It was a full house at the Richmond Theatre.
Nearly 600 people packed the building the day after Christmas in 1811 for a triple-bill benefit for Alexander Placide's theatrical company.
But a performance that began with patrons reveling in the festive holiday spirit ended with a blaze that consumed the building and at least 72 people inside, forever etching Dec. 26, 1811, into Richmond's deep history.
As the curtain rose on the second act of the pantomime "Raymond and Agnes: or, The Bleeding Nun" -- the third and final performance of the night -- a candle on a chandelier brushed against the hemp backing of some scenery.
The flames spread. One of the actors rushed to the front of the stage and exclaimed: "The house is on fire."
It didn't take long for the extremely flammable sap-filled pine roofing to catch fire. As the patrons tried to flee the rising flames and heavy smoke, the theater's poor design added to the problems.
Constructed five years earlier where the 1200 block of East Broad Street is today, the theater replaced a structure that served as a theater until it burned in 1800.
With a single narrow staircase to the box seats and only three exits -- one behind the stage, another for the gallery and the main front door -- that opened inward, the crush of bodies that sought relief proved to be just as lethal as the fire.
The blaze did not discriminate, killing rich and poor, white and black, young and old, Christian and Jew. The list of dead included recently inaugurated Virginia Gov. George W. Smith and Abraham B. Venable, a U.S. senator who had become president of the Bank of Virginia.
Smith had gotten out of the theater, but he died when he went back inside to try to save his daughter. None of his children perished in the fire.
Of the 72 confirmed people to have died in the blaze, 54 were women. The remains are buried in a crypt underneath Monumental Church, which was erected as a memorial to the victims and opened for worship in 1814.
A marble monument bears the names of those who died and rests on the church's portico.
"If you look at the memorial to those who died and are buried there, the number of women's names is just striking," said John T. Kneebone, associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University.
The death toll could have been higher if not for acts of heroism from such people as Dr. James D. McCaw, who lowered a dozen women from windows into the waiting arms of Gilbert Hunt, an enslaved blacksmith, before jumping to safety himself.
Hunt later bought his freedom and spent time in Liberia before returning to Richmond.
Charles Copland, a prominent Richmond lawyer, attended the performance that night with four of his nine children. But he grew tired of the play and left for his home, a block away from the theater.
Awakened by the light and commotion, Copland rushed back to the theater and encountered one of his daughters, who had escaped. He went into the burning building twice, helping one person escape.
He retreated the second time as he worried his exit might be cut off by the falling floor above. Copland later learned his sons made it out safely.
Another daughter, Margaret Copland, never made it out alive.
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At the time of the fire, America was in the midst of the Second Great Awakening, a Christian revival movement that attracted new church members and led to the formation of new denominations.
As Richmond, a city of nearly 10,000, reeled in the aftermath of the fire, evangelical clergy seized the moment to preach against the theater and other public amusements such as drinking alcohol and gambling.
"People read this fire as a sign that God was not pleased with Richmond," said Paul A. Levengood, chief executive of the Virginia Historical Society, noting that the response was typical of the 19th century. "In all this frivolity of going to theaters ... the city had made God very upset.
"This was a call to end this kind of behavior and go to a much more pious, God-fearing existence for the city."
A broadside published in 1811 called for an end to theaters.
"May theaters all be done away, Thro' all Columbia's shore, the building put to better use and plays be seen no more," a portion of it reads.
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the city's Common Council banned all public shows and entertainment for four months.
Richmond did not get a new theater until 1819.
While theater lagged, religion became more prominent. Before the fire there were four churches in Richmond -- St. John's Episcopal on Church Hill, a Baptist church, a Methodist church and a Quaker meetinghouse. There was also a synagogue.
A small joint congregation of Presbyterians and Episcopalians met for Sunday services at the state Capitol in the Hall of Delegates.
Kneebone said it has been argued -- although he has not researched it -- that the fire helped bring a more evangelical strain of ministers into churches, particularly the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches in Richmond.
Meredith Henne Baker was a graduate student at the College of William and Mary in 2004, focusing on American religious history, when she came across sermons related to the fire.
She said Richmond in 1811 wasn't exactly the Bible belt but more resembled New Orleans with its gambling and dancing.
Many sermons encouraged Richmond residents to stop going to the theater and start practicing their faith and go to church, said Baker, who wrote the book "The Richmond Theater Fire: Early America's First Great Disaster," which will be published in February by LSU Press.
On the spot where the theater burned arose Monumental Church, a new house of worship for Episcopalians that led to a resurgence of the faith.
The church congregation grew during the ensuing years and led to the founding of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in downtown Richmond in the 1840s.
Monumental Church tapped an evangelical minister, the Rt. Rev. Richard Channing Moore, as its first rector. He often preached against theatrical amusements but struggled to get Richmond Episcopalians on board with his views, Baker said.
"In this city, much as I wish to check the evil, I confess myself at a loss how to proceed," Moore wrote in a letter. Baker published an excerpt of the letter in her manuscript.
Theater wasn't out of the city for long, however. Plans for a new one began in 1816 by many patrons who survived the fire or families that lost loved ones in the blaze.
It took nearly three years before a new theater, initially dubbed The Theatre, was established at the corner of Seventh and East Broad streets. Forty-three years later, it burned, too.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
