Burning Ballerinas: A Tragic 19th Century Spectacle

This podcast covers mature and tense morbid and sometimes just scary stuff. Lissiter discretion is advised. You know the expression "dance till you drop?" Well, what about dance until you are engulfed in flames? Tragically, this was the case for some 19th century ballerinas. Welcome to 30 more big minutes. This is the podcast where we cover topics, people, places, history, and more of a morbid, macabre, dark, and downright grizzly nature in 30 minutes or less. I'm Elise Williams. And I'm Jessica Visami. It's been some time. It's been some time, but we are back with some new episodes. I know, happy Halloween. Exactly, happy Halloween. Yeah, we've been busy. This episode's been on the list for a minute. I'm excited for this one. Is it bad that we're always excited for really dark and morbid stuff? I guess so. Well, it's good that we are since we were the host of this podcast, but I just love learning about new things, whether it is absolutely horrific or incredible. So let's get to it. On November 15th, 1862, 20-year-old French ballerina Emma Leverie, one of the last ballerinas of the romantic ballet era, took the stage at the Paris Opera for a dress rehearsal. The illegitimate daughter of a dancer and a baron, Emma, was a well-known and widely respected dancer in her own right. On that day, she was rehearsing the role of Fonella, a mine part and the title role in Obert's opera, La Muit de Pâtissie. The epitome of grace and elegance, Emma wore a costume that was a theory in fitting of someone of her stature, a corset bodice and a gauzy tool skirt that grazed her calves. Emma sat down and in doing so, raised her tutu, so not as to crush the delicate fabric of the skirt. This, however, caused a rush of air. In the 19th century, pre-electricity theaters were lit by gaslight, meaning that the dancers were dangerously close to open gaslings. Yes, which is very scary to think about. So when Emma moved her skirt, it agitated the gas lamp, causing it to flame out and set her tutu on fire. The flames spread quickly to three times her height, and in a nightmarish display, Emma ran screaming back and forth across the stage until someone stepped in to help put the fire out. Sadly, it was too late and Emma sustained injuries that a year later would result in her death. She suffered 40% burns on her body, including having her corset burnt into her. Her face and chest were unharmed, but her thighs, waist, back, and shoulders and arms were burned. This is why I don't dance. Yeah, this is it. This is why. This is why. This makes sense, okay. So yeah, she didn't die right away. She lived until July of 1863, but then her wounds reopened, and she contracted a blood infection from this. The charter mains of her dress can be seen on display at Muse Bibliotec in Paris, France. Emma obviously never danced again after the incident, but apparently, if given the chance to go back in time before the incident, and wear something different, something flame retardant, she wouldn't have changed a thing. This is kind of strange to hear, but Emma defended her choice onto her deathbed. Yeah. Allegedly, she said, "Should I ever return to the stage, "I would never think of wearing them," these flame retardant garments. They are, quote, "so ugly." Hey, you know, honestly, she's not wrong, because they were ugly. They were ugly. Yeah, you know what she's right. But Emma's vanity proved fatal, and she was among the ballerinas who actually resisted or flat out refused to follow the 1859 imperial decree in Paris that ordered all ballerinas and Paris and theater workers had to have their costumes dipped into a flame retardant chemical solution, like alum, ammonium phosphate, or borax. They were working on these fabrics that wouldn't catch fire, but I guess the ballerinas were like, "No, this is going to interview with my performance," and I don't like the look. Hey, you know, I see their side too. Both sides are, well, one is death, one is vanity, but you know, I see both sides. Yeah, and these chemicals also had just negative effects on the garments they were applied to, they yellowed the fabric, they turned it stiff and dull, and the effects, the positive effects, weren't even permanent. So if you washed the fabric, you had to treat it again, so that it would be flame-proof again, and I'm sure that that repeated treatment of it was not good either. Mmm, yeah, fun fact. Though Queen Victoria was very invested in and part of the change to solve the flaming ballerina problem, she hired prominent chemists of the era, Dr. Alphans Oppenheim and then Dr. Frederick Verzmann, to come up with the flame-retardant fabrics. Despite Victoria's passion for the cause, England never instituted any kind of law, like France did. Yeah, though it does sound like this was even in France a very hard law to implement. Today, in our world of fast fashion and recycled fabrics, you will find a ton of synthetic clothing on the market. We've talked a lot on this podcast about how the industrial revolution resulted in some innovative products that were also quite dangerous, looking at you Sheel's green paint. And a lot of these clothing fabrics were among the materials like tool and other synthetics that they were experimenting. They were new, they were fancy. Oh, this is great that we're not just wearing cotton anymore, but yeah, there was a catch-to-it. Yeah, the chemicals and ingredients used to make tool, light and area and ethereal, and silks and satins have their sheen. We're also severe fire hazards, like when twirling around so close to gas lamps. Emma wasn't the only ballerina to fall victim to the flames. We don't have an exact count, but potentially hundreds of ballerinas died or were horrifically burnt. That doesn't even account for maybe, like, stage workers that had accidents too, or actors. That's true, yeah. The Gale Sisters, Adiana, Hannah, Cecilia and Ruth were English professional ballerinas ranging in age from 15 to 32, who tragically died following a backstage fire at the Continental Theatre in Philadelphia on September 14, 1861. The Sisters were performing in a ballet adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. During a rapid costume change after the first act, one of the Sisters' highly flammable, gauzy costumes brushed against a backstage gas jet and instantly ignited. The other Sisters and Dancers tried to help put out the flames and caught fire themselves. Yeah, gosh, this must have been just a terrifying scene to witness. Absolutely. As the flames caught, the fire quickly spread to the light gauze and tight-fitting costumes of all the other dancers who were rushing over to help. But crowds were ordered to evacuate as a theater quickly went up in a blaze the entire theater. Yeah, and they had firefighters rushing in and stuff, but I went to this fire spread and once it caught on to these materials, it was game over. Some of the women jumped from the upper-story windows as they were attempting to escape, like, their stories of seeing these ballerinas caught on fire running through the halls and jumping through these windows, not knowing if they were going to land safely or die. They just, you know, had to get out. Yep. It was stay in the building, catch fire and go down with it or try to jump to your safety. Well, the theater, as you can imagine, burned to the ground. Nine dancers died, including all four gale sisters. William Wheatley, who was the actor manager who had leased the theater at the time for the production. He was investigated for this incident, but ultimately was exonerated of responsibility for the fire. Still, he held funeral services for all of the dead dancers and he paid for their burials at the Mount Mariah Cemetery in southwest Philly. You can visit the grave of the gale sisters today, I believe. And I think that there was some inscription on the tombstone there that kind of talked a little bit about the fire. Hmm. Four Victorian era ballerinas, the danger of dancing became a thing of the past. When electric lighting was introduced around the late 1800s, by the turn of the 20th century, most major theaters, including the Paris Opera, where Emma was injured, had converted to electric lighting. Thank goodness. I'd be curious what would have happened because they tried instituting all these laws that didn't take or couldn't get passed through. And then ultimately, it was just innovation. Yeah, yeah. You know, solve the problem. It's interesting because I was thinking like, obviously, in all theaters now, no matter whether you have fire on stage or not, there's always, always, always a fire extinguisher nearby. No, I know they didn't have that back in the day, but I'm wondering, like you said, okay, there's innovation that stopped all this. I understand that they were trying to like figure out their clothing, but there wasn't anything else that was like, how can we put this fire out in a way other, like, I don't know, they didn't know there was anything else going on to possibly. And they might have had some type of fire extinguisher, not as advanced as the modern ones we use, but they might have, it was probably something we're like, "But we blow a spestus on you." Yeah, okay, yeah. It's like, you know, one deadly thing for another. But once theaters converted to electric lighting, even though ballerinas, and still today, where potentially flammable garments, the risk has gone, or at least not a big problem where like hundreds of ballerinas are at risk. That and like the amount of hairspray in the hair. Oh god. Geez, yeah. Even like you look at clothes that we wear nowadays. Oh yeah. And they have tags on them saying like, possibly flammable. Yep, so do with it what you will. But there is a bit of a lost language here, because apparently audiences had a really morbid nickname for tickets to the ballerina. They would call them tickets to the tomb. Jesus. Yeah, crazy, right? That's awful. You're going into ballet? Yeah, and you're like, well, I'm going to watch dance, but I may also watch like a horrible incident go down. Yeah, I could watch people just catch on fire and die, or that again, you could potentially, if the entire theory rose up in flames. - Yeah. - Wow, okay. - Like imagine if I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to see Greece. You know, take it to the tomb. (laughing) - What? - What? - Have fun. Tell me how it is. But again, not like we're learning anything new here, we know that women especially, as long as they look good, didn't matter. - It did not matter. - No. - Did not matter what we were putting on our bodies or the hazards, we talked on this by guess before, about like the beauty- - Makeup. - Dangerous. - Yeah. - Yeah, women face. - But also back then, I know fires was just a major thing that we know about, but we don't like know. Like, there's tons of stories. A fire broke out here, the fire this, and listening here, it was like no matter what, still get up on that stage and perform. - The show must go on. - The show must go, it's so true. The show must go on. - Maybe if it can, go deadly wrong. - Exactly, the show must go on. Yeah, that's our show. And I'm like, I don't know if you, we've talked about Moulin Rouge before, but you know, even if you're dying, if you're coughing up blood. - Show what's going on. - You got TB. - Your lungs are collapsing in, but God damn, she sounded great. (laughs) - She sounded incredible. - Sure did. - Singing her heart out. - I know. - That's our show for this week. - That is our show. Thanks for stopping by. - Bye bye. - Bye bye. (dramatic music) [BLANK_AUDIO]