The Deadly Silence of the Mill
A young fireman is killed instantly when a mill boiler explodes, leaving the community to wonder how his body was thrust beneath the furnace.
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.
Yesterday morning, just after Weatherwax's mill had started up, the inner boiler of the battery collapsed, blowing out both ends. William Welch, the fireman, was in the fire-room at the time and lost his life. Welch's father, the mill's engineer, was working about 75 feet away. It is believed William was stooping to close a draft when the explosion occurred. After a half-hour search, his body was found six or seven feet under the furnace, unrecognizable from burns and scalding. It remains a mystery how the force of the blast drove his body into that position. Welch was 26 years old and leaves a widow. Two teamsters, Jacob Kyser and Frank Lewin, were injured by flying bricks and their panicked teams, and J. A. Cowden was scalded in the lathe mill.
“It will always remain a mystery how he could have gotten there, or his body could have been driven into that position.”
Workplace safety in the 19th-century timber industry was often a matter of tragic chance, with boiler explosions acting as the 'industrial failure mode' of the era. This tragedy at Weatherwax's mill serves as a stark reminder of the human cost that built Aberdeen's early economy.
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