TERRIBLE ACCIDENT IN A CHURCH.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 295, 22 May 1875, Page 3

TERRIBLE ACCIDENT IN A CHURCH.

A terrible accidentoccurradin St. Andrew's Church, New York, on the 25th February. The New York Tribune gives the following particulars • A terrible calamity, attended with a deplorable loss of life and occurring in circumstances of impressive solemnity, took place in this city last evening. In the very middle of the services in a church crowded to its utmost capacity with an attentive and interested congregation, a part of the roof of the edifice was crushed in by the falling of a lofty wall adjoining. Several persons were crushed to death and many were injured. In the |panic which was excited in the large assemblage of people, and in the fierce struggle for safety which immediately took place, there were numerous accidents from trampling and from the heaping-up of masses of thronging, terror-stricken men and women. Five lives were lost by the disaster, and twenty-nine persons were so severely injured as to require hospital treatment, while many more went to their homes with less serious wounds and hurts.

The Herald says ;—" Among all the sudden and heart-rending calamities that have happened in this city there was never one so fitted to stir the public heart to mingled emotions of horror, pity, sympathy, indignation, and an awful sense of the uncertainty of life as that which befell the quiet worshippers in St Andrew's Church, on Duane street, yesterday evening. This edifice stands on the north side of Duane street, near Chatham street. Sweeny's Hotel, a large and high brick building, is located on the corner facing both streets. Just west of it, on Duane street, and adjoining it, was a tall, narrow store, s ; x storeys in height, whose interior was consume I by fire on the 12th of January, leaving its iron front and brick side-walls standing. The next building to this is St Andrew's Church, a Catholic place of worship—a low, large structure, capable of seating on its floor, and in its broad galleries about 1500 people. Between this low-roofed church and the western sidewall of the tall, deep store left standing since the fire of January 12th, was a space of some 2ft or 3ft. This was the condition of things exterior to the church and in its close neighborhood when the congregation assembled for worship last evening. The prayers, chants, and other services which precede the senjion had been gone through with in the regular order, and Father Carroll, of St Stephen's Church, was in the pulpit, in the midst of a discourse which rose to an unusual pitch of solemnity, as if some mysterious premonition were operating on the miud of the preacher. He was speaking of death, and warning the dense and crowded congregation of the fearful danger of postponing preparation for that event, when, with dreadful suddenness, his discourse was interrupted by a loud, stupefying crash, followed in a second or two by another. The wild amazement and frantic terror which ensued defies description. Those stupendous crashes came through the roof on the east side of the building, bringing down portions of the roof and a heavy crushing mass of loose bricks upon the heads of the people in the gallery on that side. In the consternation, astonishment, and horror which seized that crowded congregation, persons in the gallery leaped ovpr upon the heads of people in the pewsj and there was a tumultuous rush towards the doOrs, in which many were either squeezed and crushed to death or dreadfully injured. In the confusion nobody knew how many had been killed or how many wounded in the gallery by the weight which came down upon their heads with the falling roof. After great effort and difficulty the church was at last cleared, the dead decently removed, the severely wounded taken to hospitals, and the more slightly wounded to their homes. The cause of this horrible spectacle of death, maiming, fright, confusion, and honor, which came without warning and with such terrible swiftness upon that peaceful religious assembly, is apparent from the description of the locality. The long, high, western wall of the six-storey burned building, left standing since the fire of the 12th of January, had suddenly fallen upon the low roof of the chureh, breaking through and driving down the heavy incumbent mass upon the heads of the people in the gallery directly underneath."