Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens - Spurgeon (1856-1859)

Charles H Spurgeon

At the end of 1856, the Exeter Hall said that they could no longer rent the building to one church as they would get a denominational reputation, which was not what they wanted. A fund had been started for the building of a new chapel, but the end of the project was a long way off. The answer was a daring one; they decided to rent the newly built Music Hall in the Royal Surrey Gardens. The building catered for 10,000 people, but no church had ever taken a place of entertainment as a venue and some of Spurgeon's congregation were horrified. The first service was to be on October 19th, 1856. As the day approached Spurgeon "felt overweighted with a sense of responsibility and filled with a mysterious premonition of some great trial shortly to befall me."

The doors were opened early, and the vast hall was filled quickly. There were ten or twelve thousand in the hall and the same number outside, trying to get in. The road from the entrance to the grounds up to the hall was a solid mass of humanity. A prayer was said, a hymn sung, a scripture read and then, during general prayer cries were heard among the throng sitting and standing around the entrance to the hall: Fire! Fire! Some people cried. Then, close by, some voices shouted, "The galleries are giving way!" and then in another place, "The building is falling!" As can be imagined, this caused panic and people started to stream out of the main doors, terrified. People climbed over each other in a desperate attempt to get out. The scene was worse on the staircases, where people died from the crush and through people falling over the bannisters and a balustrade gave way. Once outside in the gardens, the panic did not end; people rushed down the road to the entrance, but the gates were locked to stop the crowds outside getting in and, because of the crush on both sides, the gates could not now be opened.

Spurgeon was relatively oblivious to it all as the screams did not reach that end of the hall. He could see a commotion and he heard the word 'fire', so he tried to calm the congregation, saying there was no fire. Quiet was restored and people called on him to preach, so he began addressing the people. However, word came that some people had been injured, although they had no idea of the scale. Then commotion broke out again and Spurgeon closed the meeting. On leaving he heard that some people had died. This threw him into a severe spin, impacting his mind and he went home in a daze.

It turned out that seven people had died and a large number were injured, with 28 having to go to the hospital. There was an investigation, and it was generally decided that this was organised by Spurgeon detractors. Too many people were shouting the same lies in three different parts of the building for it to have been anything other than a premeditated crime. Sadly, the instigators were never caught. Several newspapers took advantage of what happened to write scurrilous lies about what happened, blaming Spurgeon for the injuries and death. The Daily Telegraph was the most egregious. Other newspapers and journals put their full support behind Spurgeon.

Spurgeon himself was in a dreadful state. He and his wife and their newly born sons went to stay with friends in Croydon to rest. Some said that the light had gone out of his eyes and they wondered if he would ever preach again. He said that it was as if his heart was being cut to pieces. He could not be comforted; his days were full of tears and his nights full of nightmares. However, one day he was walking in the garden with his wife when the old light returned to his eyes and he exclaimed, "Dearest, how foolish I have been! Why! What does it matter what becomes of me if the Lord shall be but glorified?" He said it was like a flash of lightning from the sky his soul returned to him. Two weeks later he was able to resume his duties.

Spurgeon was not one to believe that what happened was a sign of displeasure from God, so he arranged for the services at the Music Hall to be resumed, but this time in the morning daylight. A month later the meetings resumed, going on until December 1859, during which time thousands were converted. Spurgeon was the first person to have big meetings in entertainment halls, drawing the masses who would not set foot in a church. This idea would multiply dramatically during our biggest revival of 1858-64. He explained his way of preaching. "I determined that whether my hearers would receive the Gospel or reject it, they should at least understand it, and therefore I preached it in plain, homely Saxon that a child could comprehend and with all the earnestness of which I was capable." Many people from high society went to hear him speak at the Hall; many of the nobility and many Members of Parliament attended, but they would have been very unlikely to have attended a non-conformist church. He found himself getting Words of Knowledge. One day he pointed at a man and told him he was a shoemaker who normally worked on Sunday, and the previous Sunday he had made a 4p profit, so he had sold his soul to Satan for 4p. Everything he stated was true, the words eventually leading to the man's salvation. So many people got saved that the character of the audience eventually changed, from careless hearers to committed Christians, so the tone of Spurgeon's messages changed to more doctrinal than evangelistic.