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Show CHILDREN DIE IN MONTREAL THEATER FIRE 74 Dead Identified; Small Blaze Causes Stampede and ! Suffocation Follows; Fire- ; men Find Gruesome Scene! By J. Ii. KELLY (Tutted Tress Staff Correspondent) MONTREAL. Jan. 10 (FP) All thrtm.u'h tw night mothers and fathers, in an aony of snsiienst. moved in Little groups thronuh the eity uiorirno, seeking their children anions the bodies taken from the Lanrier J'ahtee . picture theater, where 70 were suffocated and trampled tram-pled to death in a mad stampede caused by a small fire in the balcony. bal-cony. At the hospitals, others inquired for the missing among the thirty or more victims, some in a dyinji condition. beiiiK eared for there. 74 Dead Ideiitilied-- When the morgue reopened to- i day, after bein closed for u brief lespite from. the harrowintr work of 1 identification, 74 of the defid had ; been identified. About S0O to 1.000 spectators were ! in the theater fur the Sunday afi'er- j noon show. Children predominate!. I attracted by the children's fnvorih Mnvy Pickford, in "Sparrows." A minor film tra-icaliiy entitled "Get 'Em Yonnr." was fliekeriiip on the screen and the house resounded with the shrill laughter of children when a curl of smoke was seen issu in.il from a corner of the balcony. ,. As theater attendants - hurried forward to put the blaze out, a flicker of flame shot tlii-ongh an opening in the woodwork, startlinK-ly startlinK-ly vivid in the darkened theater. The dread-cry nt "Fire" was heard and rJahdomoniiim started. The balcony was packed with children because of the cheaper admission, ad-mission, 17 cents. As the mad rush for the exits started they piled into narrow stairways, which make two turns or "elbows," oh tlie; left hand stairway. Sixty Arc Suffocated ; The stampeding, children were cnu.-rht in a hopeless tangle on oiift of the turns. A medical report showed sixty of theni' died from suffocation, all air cut off by the solid mass of bodies piled high above them. So quickly did it happen that firemen who reached the scene senreeely ten minutes after, the first cry of fire, were able to accomplish ac-complish little in the way of rescue work. The strength of ten men . could hot move' a body from the solid mass. Only a few were 14 or over. The oldest was IP,. One little girl of five, Jeanne D"Arc Yien, named for the sainted heroine of France, was lifted from the mass of bodies as the bottom of the pile was renched. the laughing face that had heen wrtrching her first movie, frozen into in-to an expression of helpless terror thnt the rescue workers will neveiJ forget. . i ' I |