The coroner’s jury in the case of the victims of the Canonsburg Opera house horror has done its work and been discharged. The evidence heard by the coroner and the jury, when summarized, shows tat a boy under the required age was operating one of the moving picture machines; that the doorway of the main entrance to the Opera House building is a few inches below the width required by law; that this doorway had been approved without actual measurement by the factory inspectors. Manager Ferguson was unequivocally condemned in the findings of the jury for failure to properly police the premises, to prohibit people collect and crowd on the stairway and in the lobby, and for leaving obstructions in the shape of baby carriages in the lower hall. The jury found no person or persons criminally liable. The jury also censured the state factory inspectors for approving a public hall, the entrance to which was not up to the requirements of the law.
The jury recommends that the owner of the Opera House widen the entrance and also recommends that the next state legislature pass a law prohibiting the giving of moving picture shows or theatrical or other exhibitions on any floor above the first.
The jury also sets forth that a panic was the primary cause of the calamity. In this respect, and inn a number of others, the jury found in accordance with the ### as published in The Notes and other newspapers. The building is provided with adequate fire escapes, but in the mad rush of those who lost their reason by fright, they were not used. The narrow doorway, with the wider stairway, doubtless served to congest the victims and added to the number of deaths. A wider doorway would have saved some lives.
The Notes in its edition on Monday said editorials that one cause of great loss of life was the failure of the manager of the opera House to provide police to prohibit the gathering of people in the lobby and on the stairway while shows were on in the hall. It was stated in the same editorial that another cause for the disaster was the obstruction of the hall at the foot of the stairway by baby carriages. Both these contentions on the part of this paper were sustained by the coroner’s jury, and they are set forth in the jury’s findings , although the assertion with regard to the baby carriages was denied by the manager at the time.
We believe that reasonable, intelligent, and unprejudiced persons will agree with the findings of the jury. So far as we are able to judge they were guided by the facts and the evidence.
After all, the recommendations of the jury are, perhaps[s, the most important. They look to the future. Those whose lives were crushed out cannot be brought back; but there may be some consolation to the friends of the departed if, out of this awful calamity, safer conditions may be provided for the living. It seems dreadful beyond the power of words to express, that 26 of our people must die in order that safer conditions may be had for the people of the community. But in the past many needed reforms have come in the same way; and so it is likely to be in the future.
The jury says the main doorway leading in and out of the Opera House should be wider. It appears, however, that the doorway lacks only two or three inches of being as wide as is required by law. But the law is not everything. The doorway should be wide enough to provide a means of rapid egress in case of a panic, and twice the width provided by law would not be too wide. If the room now occupied by the Pollock shoe store were taken and added to the present stairway, and then that space divided in the center by a partition and one side used as an entrance and the other as an exit, a great improvement would be effected. The editor of The Notes was in one of Wheeling’s leading theaters Saturday night at a picture show. The crowd was great, but there was no confusion. There was a broad way over which all entering the house passed, and a broad exit entirely separate from the entrance, and those entering and those going out did not meet. This is what we should have here.