On December 5, 1876, a packed house at the Brooklyn Theatre was watching the hit melodrama “The Two Orphans” when star Kate Claxton spotted a small flame above the stage. The actors kept performing, hoping to prevent a panic. Within twenty minutes, the theatre had collapsed, killing roughly 300 people, most of them trapped in the cheap seats of the upper gallery. Kate escaped, but the press soon gave her a new name: the Fire Witch.
My guest this week is Melanie Gall, author of “Fire Witch: Kate Claxton and the 1876 Brooklyn Theatre Inferno”. We talk about Kate’s scandalous rise, the harrowing minutes inside the burning theatre, and how the tragedy reshaped her reputation forever.
The author’s website: https://www.melaniegall.com/
The author’s publisher page: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fire-Witch/Melanie-Gall/9781493098309