Tragedy at the Roslyn Mines
A devastating explosion traps forty-four miners in the Roslyn slope, leaving families in despair.
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.
A brief dispatch received here Tuesday afternoon brought meager particulars of a terrible explosion and consequent heavy loss of life, which occurred at the Roslyn mines about 1:30 that afternoon. The explosion occurred in a slope 2,600 feet long. The work of the rescuing party was necessarily slow, as bulkheads had to be built against the accumulated gas. The scene outside of the mine was a sad one; the miners were mostly married, and the families of the unfortunates held vigil at the mouth of the slope throughout the night in the rain. The miners had not been employed more than a third of their time during the past winter, and their families are now left destitute. Whether it was the result of blasting, the use of an exposed lamp, or other carelessness will never be settled.
“When darkness fell a huge bonfire was built, and there the hopeless widows and orphans camped.”
This 1892 industrial catastrophe in Roslyn highlights the early, perilous labor conditions of Washington's coal industry. It serves as a grim reminder of how coal companies prioritized output over worker safety, creating generational cycles of poverty for the families of those lost.
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