FIRE PANIC AT CONCERT.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12772, 25 May 1912, Page 3 (Supplement)

FIRE PANIC AT CONCERT.

TWO WOMEN' AND FIVE CHILD- • REN LOSE THEIR LIVES.

TRAGIC STAMPEDE. ' '":'' PARIS, April 12. .Two women and five children were killed, and ten men,' women, and children badly injured m a panic at a concert new Lille night. The concert was organised by the Patriotic League of French Ladies m a-small hall on the first floor of a house at Haudain, one of the suburbs of Lille. There were about two hundred people present, and the concert was proceeding .with success, whtflf a petroleum lamp, which hurig from a hook m the middle of the ceiling, fell among the audience. ' Tho lamp burst, and the flames leapt and' 'sputtered along the benches and the chairs. A wild panic followed; The only two men m the hall who did not lose their heads tore off their coats and put the fire out, but the rest of the audience rushed shrieking to the stairhead, and there was a wild fight for safety on • the naa-row stairs. .

Men struck women down ; and women scrambled over the bodies of little children.

When, some minutes later, the police and the firemen succeeded m restoring order, two elderly women and five children were dead on the stairs. Ten others were taken to the hospital with broken legs and broken legs and broken arms. It is feared that several of the injured cannot survive.*