Many of the actors and actresses escaped only in their costumes, and some rushed nude into the streets. The scenes in the thoroughfares where men and women in tights and ball dresses and men in gorgeous theatrical robes mingled with the naked, and the dead and dying were strewn about, made a picture fantastically terrible. The official list of dead was seventy-five, but many others died from the fire's effects. The theater at Exeter, England, burned Sept. 5, 1887, was ignited from gas lights, and so much smoke filled the edifice in a short time that near 200 were suffocated in their seats. They were found sitting there afterward, just as though they were still watching the play. This was the eleventh, and the Oporto fire the twelfth of the big conflagrations of the country. One hundred and seventy dead were taken from the ruins of the Portuguese playhouse after the flames which destroyed it on the evening of March 31, 1888, had been subdued. Many sailors and marine soldiers in the galleries used knives to kill persons standing in their way, and scores of the victims were found with their throats cut. Ten years after the Opera Comique fire occurred the greatest of all Parisian horrors, the destruction by flames of the charity bazar, May 4, 1897. Members of the nobility, and even royalty, were among the victims. All of fashionable Paris were under the roof of a temporary wooden edifice known to visitors to the exposition of 1889 as "Old Paris." The annual bazar in the interest of charity had always been one of the most imposing of the spring functions. The wealthy and distinguished, titled and modish were there in larger numbers than on any previous occasion. The fire broke out with a suddenness that so dazed everyone that the small chance of escape from the flimsy structure was made even less. Duchesses, marquises, countesses, baronesses and grand dames joined in the mad rush for the exits. The men present are said to have acted in a particularly cowardly manner, knocking down and trampling upon women and children. The death list of more than 100 included the Duchesses d'Alencon and De St. Didier, the Marquise de Maison, and three barons, three baronesses, one count, eleven countesses, one general, five sisters of charity and one mother superior. The Duchess d'Alencon was the favorite sister of the Empress of Austria and had been a fiance of the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. The Duchess d'Uzes was badly burned. The shock of the news and the death of his niece, the Duchess d'Alencon, accounted for the death on May 7 of the Duc d'Aumale.