3-011-334 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The terrible calamity in Santiago, Chili: ruins of La Compania [Compañía] Church, 1864. Engraving of a photograph by Thomas Columbus Flelsby, of '...one of the most heartrending catastrophes ever recorded...On the 8th of December last the Church...took fire, and of the congregation...two thousand persons, mostly women, were burnt to death...[the church was] sumptuously decorated, whilst many thousand lights, tapers, and paraffin lamps, hung in festoons...illumined with a dazzling splendour the interior...The walls...were covered with rich drapery, and to this circumstance is in a great measure to be attributed the catastrophe which subsequently ensued...a crescent of lights placed at the foot of an image of the Virgin above the altar set some of the drapery on fire...in a few minutes the interior of the church was a mass of flames...The burning drapery, saturated with paraffin, fell in masses on the hapless congregation, whilst from the roof a rain of liquid fire poured upon their heads. Everyone strove with the energy of despair to reach the door and to force her way through the only outlet of escape...Within less than a quarter of an hour...nothing remained of more than two thousand women...than a mass of charred and blackened corpses'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.