New Haven, CT Rialto Theatre House Fire, Nov 1921 - Theatre Burns, part 1

New Haven Theatre Burns; Find 4 Dead; May Be 30 Victims

Blaze Starts on Stage and Sweeps Through Old Structure With Great Rapidity.

80 Burned And Injured

Many Yale Students Among Those Hurt in the Frenzied Rush to Escape.

Some Drop From Balcony

Manager in Custody-Fire May have Started From Incense Burned as Picture Is Shown.

Special to The New York Times.
New Haven, Conn., Nov. 27.-Fire, believed to have been cause by the burning of incense on the stage destroyed the Rialto Theatre, a moving picture house, opposite the Hotel Taft, in College Street, and on the edge of the old Yale campus here at 7:30 tonight. Four persons are known to have been killed and at least eighty were injured, many of them seriously.

The suddenness with which the fire started and spread at first led to the belief that fifty or a hundred persons had perished. TIMOTHY J. HANNLON, who had been at the theatre, died immediately after being received at St. Raphael’s Hospital.

Another on the death list was reported to me MABEL MORAN, of Derby, Conn. An elderly woman and a young man, both as yet unidentified, were found dead on a fire escape.

Late tonight Lawrence W. Carroll, manager of the theatre, was held by Coroner Mix on a charge of manslaughter. The Coroner will conduct an investigation to learn whether or not the fire regulations were violated.

Fire Marshal Perkins late tonight was of the opinion that other bodies might be fund in the ruins when a daylight search was made, and it was believed by other officials that the addition to the death list might be as many as thirty. Search with lanterns by the firemen and police up to midnight, however, failed to disclose any further victims.

Physicians Rushed to Scene.

For nearly two hours flames from the burning theatre rose higher that the nine-story Hotel Taft, illuminating the entire city and bringing Yale University students by the hundred and townspeople by the thousand to try to help in the work of rescue and to watch the spectacle.

Practically every physician in the city was called on and the injured were sent to the three leading hospitals, the New Haven general, Grace and St. Raphael’s Hospitals. Nearly fifty of the injured were taken to the General Hospital and twelve or fifteen each to Grace Hospital and St. Raphael’s. The General Hospital alone sent twenty-five physicians and fifty nurses.

About twenty Yale students were among the injured. Of those the most seriously hurt is Allen Keith, of Southport, college sophomore, who is in the Yale infirmary. When it was said was feared he night die, Louis A Lincoln of [illegible] Mass. [illegible] on the football team, was severely but not dangerously burned.

Fireman Frank Kildea was seriously injured by a fall from an extension ladder while trying to rescue a youth about seventeen years old from a fire escape. The lad, with his clothing afire, made his appearance on the fire escape heading after the crowd had gathered and after many others had escaped by that route. He was told to jump, but failed to do so, and finally fell unconscious on the fire escape landing.

Kildea started up on a ladder which was thrust through intervening flames. He apparently inhales smoke or flame, for he lost his hold and fell to the ground. He was taken to a hospital with burns and possible internal injuries.

Many persons who fought their way out of the theatre with slight burns or bruises make their way home without hospital attendance. A number of Yale students were on the injured list, but the majority of those injured and, so far as known, all of those killed were New Haven residents.

A panic began with what was apparently the flare-up of burning scenery and the cry of “fire,” and it was remarkable that the dead and injured list was not greater.

As it was, few of those who were in the theatre could have escaped without bruises, as those trying to escape the flames which shot over the seats into the orchestra became jammed at the exits and many were trampled underfoot. Two of the patients at St. Raphael’s Hospital bore evidence of a severe struggle. James Tierney of 170 Ward Street had a fractured skull and Bernard Dorgan of 280 Lombard Street, a fractured leg.

Others at the hospitals had injuries which came from trampling. Many of those who were not injured had their clothing nearly torn off in the crush.

Continued in part 2, below