By this time the fire (which seems to have originated by some of the "short drops" blowing against the "border lights" in the flies, and so communicating to the scenery) had made so much headway that the actors had to look out for themselves. They had held their ground as long as it was possible, and, seeing from the panic which started immediately in the gallery and spread all over the upper part of the house, that the worst had begun, they began their retreat, the ground floor being already almost cleared. Mr. Thorne had gone. Mr. Burroughs was up-stairs in his dressing-room, from which he escaped only to meet his death. Mr. Murdoch was never seen again. Miss Claxton and Miss Harrison rushed one way; Miss Girard and the minor people another.
The sight of fire seemed to paralyze every one for an instant, and just as they recovered sufficiently to act, Mr. Studley's sudden coming to the front of the stage and assuring them that there was no cause for alarm caused another pause of a second. It was for a second only. The blazing fragments began falling thick and fast, contradicting the actor's well-intentioned deception. The audience arose as by one impulse and made a rush for the doors. The entreaties of Miss Claxton and Mr. Murdoch were unheeded. The fierce struggle for life had begun.
The ushers for the most part preserved their presence of mind and endeavored to enforce order among the rushing crowd, as did also the police in attendance. Mr. Rochfert, the head usher, broke open a small door at the farther end of the vestibule and increased the facilities of exit into the open air, which regularly consisted of two doors five feet wide, opening upon Washington street. Mr. Rochfert also entered the auditorium and endeavored to quell the excitement, but without effect.
A fire alarm had been immediately sent from the First Precinct Station-House, which is located next the theatre, and a minute or two after a general alarm and also a call for the reserved force of all the precincts. But by the time the engines were in position and at work the fire was beyond control. The occupants of the orchestra chairs and parquet had had but little difficulty in making good their escape, but at least two-thirds and perhaps even a larger fraction of the audience were still in the dress-circle and gallery. The lowest estimate of the number in the gallery is that five or six hundred people were in that portion of the house, and from among these were most of the three hundred deaths. The exit from the first balcony was down a single flight of stairs in the rear of the vestibule. Down these stairs the people came in scores, leaping and jumping in wild confusion. The way out from the upper gallery was down a short flight of stairs starting from the south wall of the building, thence by a short turn down a long flight against the same wall to the level of the balcony, and from this floor down a cased flight into Washington street. The main floor and first balcony were soon emptied through their respective exits, but for the five or six hundred panic-stricken gallery spectators to pass safely through the tortuous passage described was next to an impossibility. Every indication points to the belief that, suffocated by the smoke forced down like a wall from the roof, the mass of those in the upper gallery thronged about the entrance to the stairs and were either blocked there so as to make exit impossible, or were unable even to make the attempt to escape, and sank down, one upon the other, to fall in a mass into the horrible pit under the vestibule when the supports of the gallery were burned away. Those near the entrance of the stairs were, probably, the only ones who were able to escape from this terrible slaughter-pen. There was comparatively little outcry here, and this again would seem to indicate that suffocation had intervened to numb the sensibilities of the hundreds to whom death was to come by fire.