Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1908 — Seventy-Five Burned In Theatre Fire. [ARTICLE]

Seventy-Five Burned In Theatre F ire .

An opera house at Bowerton, Pa., crowded with members of the St. Johc’s Lutheran Sunday school, gathered to witness an entertainment, was destroyed by fire Mon day night and seventy-five of the children and their parents were burned to death. The explosion of a tank created a stampede tor the exits and the performers, in an effort to calm the audience, upset the oil lamps, that served as foot lights and in a short time the entire theatre interior was in a blaze. Scores of men and children were trampled on and in several cases entire families are said to have been obliterated and most of the dead bodies were consumed by the blaze.