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Fascinating Horror
  • 1 year ago
"On the 6th of July, 1944, the circus came to Hartford, Connecticut. Excited residents crowded into the big top to watch a performance unrivalled in that day and age.."

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Transcript
00:00On the 6th of July, 1944, the circus came to Hartford, Connecticut. Excited residents crowded
00:19into the big top to watch a performance unrivaled in that day and age. Trained lions and tigers,
00:25daredevil stunts, a menagerie of exotic creatures, and a series of acrobatic marvels.
00:32Around 7,000 people filed into the huge canvas enclosure to enjoy the show, but before the
00:39afternoon's entertainment could draw to a close one of the worst temporary building fires in
00:44US history would claim the lives of nearly 170 of the audience. In the 1940s circuses were rather
00:54different than they are today. The Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus was one of the
01:00biggest in the country. It traveled all over the mainland United States by train, setting up and
01:06performing for a few days at a time near major population centers. Its big top was among the
01:12biggest in the world at the time, with capacity enough for 9,000 spectators around three parallel
01:19rings. The appearance of the circus was, for many residents, a rare treat. The Second World War had
01:27been raging for several years, and so chances for fun were few and far between. Anyone who wanted
01:34to visit would have had to make use of rationed gasoline to get there, and might have struggled
01:40to find time out from demanding work for the war effort. Because many men were serving overseas
01:46it was mainly women and children in attendance that day.
01:51The circus itself was also impacted by war. Resources were scarce and transport was often
01:58disrupted. The movement of munitions and supplies for the war took priority over everything else.
02:05In fact the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus had planned to arrive in Hartford and be
02:10set up by the afternoon of the 5th for their first show. Because of transport delays they had
02:16to cancel this performance, something which many circus folk considered a bad omen. They must have
02:23breathed a sigh of relief when the evening show on the 5th of July went off without a hitch.
02:29It wasn't until the next day that disaster would strike.
02:34The 6th of July was a hot, dry day with temperatures inside the big tops stifling.
02:41Nevertheless people flooded into the circus, more than 7,000 of them. Crowds filtered in
02:47through a small number of main entrances and took their seats on bleachers all around the
02:51performance area. Nobody knows, even to this day, how the fire began. It may have been deliberate
03:00arson or a discarded match or cigarette. Whatever the cause, the flames began licking at the southern
03:06side of the tent not long after the performance began. The fire resisted the attempts of ushers
03:13to put it out with buckets of water, and spread from near the ground to the top of the canvas
03:18sidewall of the tent. There it licked against the roof and began to spread with incredible speed.
03:26The spread was, in fact, so rapid that many survivors describe it as a fireball or explosion.
03:33While we don't know what caused the initial fire, we do know what caused it to spread so fast.
03:41The big top was made of two types of canvas. The sidewalls were plain fabric and had no
03:47fireproofing at all. The roof, on the other hand, was made of fireproof canvas... but fireproof
03:54canvas which had been soaked in a mixture of paraffin and gasoline in order to protect it
04:00against rain, a waterproofing process that was quite normal and accepted at the time.
04:08A fire was not a totally unexpected possibility. In fact the circus had suffered several in the
04:14past, although miraculously none had resulted in human fatalities. A terrible fire had wiped out
04:22most of their animal menagerie just two years before, and on another occasion a circus tent
04:27of theirs had burned to the ground, although thankfully without a single casualty.
04:32Circus staff were aware of the possibility of fire.
04:38To mitigate it seat men were positioned under each set of bleachers, where there were also
04:43large buckets of water. Whenever a dropped match or cigarette set a sidewall smoldering
04:50they would quickly put it out. This precaution was, it's clear in retrospect, totally insufficient.
04:58When it was just the sidewall burning the evacuation was relatively orderly.
05:05The circus band quickly started playing Stars and Stripes Forever, a pre-agreed emergency song
05:12which served the dual purpose of calming the crowd and alerting all circus staff that something was
05:17wrong. Ushers moved people towards the exits as quickly as they could. Getting all 7,000 people
05:24out seemed manageable until the fire reached the roof and rippled across the paraffin-soaked canvas
05:31in a giant fireball. The remaining audience members suddenly found themselves trapped
05:38under a vast burning sheet that threatened to collapse at any moment. Panic ensued.
05:46You might think that a circus tent is a relatively easy building to escape from,
05:51and many people did indeed manage to get to safety by crawling under the canvas
05:56sidewalls. In this particular case, though, escape wasn't necessarily easy for everyone.
06:03Many people were seated high up on bleachers and had to jump to the ground before they could
06:08squeeze under a sidewall. The main exits quickly became horrifically crowded. There were only a few
06:16of these available. Several others were blocked by large metal tunnels which had been fed in from
06:22outside the tent so that circus animals could be safely moved into the ring. These long metal cages
06:29would have been removed just minutes later, but the fire developed so rapidly that there was no
06:35chance to do so. Many people had to clamber bodily over the tunnels in order to get to safety.
06:42Elsewhere unsecured wooden seats became a chaotic jumble that tripped people trying to escape.
06:49As the fire spread and burned through support ropes, poles began to fall. Within a very short
06:56space of time the whole roof of the tent collapsed down onto anyone who had not escaped.
07:03From the beginning of the fire until total destruction was less than 10 minutes. By the
07:10time many fire engines arrived on the scene it was already too late.
07:17The death toll recorded in the aftermath of the fire was 168, a number which included one recorded
07:24death to cover a collection of partial remains that could not be attributed to an individual
07:30human. Three more people died of their injuries in the months which followed, and many survivors
07:36bore both physical and psychological scars from the event for the rest of their lives.
07:43Even taking place in wartime the Hertford Circus fire was a shocking disaster. These were ordinary
07:50people, many of them children, who had been enjoying one of the very few forms of entertainment
07:56still available to them. One death which particularly captured the attention of the
08:02public was that of Little Miss 1565, an eight-year-old victim who could not be positively
08:09identified, and so was named for the number on her mortuary tag. Her picture appeared in papers
08:16across the country, but it wasn't until decades after the fire in 1991 that she was finally
08:22identified as Eleanor Emily Cook, and her remains were moved to a plot beside her brother, who had
08:29also died in the fire. Another image also circulated widely after the tragedy... that of
08:37clown Emmett Kelly. He was putting on his makeup when the fire began, and is pictured in his full
08:43costume hauling buckets of water to damp down the flames. While many performers and circus staff
08:50were injured in the fire, none were known to have died. Likewise the performing animals, a vital
08:58part of the circus, mostly escaped unscathed. The lions had just been herded off stage when
09:04the fire began, and so were saved with only minor burns. Had the incident begun just a few minutes
09:11earlier the presence of panicking animals would have added considerably to the chaos of the
09:16evacuation, and no doubt increased the already terrible human cost. As it was, camels, zebras,
09:24and elephants had to be led away from the circus lot into surrounding streets to keep
09:29them from taking flight as fire engines arrived to put out the flames.
09:35Naturally an investigation followed the disaster. It was found that Hartford was not lax when it
09:41came to fire safety. Indeed, they had recently invested hugely in installing new fire escapes
09:47in the city. However, the circus seemed to have gone by under the radar. There had never been a
09:54problem with fire there before as far as Hartford officials knew, and so it wasn't something they
09:59planned for. The Big Top had been inspected to ensure that it was of sound construction,
10:05but had not been assessed for flammability or fire safety.
10:10The cause of the fire was never officially determined. Many circus folk were convinced
10:16it was arson, while others blamed a sparking spotlight. However, multiple investigations
10:22concluded that the most likely cause was a dropped match or cigarette.
10:28Several members of the circus were charged with involuntary manslaughter, and were given prison
10:33terms of up to five years apiece. All of them were released early due to good behavior or for medical
10:40reasons. The circus itself, while it did not accept responsibility, was eager to provide compensation,
10:48and for almost 10 years willingly set aside all profits so that they could pay Hartford
10:53whatever amount the city deemed fit to pass on to victims of the fire for their loss and suffering.
11:00When the circus did go on to other performances it was with many modifications. Local authorities
11:06across the country now required proof that circus tents were fireproof, and threw their
11:11weight behind enforcing smoking bans... something they'd never particularly cared about before.
11:18Fire inspectors started routinely turning up to check on circuses, even in cities where they never
11:24previously had. The fire, although terrible, had made the country aware that such a disaster could
11:30happen, and that steps were required to prevent it. A permanent memorial to the disaster was put
11:38in place around the 50th anniversary of the fire. A metal plaque marks where the center of the main
11:44ring once was, and a circle of trees outlines what was the footprint of the big top. Current
11:51fire safety standards make it likely that, in the US at least, this is the last memorial to
11:58the victims of a circus fire that will ever need to be built.
12:14you

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