EXIT WAS LOCKED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 962, 3 May 1930, Page 11

EXIT WAS LOCKED

CINEMA MANAGER FREED ON SERIOUS CHARGE PAISLEY PANIC ECHO Reed. 9.5 a.m. LONDON, Friday. Conflicting evidence as to whether an iron trellis exit gate was locked or unlocked was given at the trial at Edinburgh of Charley Dorward, manager of the Paisley Cinema, in which 70 children perished on New Year’s Eve. Dorward, who was charged with culpable homicide, gave evidence that he did not lock! the gate at the performance. If the police found it locked, somebody else must have locked it. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The Paisley cinema disaster was the worst of its kind ever known in Scotland. At a special New Year entertainment for children a smoking film caused a panic, and although the building was not ignited, a frantic struggle to reach the exits had dreadful results. Seventy children perished, most of them from asphyxiation, as a result of gas-brackets being broken in the mad rush for safety, and poisonous gas being poured into their midst. Many other children were taken to hospital, most of whom were suffering from shock. Numbers of the terror-stricken children were piled in heaps breasthigh when rescuers reached them. In the hospital distracted mothers identified tWdr offspring and nurses fainted, appalled by the magnitude of the disaster. There were many instances of heroism.