THE WASHINGTON CATASTROPHE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2535, 29 July 1893, Page 3

THE WASHINGTON CATASTROPHE.

Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., made historic by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln within its walls, twentyeight years ago, by J. Wilkes Booth, the actor, suddenly collapsed on June 9th, crushing the life out of over a score human beings, and inflicting injury on twice as many more. It is a coincidence which will go into history that this second tragedy occurred on the day when the remains of the tragedian Edwin Booth, brother of the assassiu, whose life was so darkened by the crime that he never visited Washington after wards, were being laid to rest. building collapsed in the midst of an ill-judged effort to remedy some of its defects. The hour of the disaster was shortly after the departments had settled down for the day’s work, about 9.30 o’clock. The workmen’s operations under the building were the immediate cause of the catastrophe. They had been tinkering on it for two hours or more. Half an hour earlier aud but few lives would have been lost. An excavation for an electric light plant was being dug in the cellar of the structure, a three-storey affair, and according to the best information obtainable the workmen dug beneath the foundation supports in the front of the building, weakening them to such an extent that the walls gave way before they could bo jacked. This explanation of the accident is the only one advanced, but it seems somewhat strange in view of the fact that the top floor gave way first. The floors fell iu as if they had been cards in a card house. On each floor there were scores of clerks and others at work, aud without warning they were carried down as if in a cataract. There were 300 clerks employed in the building at the time of the disaster. Referring to it ex-Congress-man Poiusetter Dunn, of Arkansas, made the remark, “ It’s too bad. I wouldn’t have cared so much they had been pensioners, instead of the poor clerks,” a remark that has been duly c’"ciliated through the press all over the country, and on account of hH indiscretion Mr Dunn finds himself in very bad odour.