Blaming the victim - 1856
Charles Spurgeon preaching at Surrey Gardens Music Hall.
Introduction
On 19 October 1856 as Charles Spurgeon began to preach in the crowded Surrey Gardens Music Hall, some troublemakers shouted “Fire! Fire! Fire! The galleries are giving way! The place is falling! The place is falling!”
A terrible panic ensued as people fled from the building. They jumped over the rail of the galleries, trampled upon one another, and crushed the fallen. Thousands outside the hall were struggling to get in to hear the popular preacher, creating even more havoc. In the melee seven people died and many more were injured, although the hall was so large that Spurgeon was unaware of these facts until later. He wanted to end the service immediately but people shouted “Preach! Preach!” so he attempted to do so. A renewal of the pandemonium forced him to give up the attempt. The next day, the papers blamed him instead of the ruffians who caused the panic, and Spurgeon nearly went insane from horror at what had happened. Here is the Daily Telegraph’s cruel attack on him issued this day 20 October 1856.
Quote
“Mr. Spurgeon is a preacher who hurls damnation at the heads of his sinful hearers. Some men there are who, taking their precepts from Holy Writ, would beckon erring souls to a rightful path with fair words and gentle admonition; Mr. Spurgeon would take them by the nose, and bully them into religion. Let us set up a barrier to the encroachments and blasphemies of men like Spurgeon, saying to them, ‘Thus far shalt thou come, but no further;’ let us devise some powerful means which shall tell to the thousands who now stand in need of enlightenment,—This man, in his own opinion, is a righteous Christian; but in ours, nothing more that a ranting charlatan. We are neither strait-laced nor Sabbatarian in our sentiments; but we would keep apart, widely apart, the theatre and the church;—above all, we would place in the hand of every right thinking man, a whip to scourge from society the authors of such vile blasphemies as, on Sunday night, above the cries of the dead and the dying, and louder than the wails of misery from the maimed and suffering, resounded from the mouth of Spurgeon in the music-hall of the Surrey Gardens. And lastly, when the mangled corpses had been carried away from the unhallowed and disgraceful scene—when husbands were seeking their wives, and children their mothers in extreme agony and despair—the chink of the money as it fell into the collection-boxes grated harshly, miserably on the ears of those who, we sincerely hope, have by this time conceived for Mr. Spurgeon and his rantings the profoundest contempt.”
Drummond, Lewis. Spurgeon, Prince of Preachers.