The Paisley Cinema Disaster page 2

The Royal Alexandra Infirmary was situated a little more than half a mile from the scene of the calamity. Even with every available ambulance in Paisley put into service, it was quite impossible to convey all the unconscious children there as quickly as their precarious condition demanded, and accordingly the tramcars, and every other sort of vehicle that could be requisitioned, were employed to fill the role of extra ambulances. Within a most creditably short space of time 150 of the little victims had been whirled off to the infirmary.

The news of the dreadful happening had spread like wildfire through the town. Hundreds of parents who knew that their offspring had attended the matinee besieged the theatre, clamouring for news. Many of them were sobbing hysterically as they awaited tidings, and one poor fellow collapsed in a dead faint on learning that his three little ones were all numbered among the dead. Having shut the doors of the theatre to exclude the public, the officials made a final thorough search of the building. Their care received a melancholy reward, for the bodies of two more little children were discovered huddled together in the orchestra pit, where they appeared to have crept for shelter after finding the passages to the doors blocked by the mounds of corpses.

As tramload after tramload of unconscious children was rushed to the infirmary, a frantic mob of parents rushed after the cars through the streets, and in a few minutes the hospital and the police-station were surrounded by weeping relatives and friends. So severe did the stress become that it was found unavoidable to refuse admission to the infirmary to all save the injured and those attending them.

The scenes at the hospital were such as almost to defy description. As the children arrived by the carload, they were hurried off at once to the wards. In only too many instances the briefest of inspections sufficed to show that life was extinct, and before long some of the outer rooms were filled with rows of little forms already certified as dead.

The staff of the infirmary being hopelessly inadequate to cope with such an unprecedented rush of patients, an appeal had to be made for volunteer assistants. The call was answered at once, but even then every one concerned had to work unceasingly and at top pressure. So rapidly were the victims brought in that it actually became necessary to hurry the bodies of those beyond human aid to a lift and convey them to the basement, in order to make room for those whom there was still a chance of saving by immediate treatment. Arrived at the basement, the little corpses were placed on trolleys by twos and threes and rushed along a tunnel to the mortuary. And when the mortuary was full, other rooms were converted to a like use.

The human drama enacted at the hospital was no less heartrending than that which had taken place at the cinema - so distressing, indeed, that even some of the professional nurses, accustomed though they were to the sight of suffering, were almost overcome. One of the last people to visit the infirmary was a woman whose three children had gone to the cinema as a special treat. "Shrinkingly, as it came to her turn," narrates a sympathetic eyewitness, "she advanced to the door, with a nurse holding her hand, a prayer in her eyes. Her lips moved and tears streamed down her face. Slowly she passed through the door; then the huddled crowds heard a loud sob and - silence. The mother's worst fears had been realised. The whole of her family of three children was wiped out."

There was little to be said which could bring comfort to the bereaved parents. One fact there was, however, from which they must have drawn some meed of consolation. The dead children, almost without exception, presented composed and peaceful features inclining to a smile, and only in two or three cases were there any marks of scratches or contusions. Dr. Andrew Gray was therefore able to assure the parents that death had come to their little ones both painlessly and with merciful swiftness. Actually, 59 of the children brought into the hospital were already dead on arrival; 10 more died the same day, and one the day after. In 68 cases out of the 70 the cause of death was established as having been asphyxiation due to crushing. But pitiful indeed was the condition of the survivors. All the rescued children were in a deplorable state, of hysteria, and some - so terrible had been their experience - were even on the verge of insanity.

The Glen Cinema, as has already been mentioned, was largely patronised by the most impoverished classes; indeed, many of the parents were so desperately poor that they could not raise the necessary funds to bury their children. The question of relief-measures was therefore a pressing one, and on the very night of the tragedy the Paisley magistrates held an emergency meeting to consider ways and means. The relief fund was headed by a grant of 1,000 guineas from the Town Council, members of which paid a personal visit to every bereaved home to tender their sympathy and to make an offer of paying the funeral expenses, £1,000 was contributed to the fund by Mr. James V. Bryson, the managing director of the Universal Pictures Corporation, and another £1,000 by Mr. Edward Cochran, the proprietor of a big drapery store in Paisley, and it is gratifying to be able to add that the response of the public at large was generous in the extreme, the receipts reaching a total of £4,000 by January 6th.

The funerals of some fifty of the children took place on the 3rd, all business premises closing and all flags being flown at half-mast. Among the first funerals held was that of Robert Wingate, who had been a keen member of the local Boys' Brigade. Upon the plain white coffin lay the poor little fellow's cap and belt, and the procession was led by the pipe-band of the Brigade, playing the haunting, dirge-like "Flowers o' the Forest." References to the tragedy were made in all the churches on the Sunday following, and at Sherwood Church special mention was made of the heroism of James Johnstone, the boy whose self-sacrificing act has been described above.

Early on January 2, meanwhile, the scene of the disaster had been carefully examined by Major T. H. Grozier, Chief Inspector of Explosives to the Home Office, accompanied by Firemaster Dyer, of the London Fire Brigade, and two officials from the Surveyor's Department of the London County Council. His report expressed the opinion that the circumstances leading directly to the catastrophe had been the position of the rewinding-room, the blocking of the exits, the lack of attendants, and, lastly, overcrowding. The panic, it was pointed out, had arisen owing to the smoke from the re-winding-room entering the auditorium; but had there been more attendants, it was possible that the children could to some extent have been quietened, and it was certain that the great loss of life would not have ensued had the back gate only been left open.

To determine how the used film had come to catch alight was naturally a task of extreme difficulty. Rosie, the operator, was emphatic in his denials that there had been any smoking in the operating-room that day, and McVay, the assistant, made a statement that there had been an accumulator standing in the box into which he put the film, and that he had placed the film against the accumulator, upon which smoke had immediately begun to come from it. Presumably he had set the film against that part of the accumulator which would cause a short circuit. In this connection, Major Crozier's report made it clear that "Smoking Prohibited" notices were duly posted in the operating portion of the cinema, as stipulated by the regulations. On the other hand, although it was impossible to say definitely that smoking had taken place in the enclosure, cigarette-ends of recent origin and spent matches were found on the floor, and in the rewinding-room there were an empty cigarette carton and an empty matchbox, while the top wooden shelf displayed the unmistakable mark left behind by a burning cigarette.

As early as January 2, however - the very day of the Home Office expert's visit - there had been a dramatic development, no less an event than the arrest of Mr. Charles Dorward, the manager of the cinema, whom the Paisley police, acting on a sheriff's warrant, apprehended on a charge of culpable homicide. Next day he appeared at the Sheriff's Court; application for bail was refused, and the accused man was then committed to prison pending consultation with the Crown authorities, though later on he was in point of fact released on bail in the sum of £750.

Dorward's trial opened at Edinburgh on April 29, the Lord Advocate, Mr. Craigie Aitchison, K.C., and Mr. John Cameron appearing for the Crown, while the defence lay in the hands of Mr. Macgregor Mitchell and Mr. J. L. Clyde. The principal contentions of the prosecution were concerned with the iron trellis-gate behind which so large a number of the little victims had perished. It was alleged that Dorward, although he had more than once received warnings in this regard, had failed in his duty in that he kept this gate closed and padlocked on the fatal afternoon. The essence of the indictment, that is to say, was that it had been the manager's bounden duty to keep the exits open during the performance, and more particularly so because there were only two such exits, but that this had not been done.

As against this contention, it was arguea on Dorward's behalf that the law of Scotland did not recognise vicarious responsibility; to be guilty of a crime, a man must commit it himself, and it could not be maintained that any action of Dorward's had been the direct cause of the children's deaths. The Lord Advocate, however, found himself quite unable to regard this presentation of the matter with any sympathy. Evidently taking the view that acts of omission can be considered as real acts no less than those of commission, he replied that "it would be a curious thing if a cinema manager could escape responsibility by saying he was not responsible for the fire which gave rise to a panic."

The bulk of the argumentation, however, revolved around the central point of whether or not the trellis-gate at the foot of the balcony stairs had actually been fastened during the performance; and, if so, whether the responsibility for this did or did not rest upon Dorward. The first evidence bearing upon this question was that of James Glen, an attendant at the cinema, who stated that he had been engaged in "packing" the children when he first observed the smoke. Knowing that the iron gate at the back was always kept padlocked during matinees, he had rushed round to try and get it open. A policeman had struck the padlock with his baton, and several men had then, by dint of violent tugging, succeeded in opening the gate.

Mr. James Graham, the proprietor of the cinema, then attested that on two occasions he had found the trellis-gate shut during matinees. He had then reprimanded Dorward, whose excuse had been that "they were slipping in at the back." He had replied that he did not care if the whole of Paisley slipped in: the gates must be kept open. Describing the afternoon of the tragedy, he narrated how he had received an urgent telephone message from Dorward to the effect that something terrible had happened, and that a lot of children had been injured. He had asked the manager whether the gates had been open, and the answer had been in the affirmative. He had then said to Dorward, "Do you say that on your soul and conscience?" And again the other had replied, "Yes."

It was mentioned in the police evidence, however, that Dorward, when arrested, had made a statement that at a quarter-past one on the afternoon of the matinee he himself had gone down and pushed the trellis-gate open, and his allegation received support from Isa Muir, the cinema chocolate-girl, when it came to her turn to give evidence. This girl swore that the manager indubitably had descended the steps and pushed back the gate. How it had come to be shut again she naturally could not say, but she thought it might very possibly have been reclosed by two boys whom she had observed peeping through a glass panel above the back door soon after the performance started.

It would seem that the court based its eventual decision upon the consideration - an eminently just one, it must be agreed - that Dorward's previous failures to obey the proprietor's instructions with regard to the trellis-gate were entirely irrelevant: the one salient question to be decided was whether on this particular occasion he could be held responsible for that gate having been fastened, and thus, by a natural sequence, for the deaths of the unfortunate children. And upon this all-important point the evidence was contradictory. On the one hand, there was the witness who had testified that the gate always was kept padlocked during matinees, and that he had seen a policeman striking the padlock with his baton; on the other hand, there was the chocolate-girl who declared that Dorward, far from locking the gate, had with his own hands pushed it open. It was clearly an admissable possibility that the gate had indeed been reclosed by some unauthorised person. True, it had been bent and twisted in the effort to wrench it open; but was it not at least credible that the crowd, horrified out of its reasoning powers by the gruesome spectacle behind the trellis, had made a mistake and jumped to the natural but erroneous conclusion that the gate was locked?

Such must have been the court's line of argument. At all events, a verdict of "Not guilty" was returned, and so fell the curtain upon one of the grimmest dramas that have startled the United Kingdom in recent times.