James Reilly

Parish priest who survived the Glen Cinema disaster Born: May 5, 1919; Died: June 28, 2016

FATHER James Reilly, who has died aged 97, was Glasgow’s oldest priest and a survivor of the Glen Cinema disaster in Paisley in which 69 children died.

The disaster happened on December 31, 1929, when a smoking reel of film led to panic and a stampede towards the exits in which many of the children in the audience were trampled underfoot. The young James was one of those pronounced dead at the scene and was taken to a mortuary where a nurse realised he was still alive. Years later, he said he had never forgotten that dreadful day and never would.

He and his family had originally come to Paisley as Irish immigrants and lived on Silk Street in the town. As well as his parents Patrick and Annie, there were James’ brothers Charlie and Eddie John and his sisters Patricia, Lena and Kathleen.

The young James was educated at St Catherine’s Primary School and St Mirin’s Academy, Paisley. He then attended St Mary’s College, Blairs, Aberdeenshire, and St Peter’s College, Bearsden, Dunbartonshire, and was ordained by Archbishop Donald Campbell at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Glasgow on June 29, 1945.

He served in many parishes including St Stephen’s in Dalmuir, St Anne’s, St Laurence Martyr, St Mary Immaculate, Our Lady and St Mark’s, Alexandria, St Barnabas and St Lucy’s, Cumbernauld, from which he retired in 1984.

When the cinema disaster happened, he was just 10 years old and had gone to the cinema with about a thousand other children to see a Western, The Dude Desperado, which was showing at a matinee on Hogmanay, 1929.

Within a short time of the film starting, smoke from a reel of film began filtering from the projection room into the packed cinema and panic ensued. The audience rushed to the exits, which were locked, and many of the children were caught underfoot and suffocated. Hundreds more suffered smoke inhalation injuries or otherwise injured, many of them seriously as they pushed to get through the doors. Years later Father Reilly explained to his local newspaper, the Paisley Daily Express, how he was pronounced dead and taken to the mortuary.

He said: “My mother was informed I had died and that my body was in the mortuary. However, when I woke up there was a nurse pumping away at my chest. I was in the basement of the mortuary and there were other children lying around me. They had been looked at by the doctors and were probably all dead, but this nurse must have passed close to me and, by luck, she saw some flicker of life in me.

“The next thing I remember was waking up in a bed in a hospital corridor. I must have blacked out again because I don’t know how I got there.”

He told friends he was the luckiest man alive.

However, the then newspaper delivery boy was left with both mental and physical scars after the tragedy, which is remembered with sorrow to this day in Paisley as Black Hogmanay.

He said: “After what had happened to me, I was afraid to go to the football and the cinema because, everywhere I went, I was looking for exits. I’ve never forgotten that dreadful day and I never will.” In all, 71 people were killed. Father Reilly was a quiet, highly educated man and a caring pastor who touched the lives of many people. His funeral Mass, which took place at St Michael’s Church, Dumbarton, on Friday, July 7, was concelebrated by Archbishop Tartaglia and his fellow priests of the Archdiocese.

Father Reilly died at his home in Cardross, Dunbartonshire, after a short illness and on the eve of the 71st anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Glasgow.