No theaters were built on the modern plan until in the sixteenth century in France, and not until the seventeenth did any catastrophe worthy of record occur. When Shakespeare lived plays were generally produced in temporary structures, sometimes merely raised platforms in open squares, and it was after his time that scenic effects began to be amplified and the use of illuminants increased. Thus it was that dangers, both to players and auditors, were vastly increased. In the Teatro Atarazanas, in Seville, Spain, many people were killed and injured at a fire in 1615. The first conflagration of this kind in England worth noting happened in 1672, when the Theater Royal, or Drury Lane, standing on the site of the playhouse in which "Mr. Bluebeard" was produced before it was brought to Chicago, was burned to the ground. Sixty other buildings were destroyed, but no loss of life is recorded. Two hundred and ten people lost their lives and the whole Castle of Amalienborg, in Copenhagen, was laid in ashes in 1689 from a rocket that ignited the scenery in the opera house. Eighteen persons perished at the theater in the Kaizersgracht, Amsterdam, in 1772, and six years later the Teatro Colisseo, at Saragossa, Spain, went up in flames and seventy-seven lives were lost. The governor of the province was among the victims. Twenty players were suffocated in the burning of the Palais Royal in Paris in 1781. In the nineteenth century there were twelve theater fires marked by great loss of life, and the first of these occurred in the United States. At Richmond, on the day after Christmas in 1811, a benefit performance of "Agnes and Raymond, or the Bleeding Nun," was being given, and the theater was filled with a wealthy and fashionable audience. The governor of Virginia, George W. Smith, ex-United States Senator Venable, and other prominent persons were in the audience and were numbered among the seventy victims. The last act was on when the careless hoisting of a stage chandelier with lighted candles set fire to the scenery. Most of those killed met death in the jam at the doors. The Lehman Theater and circus in St. Petersburg was the scene of a fire in 1836, in which 800 people perished. A stage lamp hung high ignited the roof, a panic ensued, and there was such a mad rush that most of the people slew each other trying to get out. Those not trampled to death were incinerated by the fire that rapidly enveloped the temporary wooden building.