Show Terrible Calamity London lOA terrible calamity involving the death of 178 children occurred in Sunderland County of Durham this evening From the I details received it appears that an entertainment was given at Vic toria Hill by a conjurer attended almost altogether by children several thousand being in attendance attend-ance The accident occurred at the close of the performance the body of the hall being entirely crowded with occupants when some 120 little ones came rushing down the stairs from the gallery at the top of the first High of stairs was a door which opened only twenty inches and thus but r one child at a time could get through At this point while amass a-mass of children were putting forward for-ward one of them fell and was unable un-able to rise owing to the others crowding The result was that a great number were pushed down trampled on and suffocated The scene was terrific No effort could stop the mad rush of affrighted children They came on pell mall though strangely without much shouting and soon 178 were knocked down and suffocated to death by others tramp ling on them The greater number of bodies were badly mangled from trampling They were piled seven or eight deep Many victims not killed had their clothing torn from their bodies and this together with the bleeding bodies of the unfortunate unfortun-ate shows the terrible nature of tbe struggle The ages of the children child-ren knon to have been killed ranged from fourto fourteen years There was great excitement In town when the accident became known A great crowd rushed to the scene until 20000 were surrounding the the town hall The feeling was intense and the authorities ordered out the infantry to preserve order Tne work of getting out the bodies was begun immediately They were laid out in the hall and the parents of those killed wero admitted ad-mitted to identify their children Some heartrending transpired while the identification was in progress pro-gress wThe mothers of tho dead children were constantly uttering some piercing shrieks and many fainted on discovering the ucvllus of their little ones t |