What Really Happened at the Cocoanut Grove?

On a Saturday night in November of 1942, a sixteen-year-old busboy in a crowded Boston nightclub was told to fix a light bulb at the top of a fake palm tree. He couldn't see the socket, so he struck a match, then put it out. Seconds later, the palm leaves were burning. Before it was over, 492 people had died, the most of any nightclub fire in American history. For decades, the story people told was simple: a boy lit a match, and a revolving door jammed. The official investigation never said that. So what actually killed so many people? The answer starts with the doors, the decorations and the crowd, and it ends with a boy who carried the blame until he died. What this covers: A club approved for about 460 people, holding about a thousand, with two exits meant for ordinary guests The Melody Lounge basement, its single four-foot-wide staircase and the locked door at the top The revolving door that jammed, and the exits that were bolted, bricked up, unmarked or swung the wrong way Mass General (114 patients) and Boston City (more than 300), and the burn care built on the survivors Oliver Cope, Francis Moore, a rush shipment of penicillin and the fluid treatment they described in 1947 Fire Commissioner Reilly's 1943 report, and why the official cause stayed "unknown" Stanley Tomaszewski, blamed in the headlines, later a federal auditor and a father of three The only person convicted of manslaughter, Barney Welansky: the sentence, the pardon and the 1944 court ruling A later refrigerant-gas theory that is still only a theory, and the code changes that followed The match is the story people remember. The locked doors are the reason so many died. Next time you walk into a crowded room, find the exits. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ❤️ It's just me making these. If this one was worth your time, a like helps more than you'd think. If not, all good. See you in the next one. Wren ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ S O U R C E S ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE NIGHT AND THE ROOM Commonwealth v. Welansky, 316 Mass. 383, 55 N.E.2d 902 (Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, 1944). The jammed revolving door, the key-locked exit, the crowd testimony and the finding about the owner. Fleming, D. J., 2017, "The Cocoanut Grove Fire," Prologue, 49(3), National Archives. The bolted and bricked-up exits, the unmarked doors, the eight minutes and the thirty-nine servicemen. Boston Fire Historical Society, "The 1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire." The date and time, the inward-swinging door in the new lounge and the Melody Lounge staircase. Boston Public Library research guide, "Cocoanut Grove." The paper decorations, the one-week closure, the revolving-door ban and stronger codes. Svoboda, C. J. W., 2021, "Fire in Boston's Cocoanut Grove Nightclub Proves Deadly," EBSCO Research Starters. The approved capacity, the crowd of more than a thousand, the acquittals and the code changes. CBS News, "Cocoanut Grove: Boston nightclub fire, safety codes and burn care." The staircase that acted like a chimney and the 2004 sprinkler rule for Massachusetts nightclubs. THE BLAME Reilly, W. A., Boston Fire Commissioner's report on the fire, November 1943, as quoted at celebrateboston.com. His statements that he could not determine the original cause or find that the boy's conduct caused it. New England Historical Society, "The Kid Wrongly Blamed for the Cocoanut Grove Fire." The fire marshal clearing the boy, the decades of blame, his later life and his death in 1994. Kenney, C., 1999, "Did a 'Mystery Gas' Fuel the Cocoanut Grove Fire?" Firehouse, May 1999; Beller, D. and Sapochetti, J., 2000, NFPA Journal, 94(3). The refrigerant-gas theory, which this video treats as unproven. THE HOSPITALS Saffle, J. R., 1993, "The 1942 fire at Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub," American Journal of Surgery, 166(6), 581-591. A surgical review of the fire and its patients. Cope, O., 1943, "The Treatment of the Surface Burns," Annals of Surgery, 117(6), 885-893. Oxygen, plasma, gauze dressings, sulfadiazine and burns healing without infection. Cope, O. and Moore, F. D., 1947, "The Redistribution of Body Water and the Fluid Therapy of the Burned Patient," Annals of Surgery, 126, 1010-1045. How burns shift water in the body and how to replace it. MGH Research Institute, "How the Cocoanut Grove Fire Changed Burn Care at Mass General and Beyond." The 114 patients, the 39 alive after the first night and Cope's treatment. Proto Magazine, 2017, "Cocoanut Grove, 1942." The thirty-two liters of penicillin rushed to Boston under police escort. Wikipedia, "Cocoanut Grove fire" and "1942 Boston College Eagles football team." The football game, the owner's pardon and Boston City's patient rate. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #history #boston #documentary #firesafety #1942