Exeter's Theatre Royal is best remembered, unfortunately,…

Exeter's Theatre Royal is best remembered, unfortunately, for the disaster during a dramatization of Romany Rye (a melodrama by Wilson Barrett) on September 5, 1887.

Fire breaks out backstage where gas lighting ignites some gauze.

The number of exits from the gallery of the auditorium proves to be inadequate and in the resultant panic among the audience 186 people die, only 68 bodies being recovered.

A national appeal for donations for the victims’ families raises £20,763 and the event is influential in the introduction of safety precautions for public buildings.

The name "Theatre Royal" had first been applied in Exeter by the mid-1830s to what had previously been the Bedford Circus Theatre, in premises dating from 1821.

This theater building was a replacement for one of 1787 which had burnt down the previous year.

Under its new name, melodrama and farce were staples of the playbill.

This building was completely gutted by fire in 1885 and although it was reconstructed for other purposes the name "Theatre Royal" had been transferred to new premises on the corner of Longbrook Street and New North Road.

The new theater had been built by the Exeter Theatre Company to the designs of C. J. Phipps and opened in 1886.