Death and destruction in God's house

Published on Sunday 29 January 2006 01:40

FOR THE people of Kirkcaldy, Fife, Sunday, 15 June 1828 was a day of great anticipation that turned to tragedy when the town's worst modern disaster struck, crushing the expectant hopes of those who had gathered in the parish church and leaving 29 people dead.

The good townsfolk and their neighbours had flocked to Kirkcaldy Parish Church in droves to hear a firebrand sermon from preacher Edward Irving, a prodigal son returning to Scotland and setting the country alight with his controversial beliefs.

Irving attained fame for his sweeping and impassioned rhetoric during a brief ministry in London that attracted the famous and powerful. The MP George Canning, twice foreign secretary, attended Irving's Sunday sermons and mentioned the preacher in speeches to parliament while English author Thomas De Quincey said that he was "by many degrees the greatest orator of our times."

Earlier in the summer of 1828, the people of Edinburgh had turned out in droves to be inspired by this tall, charismatic and populist minister. Dr Thomas Chalmers, minister at St John's parish in Glasgow who started Irving in his ecclesiastical career, described his understudy's crowd-pulling powers with amazement. "Certainly there must have been a marvellous power of attraction that could turn a whole population out of their beds so early as five in the morning. The largest church in our metropolis was each time overcrowded," Chalmers said.

The scene was repeated at Kirkcaldy Parish where the church pews and galleries were so packed to the rafters with the faithful and curious that hundreds had to be turned away at the door. The service started and "…owing to the crowded state of the Gallery, a kind of continual moving was going on, such that some of those that were sitting, rising up to accommodate those that had stood some length of time," said one traumatised eyewitness in a letter to a newspaper (supplied by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland).

The movement of some 400 people on the 50ft north gallery was too great for the balcony to support. "When service was near concluded, a sort of crackling noise was heard, which alarmed the people, and caused a general movement, and awful to relate, at this moment of confusion, part of the Gallery gave way, and fell with a crash on the devoted victims below," said the anonymous writer.

Twenty-eight people died as a result of the collapse, according to a report in The Scotsman, but only two succumbed from the immediate impact. "Those who were in the gallery when it fell escaped with bruises and contusions. Mrs Beveridge and David Lawson were killed by the falling of the gallery - the former struck on the head or chest by a joint and killed on the spot while her two blind sons behind her escaped unharmed." Another man, James Grant, died later from his injuries.

Panic took the lives of the remaining 26 casualties. The Scotsman described the horrific scene in vivid detail: "In this dreadful struggle, numbers were thrown down, who were speedily trodden to death, or perished by suffocation. The shrieks of the women half stifled the groans of the dying - the cries of despair heard over the confusion that prevailed, formed a scene of horror of which the most animated description could convey but a faint idea, and which cannot be mentioned without shuddering from the stoutest hearts, that stood the pressure and the peril."

Irving, the man who was the unfortunate – albeit indirect - cause of the tragedy, had been making his way into the church when the gallery collapsed. He gained great respect from the townsfolk as he ministered to the wounded and dying doing "everything that it was possible for a benevolent man and Christian minister to do for both the temporal and eternal welfare of his suffering fellow Christians," according to The Scotsman.

Several surgeons who attended the sermon were now treating the injured and dying. The authorities were also quick to react and about 100 special constables were dispatched to maintain order as, once word spread, thousands of friends and relatives from across the burgh rushed to the church to discover the fate of those close to their hearts.

Fast fact

The Presbyterian Church convicted Irving of heresy in 1833 for his unorthodox beliefs in the Second Coming of Christ. He went on to found the Catholic Apostolic Church, a forerunner of the Pentecostal movement of the US, now the world's fastest growing Christian denomination.

So mangled were some of the bodies that identifying the victims proved almost impossible. Items of clothing torn from members of the congregation during the disaster were later taken to the Council chambers where public servants tried to identify their former owners. Days later, the morose townsfolk went about the business of organising funerals for their lost loved ones.

Thirteen of the victims were buried in Kirkcaldy parish and the neighbouring parish of Abbotshall. Not only were the lives of the survivors ruined by the tragedy but so also was their house of worship. An entire side of the parish had nearly been razed by the accident while many of the church's stained glass windows were shattered. The people of Kirkcaldy had paid a high price for their piety.

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