2-970-007 - /Heritage Images

Scene of the Recent Accident at Cork, 1856. Disaster in Ireland, '...at Penrose's-lane...about forty people...had assembled...at the wake of an infant child...the flooring gave way...[the guests] were precipitated with a tremendous and fearful crash to the base of the house, where they were huddled together in one indescribable mass of dead and dying...here and there a human head, an arm, or a leg protruding...Of the nineteen who met their death, very few of their bodies exhibited marks of external violence, having come by their end from suffocation; the eyes, nostrils, mouths, and ears of the killed being literally stuffed with mortar-dust...a man, residing in the lane...informed the Mayor that a year ago he called the attention of the Corporation to the unsafe state of the very house which has fallen, and that the house was actually inspected by the proper officers, but no steps taken to render it more secure'. From "Illustrated London News", 1856.