On the evening of 5 September 1887 the Theatre Royal in Exeter was full. The piece was The Romany Rye, a melodrama, and the fourth act had begun when fire broke out in the backstage area.
One hundred and eighty-six people died. Some from smoke and flame, some crushed in the press of bodies trying to get out, some from falls after jumping from the balconies and the roof. The worst of it was in the gallery, high above the stage, reached by a stair that was narrow and served too many people. Those seated there had the furthest to go and the least room to go in.
Men from the theatre staff and from the fire brigade went back into the building more than once for people they could hear and could not reach. Much of what is known about that night comes from their accounts and from the inquest that followed. I have worked in a house with one screen and one set of doors for twenty-six years, and I have never stopped counting them. Exeter is why.
Many of the dead were buried together in Higher Cemetery, Exeter, under a memorial raised by public subscription, and it is still tended. Thank you for counting the doors, Constance.
Constance, the inquiry that followed pushed British theatres towards iron safety curtains, doors that open outward under a crowd, and separate exits serving the gallery. Much of the ironmongery in the houses you have worked in dates from that.