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CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE PROCATHEDRAL, 1842 (12 12 13)
This photograph of Lower Abbeygate Street was taken from the top of a warehouse on the corner of Whitehall c.1870. In the foreground, you can see the remains of the Browne Mansion, and the original site of the Browne Doorway. Further up the street is the Pro-Cathedral, which was the site of an appalling disaster on Christmas Day, 1842. The following account, which appeared in The Dublin Pilot, is a graphic account of what happened.“I write to give you the earliest information of a very sad catastrophe whic occurred this morning in the parish chapel. As is usual here on every Christmas morning, he first mass is read at 6am. The doors opened at 5am.
There is always an Irish sermon at first which is attended almost exclusively by country people, the inhabitants of the Liberties of the town, and the working classes. Before 6am, the chapel was so densely crowded that there was no getting into it, either by the aisle or the gallery. In the centre of the aisle, under a large chandelier is a high step ladder which opens out in the form of the letter A. On this some persons were crowding up, and by some means or other, broke one or two of the steps. The noise of the crash or break being heard plainly in the gallery, the persons there thought it was giving way whereupon a rush was made to the staircase which is not very wide; some of the first getting down, from the great pressure, fell over and those immediately behind them fell over them, and thus, from the constant pressure from above, there was not time to extricate them, until, melancholy to relate, from 40 to 50 have been taken up quite dead. Never was a more distressing scene witnessed than the multitudes coming in from the surrounding districts looking out for some friend or other among the dead, and then the screams and shouts as each discovered a father, mother, sister or brother.