apparently unconnected murders all lead back to one terrible day. I’ve taken a bit of poetic license, changing the date and the location, but the details of the tragedy remain largely the same. And a fictionalised Frederick Graham makes an appearance, acknowledging his heroic actions.
The Innocents by Bridget Walsh (Gallic Books) Out Now
The Variety Palace Music Hall is in trouble, due in no small part to a gruesome spate of murders that unfolded around it a few months previously. Between writing, managing the music hall and trying to dissuade her boss from installing a water tank in the building, Minnie Ward has her hands full. Her complicated relationship with detective Albert Easterbrook doesn’t even bear thinking about. But when a new string of murders tears through London, Minnie and Albert are thrown together once more. Strangely, the crimes seem to link back to a tragedy that took place fourteen years ago, leaving 183 children dead. And given that the incident touched so many people’s lives, everyone is a suspect . . .
More information about Bridget Walsh and her books can be found on her website. She can also be found on “X” at @bridget_walsh1
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