ON THIS DAY in 1926, families and friends from Dromcollogher in Co Limerick and the surrounding areas packed into a temporary cinema hall to watch firstly False Alarm, a short film, and then the main feature of the evening, an American film called The Decoy.

The cinema was a venture by a local entrepreneur, William ‘Babe’ Forde, who had organised the screening with the help of projectionist Patrick Downing.

Around 150 people settled in for the screening upstairs in the hall. But tragedy struck when a candle’s flame caught on the highly-flammable nitrate film. The room went up in flames rapidly and although many escaped through the exit and a window, both avenues ended up blocked.

A total of 48 people perished as a result of the fire – 46 at the scene and a further two deaths to follow later in the year. Bodies were identified by things like belt buckles, shoes, wedding rings. 

Of the 48, 16 were children. The two youngest, James Kenny and Thomas Noonan, were seven years old. The oldest victim was 68-year-old Mary Turner.

The parish priest rushed around the village of Dromcollogher and conducted a hasty census of sorts to determine who was missing, and who may have perished.

The funerals of the 46 were held as a collective the following Tuesday.

A State centenary commemoration for the 48 victims of the fire will be held this afternoon at St Bartholomew’s Church in Dromcollogher. Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Culture Minister Patrick O’Donovan will officiate the ceremony.

Ahead of the ceremony, O’Donovan wrote: “Having represented Dromcollogher for the last twenty-three years I am honoured to be the minister responsible for the commemoration.

“It is fitting that 100 years after the head of government came to west Limerick to pay his respects to the families, that the current head of government, an Taoiseach Micheál Martin, will make the same journey.”

He said it is “difficult to comprehend the fallout” and the “utter devastation” in the area today.

A book on the tragedy written by members of the local community will launch on Sunday.

Historian Dr Martin Walsh, who lectures part-time at University of Limerick and is currently researching the event with the view to publish a book on the matter, spoke to The Journal about the fire and the people who died.

“This happened three years after the civil war in Ireland had ended. We were supposed to be in a peaceful period, and the fact that people could go to the cinema and not come back from it is just horrific,” Walsh said.

In terms of tragedies, the only one that comes close to it is Stardust, which, coincidentally, 48 people also died that night.

The estimated population of the village at the time was around 500 people, and although not all 48 victims were from Dromcollogher, in effect, 10% of the village was wiped out.

Walsh’s grandmother was from Feohanagh in Co Limerick, a small village a few miles from Dromcollogher, and would have been the same age as one of the victims, 15-year-old Violet Irwin.

The Burning

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While the tragedy was one of significant magnitude, dubbed locally as The Burning, it is something that many people outside the area are unaware of.

Walsh said, “Because my grandmother was from the area, I knew about the fire, but we’re kind of getting to a point now where memory will start to fade completely, and it’s so important to record those memories.”

The historian detailed the extent of the impact on the community: an entire family, the Buckleys, and their maid were all killed in the fire. Many of those listed as victims share surnames.

Mary Turner, the oldest victim, died in the makeshift cinema alongside her daughter Anne Fitzgerald and grandson Maurice Harnett. Anne’s two stepchildren Daniel and Margaret also perished.

“Her brother came back from England. He got a message to say, listen, your relatives have died. Come home as quickly as you can,” Walsh said.

“And then he says in a letter to his wife that he had just been through the First World War, and what he saw when he came back to the village – that war didn’t compare to what he saw. There was no comparison, it was so horrific.”

The Burning saw an overlapping of multiple tragedies for many of those connected to the victims. Nora Hannigan, an 11-year-old girl who had lived in Deptford in London, was described as an “exceptionally gifted child”.

Her family were originally from the Limerick-Cork border, and she had been sent to the cinema as a treat. She perished in the blaze. In Deptford, the community erected a statue in her honour in the local graveyard – but this statue was later destroyed in the Blitz.

“There’s so much to be told in the story,” Walsh said. He detailed personal tragedies many of those in attendance had already been dealing with before the fire claimed their lives: people had already lost children and family members, and the fire was a nadir for the community.

William Forde, the man behind the cinema, the projectionist Patrick Downing, and the man who owned the site, Patrick Brennan, were all charged with manslaughter and brought to trial. Brennan was found not guilty. Charges were ultimately dropped for both Forde and Downing.

“They [the State] felt that a lesson had been learned at that point.”

Forde left Ireland for Australia, but he too suffered death after mixing up baking powder with arsenic in 1929, killing himself and a colleague – “it was reported back again in newspapers how negligent he was,” Walsh said.

For both the Dromcollogher cinema fire in 1926, and the 1981 Stardust fire, there remains a rawness at the scale of the tragedies.

“You don’t expect to go out for a night’s entertainment or to see somebody going off for a night’s entertainment and never to return,” Walsh said.