Title

The terrible calamity in Santiago, Chili: ruins of La Compania [Compañía] Church, 1864. Creator: Unknown.

Caption

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.

Credit line

Photo12/Heritage Images/The Print Collector

Reference

HRM24A14_453

Model release

NA

Property release

NA

License type

Rights managed

Available size

28,4Mb (3,1Mb) / 12,3in x 9,0in / 3693 x 2691 (300dpi)

Keywords

exterior outdoors South America building religious architecture arts country religion art burned burnt fire continent British church color Chile decoration decorative death accident ruins ruin Christianity South American Santiago location disaster century Colonial Britain catastrophe newspapers press print concept ruined incident inflammable decorated flammable B&W 17th century engraved engraving Colour 19th century Chilean black & white black and white B W deaths white and black nineteenth century seventeenth century The Print Collector Illustrated London News TGN ILN outside newspaper Iglesia de la Compania Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus Unknown 19th-century Church of the Society Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesùs