Hong Kong’s Happy Valley Racecourse shed collapse and fire killed 670 racegoers
DARIA Xavier, 16, was possibly perusing results from early races when disaster befell Hong Kong’s Derby Day races in 1918.
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DARIA Xavier was sitting with members of her large family, possibly perusing results from early races, when disaster befell the popular Hong Kong Derby Day race meeting.
She was among 10,000 spectators crammed into the Happy Valley Racecourse on a crisp, dry Tuesday afternoon 100 years ago.
Just before three o’clock, after the third bell for the next race following a tea break, almost a whole row of temporary bamboo and rattan grandstands, known as matsheds, collapsed. Daria was on the ground-floor of stand No 7, one of three temporary three-storey matshed grandstands licensed to three Portuguese families and their business partners, including printers and clerks.
Racing had been held at Happy Valley — apparently sarcastically named when the British military set up camp in 1840 on mosquito-ridden swampland that became a haven for malaria — since 1846. Derby Day was the Hong Kong equivalent of England’s Royal Ascot, or Australia’s Melbourne Cup.
The Xavier family had founded the Hong Kong Printing Press in 1888. Responsibility for construction of a matshed for the 1918 Hong Kong Derby Day fell to Francisco de Paula Xavier, who joined several relatives and friends for lunch on February 26. His guests included stepbrothers Jose Maria and Ludovino, and nephews Paulo, 18, and Vasco, 20, and his niece Daria, then 16, along with several other Portuguese business families.
Paulo, Vasco and Daria were siblings of Pedro Xavier, who then owned the printing business. In extensive research into the 1918 Derby Day disaster, Xavier descendant Roy Eric Xavier, director of the Portuguese and Macanese Studies Project, found that Francisco had instructed his contractor to reinforce bamboo supports in the matshed. Like most of the other 18 stands, the ground floor of stand No 7 was used for refreshments, sold by Chinese employees.
The main floor was used for pool betting and cash sweeps, with the smaller top floor reserved for ladies. Cooking was not allowed, but a charcoal chatty on the lower floor was used to boil water for tea. In 1918 each masthead “proprietor” paid the government $HK706 for a single license and $HK180 to build each structure, a total of more than one year’s annual salary in the colony; large families and groups sometimes had more than one.
The Xavier family had organised a matshed for the past nine years. The bamboo and palm leaf stands were erected by Chinese contractors in less than three weeks, in a design based on single-storey theatre structures used for religious ceremonies. Gambling was officially prohibited in the matsheds, although the Hong Kong police chief admitted to suspecting cash sweeps were held, adding, “We have never interfered with parimutuel and cash sweeps either in the grandstand or matsheds. The Governor did not instruct me to interfere.”
Disaster unfolded as betting ended and horses approached the line.
A Hong Kong Daily Press reporter later wrote: “At a few minutes to three o’clock, just after the third bell had rung for the first race …, the whole row of Chinese booth and matsheds … collapsed, and awful confusion ensued. The stands fell gradually outwards and made the sound like a rasping of a saw. It looked as if the tops of all the stands had been connected by a wire that had been pulled over. ” The 90m row collapsed in about 10 seconds.
Hearing shouts for help, Francisco Xavier found his wife and children then punched holes through the matting with his hands and feet to help get children out. He counted 18 family members as they escaped. In another shed, a spectator heard people running and shouted at them to stay calm, but suddenly felt himself go down with the shed. Pinned under the debris, he recalled hearing cries for help and people jumping over him. He found a knife in his pocket to cut a hole in the matting, and dragged his wife through.
The Daily Press reporter noted that most who had fallen from the stands would be safe. But suddenly white smoke and flames appeared on the side of the stands, and quickly spread.
“While the flames were raging, the wind refreshed and the heat became terrific,” he reported. “There was a terrible crush, everyone struggled to save himself. The outbreak caused a terrible panic and hundreds were thrown to the ground who would have otherwise have had no difficulty escaping. Clouds of smoke must have suffocated many. Children were swept hither and I fear that several of them must have been trampled to death.”
The shed collapse left Daria trapped under a blackboard and a bamboo table. Her brother Paulo and others tried to free her, leaving Paulo badly burned on his arms. Roy Eric Xavier wrote that years later, Paulo explained that Daria had told him it was no use and to flee for his life. Paulo stayed until the last moment, and was almost caught by the flames until a police sergeant pulled him to safety.
An inquiry found Daria was among the 670 fire victims, many of them women and children.
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