top of page

On Thursday July 6, 1944 the Hartford Circus Fire went up in flames directed by the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus. A lot of trapeze equipment came falling down and tons of people got burned. The police soon figured out that the cause of the fire was a cigarette thrown near the men's bathroom and causing a minor fire. The fire then spread to the canvas of the tent because the tent was treated with paraffin wax and the wax was thinned with gasoline. This was intended for waterproofing but of course it is not fireproof. People were gathered in mobs near the entrances and exits, some people even trampling others to death because they were so desperate to save themselves instead of the other people. Many people were rushed to the Municipal Hospital and immediately put in emergency rooms. The next morning, all that was left of the Ringling Brothers Circus was a huge pile of ashes. Because of Horace Wells invention of anesthesia many injured adults and children were saved the day of the Hartford Circus Fire.

A young woman named Edith M. Waterhouse did her training at Yale University's School of Nurse Anesthesiology. "One of her first assignments there was to provide medical assistance and triage to victims of the Great Hartford Circus Fire in July of 1944" (Obits). 

Before the fire

After the fire

A video about the Hartford Circus Fire

Another man named Curtiss B. Hickcox, head of the Anesthesia Department at the Hartford Hospital, was going to go to the circus when the hospital called him back to help save the people injured from the fire.

After the fire there were several men that went to jail. One of the owners of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus was in charge of putting multiple fire extinguishers near the stands but he forgot to put all of them in the tent. Most circuses today are indoor, have multiple fire exits, and also many fire extinguishers because of the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944.

bottom of page