INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS
The Frenchtown factories – are where the blood really flowed.
When rolling through the microfilm of the old Frenchtown Star and the Hunterdon Independent you will find lots of reports on runaway horses, surprise parties, home improvements, and injuries amid the machinery.
Here are just a few examples of the latter:
In July of 1871, Abraham Slack, a longtime employee of the Voorhees, Hann & Co. spoke mill on Second Street, was putting a drive belt onto some machinery, when he stuck his elbow into a wheel with spinning arms that knocked his hand into a pulley. He staggered back into that same wheel and it threw him five feet. He came away with a bruised hand, a severely gashed elbow and the flesh of one finger nearly torn off.
On Sept. 13, 1873, Francis Worman, engineer in David Worman's mill, was cleaning his engine and caught his hand and mashed his forefinger to a jelly. Amputation was considered, but not performed.
On Aug. 8, 1889, Samuel Stahler got his left hand caught in his spoke lathe at Fargo & Taylor's mill. “The knuckle of his middle finger was cut out and another finger was badly damaged. This is a serious injury, but Mr. Stahler views it with his usual coolness,” according to the Star. Was he chill because he'd noticed that his coworkers were missing fingers and had been expecting it? Or was it because he'd already had a finger shot off while fighting for the Union with the 15th New Jersey?
On May 20, 1890, while Frank Stahler was sawing hoops in Campbell's basket factory, the saw caught the third and fourth fingers of his right hand and the ends were sawed off. A physician sewed the fingers on, hoping the graft would take. The next year, Stahler caught his other hand in a circular saw at Slack & Holcombe's wheel factory and three fingers had to be amputated.
On June 23, 1890, the Fargo & Taylor mill was once more the scene of bloodshed. David O. Roberson was wielding an ax that “was so deflected as to cut a gash of about two inches in his right arm below the elbow. An artery was severed from which blood spurted higher than his head… Mr. R. will have good reason for taking a summer vacation.” – the Star.
On Oct. 19, 1900, William Hawk had part of the third finger of his right hand cut off while working at Campbell's basket factory. Dr. Decker amputated it at the second joint.
On June 8, 1901, F.B. Fargo Sr. cut the end off his left thumb with a circular saw at the Crosby factory. The cut was about halfway between the end of the thumb and the first knuckle, and later that summer another victim was claimed by a Crosby circular saw. Charles Hawk was using it when it threw a stick of wood, knocking him out. It was several weeks before he was up and about.
Asie Anderson offers an explanation for his own minor injury, suffered at the Crosby factory at age 12 in 1922. Working before and after school, he was drilling a hole in each end of a dowel that went into the assembly of a doll carriage. With a piecework rate of 35 cents for each 1,000 dowels processed, “you had to work fast… One day I was boring the holes in the dowels so fast I bored a hole right through my nail.”
On May 8, 1924, C.R. Taylor, while operating a circular saw at the Kerr Chickeries box factory, cut the fingers off his right hand. Dr. Grim gave him first aid and had him taken to Mercer Hospital in Trenton. Hope was expressed that one of the fingers could be grafted back on. About a week later, Harry Riegel's left thumb was mashed in a machine at the Crosby factory.
On Oct. 17, 1924, Charles W. Johnson of Sixth Street, working at the porcelain factory, caught his sleeve in the cog wheels of a machine and his arm was badly lacerated before the machine was stopped. The machine had to be pried apart to release him.
This list is by no means complete, but you get the idea: Factory work was dangerous.
Frenchtown's worst industrial accident occurred in 1879. It cost one man his life. That tragedy will be the subject of a later post.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"