The Heat That Broke the Girls: A Seattle Summer of Hysteria
In June 1902, a sweltering afternoon in downtown Seattle turned a garment factory into a scene of mass panic as workers collapsed from heat prostration.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
SEATTLE, Wash., June 18.—Work in the cigar factory of Riverhorn, Stark and Company was practically brought to a standstill by heat prostrations today. The firm occupies a brick building on Nelson Street that is not high enough, and for some months past 50 girls have been kept at work in a loft, half of which has been kept at work in the low room directly under the roof.
They had not been in the room for more than a half hour when one of them fainted. Her bench mate stopped to raise her, and she herself toppled over. The sight produced a terrible panic among the girls, who became hysterical and started to run around the room. One girl went into convulsions. The terror was indescribable. At one time seven lay senseless upon the floor of the factory. In half an hour nineteen had been prostrated. They were removed at once to the outer air, and the majority soon recovered under simple treatment.
Ella Lamerwiz, 21 years of age, was taken with violent convulsions. She became delirious and imagined that she was about to be killed. She fought savagely with her teeth and nails, and it required the efforts of three men to get her into a carriage. One of the men who aided in carrying for her was so overcome by his exertions that he fainted in the carriage as it was returning to the factory.
This account highlights the perilous working conditions of early 20th-century Seattle, where industrial buildings lacked basic climate control and ventilation. The 'heat prostration' described here is an early form of what we now recognize as heat stress or heat stroke, a growing concern in modern urban environments as global temperatures rise and labor protections are debated.
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