Page:Account of the dreadful accident and great loss of lives which occurred at Kirkcaldy, on Sunday the 15th June, 1828.pdf/12

12 occasion would be equally erroneous and unjust. The real cause was the utter insufficiency of the church, particularly the galleries, as will incontestably appear from the following particulars. This edifice, which is modern, was built in 1807, twenty-one years ago. The contractor was a person named Alexander Macfarlane, a wright from Perth; and amongst other things, it was one of the specifications of his contract that the transverse joists or beams of the gallery should be inserted into the walls while building. Accordingly, when the latter had attained the requisite height, he applied for the timbers to a wood merchant in Kirkcaldy, but being unable to give security for the payment of the price, they were refused; and the church was built and roofed in, in direct violation of this part of his compact, and without any means having been provided in the shape of a or otherwise, either for the insertion or support of these all-important beams. Hence, when they were procured, they appear to have been rather laid against the wall than inserted in it, the holes in which the extremities were placed were scarcely an inch deep; and, in some cases, it is evident they have been found too short for this, as we observed several joists which had not reached the wall at all, and were attached to it solely by a thin narrow plate of iron with a few nails. Nor is this even all. The lower extremities of these transverse beams or joists rested upon a longitudinal beam, supported by pillars, which runs along the front of the gallery;