Bazaar of Charity

The Bazar of Charity was created by Harry Blount in 1885: it was about an charitable organization whose object was to ensure the sale of objects, linen rooms and trinkets various, to the profit of the most stripped. Installed with Paris, it was destroyed by a Incendie sadly celebrates the May 4th 1897, which made 129 victims whose majority are women resulting from the high society.

The Bazaar of Charity is not a sale intended for a single work but a Consortium: many charity works join to rent a room with common expenses, thus reducing the expenditure and making it possible to group purchasing and guests.

Initially installed with the Suburb Saint-Honore, it is installed in 1897 street Jean-Pin (N° 17) on a ground pertaining to Michel Heine. This ground was then occupied by a hangar out of eighty meters length wooden on thirteen broad.

Premonitory vision?

The March 21st 1897, the Countess of With a grid proposes the creation of a caritative work to the profit of the catholic Circles of workmen, intended to bar the road with the Socialist Jules Guesde.

It benefits from a reception to invite a fortune-teller inspired, Miss Couedon, whose gifts of soothsayer are known of All-Paris. During the reception, this one starts to speak, slowly, of a a little remote but distinct voice:

Installation

The April 6th, the baron de Mackau brings together the persons in charge of the Bazaar of Charity: Its Royal Highness the duchess of Alençon, her daughter-in-law, the duchess of Vendôme, the duchess of Uzès, the marchioness of Saint-Shamans, the Greffuhle countess, general February, Mrs. de Sassenay, and their advertisement which the Bazaar will be decorated to represent a street of Paris to the Middle Ages with its hoods, its gravers with the picturesque signs, its stages in trompe-l'oeil, its papered walls of ivy and foliage.

In premium the Bazaar will propose, under a lean-to building, a spectacle of cinematograph where one will be able for fifty centimes to see the animated images of the Frères Light projected by an apparatus of 35 mm Normandin and Jolly: an exit of factory, a train which enters in station and the film of the sprinkler sprinkled .

The building is organized in the following way: a double door opens on a vast alley, broadside of 22 counters out of wooden, a 80 meters length; on the left of the entry, a loggia accommodates the offices, on the right is the “living room of the ladies”.

The counters bear evocative names: “ With the Tower of Nesle ” “ With the sow which spins ” “ To the lion of gold ” “ To the Cat boot ”. Vis-a-vis the entry is a dresser, together with a kitchen and a cellar. The back of the hangar gives on an interior court, bordered by the Hotel of the Palate ; leant with the back frontage of the hangar a room sheltering is the Cinématographe.

The contractor in charge of the cinematographic representations is however not very satisfied with this room and opens some to the baron de Mackau: “ I do not have enough place to place my apparatuses, the tubes of oxygen and the ether cans of the Molteni lamp. It is also necessary to separate the mechanic from the public. The reflections of the lamp are likely to obstruct the spectators. ” “ We will make a partition in tarpaulin around your apparatus. A curtain will hide the lamp. ” “ And my bottles and my cans? ” “ You will have only to leave them on the waste ground, behind your room . ”

Catastrophe

The sales are organized the 3,4,5 and May 6th, 1897.

The first day, on May 3rd 1897, will be honoured by the presence with Miss de Flores, girl of the ambassador of Spain. The sale of May 4th, as for it, will be honoured with the presence with Sophie de Wittelsbach, duchess of Alençon, sister-in-law of the emperor of Austria, François-Joseph and younger sister of famous Sissi.

The counters are held by ladies belonging to the highest French aristocracy.

The Bazaar is blessed by the apostolic nuncio as of 3 p.m.: this one comes, makes a fast tower and from goes away without the crowd which presses itself there, realizing well there.

Around 4 p.m., the duchess of Alençon - which chairs the stand of the Dominican Noviciates, located at an end of the gallery - murmur to one of its neighbors, Mrs. Belin: “ I choke… ” Mrs. Belin observes: “ If a fire burst, it would be terrible! ”.

The drama

Towards 16:30 occurs the fatal accident: the lamp of projection of the cinematograph exhausted its reserve of ether and it should again be filled. The assistant of the projectionist lights a match but the apparatus is badly insulated and the ether vapors ignite.

Some moments after, whereas the organizers - among whom appear the duke of Alençon - were informed of the accident and already started to make evacuate, in the calm one, the hundreds of people present in the hangar, a curtain takes fire, ignites the woodworks then is propagated with the tarred vélum which is used as ceiling with the Bazaar. A witness will say: “ Like a true powder trail in a distracting howling, fire set ablaze the decoration, would run along the woodworks, devouring on its passage this gracious and fragile tumble of hangings, ribbons and laces . ”

Grondement of the fire the cries of panic of twelve hundred guests answer who try to flee by losing their coolness. Certain people fall and cannot be raised, trampled by the crowd of the runaways, panicked.

The duchess of Alençon will say to the Countess Mathilde d' Andlau: “ Leave quickly. You do not occupy of me. I will leave the last . ”

Outside the firemen arrive on the spot however that clusters of people emerge from the bazaar, transformed in blazing inferno. Some of the visitors try to be run away by the interior court: they will be saved thanks to the intervention of the cooks of the Hotel of the Palate , Misters Gomery and Edouard Vaudier, which loosened three bars of the windows of the kitchens to help them to extirpate furnace.

Fifteen minutes only after the beginning of the fire, all are consumed: the hangar does not offer any more the aspect but of one accumulation of beams out of wooden calcined, frays of atrociously mutilated and carbonized corpses.

A journalist who has just arrived on the spot, notes: “ It is an unforgettable spectacle within this immense framework of fire formed by the whole of the bazaar, where all burns at the same time, shops, partitions, floors and frontages, of the men, the women, the children twist, pushing howls of damnés, trying in vain to find an exit, then flame in their turn and fall down to the always magnifying heap of calcined corpses ”.

Died of the duchess of Alençon

The duchess of Alençon figure among the victims. There remained with the counter of the Noviciate in company of some faithful, it tries one moment to flee by the principal door, believing to find her husband then it turns back.

A nun comes to crumble with its feet: " O Madam, what a dead ! " ; she answers him: " Yes, but in a few minutes, think that we will see God ! " , which will be its last words. She will die in company of the Countess of Beauchamp, which she will take in her arms to mask the death to him which awaits it.

No one does not know if she died asphyxiated or burned alive but the contractions of its body show that she had endured the limits of the human suffering. Its body, unrecognizable, will be finally identified by its dentist thanks to his immaculate teeth and its gold bridge. (Here the beginning of the dental identification.)

After a celebrated funeral mass the May 14th in the Saint-Philippe church of Rolls, it will be buried in the funeral vault of Orleans, with Dreux.

Victims: almost all the women

Among the 129 dead ones that the fire made, which five people whose bodies were not identified, one counted 123 women, of which almost very of aristocratic stock. The feminist journalist Severine wrote in the Newspaper in connection with the escape of the men present at the time of the catastrophe: “Among these men (they were approximately two hundreds), one quotes of them two which were admirable and up to ten in very which made owe them. The remainder packed up, not only not saving anybody, but still clearing a passage in the female flesh, with kicks, punches, blows of heels, blows of cane. ”

Indirect victims:

- the Poillouë general of Saint-March (one of the favorite Turkish head of Alphonse Allais) dies of a Heart attack by learning death from a close relation in the fire

- the duke of Aumale is embanked by an heart attack on May 7th, after having written a score of letters of condolence to the families of the victims of the nobility.

Vault Notre-Dame de Consolation

On the site of the Bazaar of Charity an expiatory vault, called rises today Notre-Dame de Consolation. This vault is dedicated to the victims of the fire.

Impact of the catastrophe on the cinema

Once the results of the known investigation, much regard the career of the cinema as finished. Under the pressure of the high society, projections are prohibited besides a time before the interest of the invention and its development abroad do not pass in addition to the resentment of the endeuillées victims.

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