Tragedy on the Tracks at Ritzville
A drifter loses his life attempting to catch a moving freight train outside the local flouring mill.
Last Sunday morning at 8:20 o'clock, as a special freight pulled out east and was opposite the flouring mills, a man by the name of Allen Monroe undertook to catch the rods, and missing his hold, was thrown under the wheels and instantly killed. The deceased was about 30 years of age. According to the testimony of Frank Lawrence, who claimed to have known him for two years, he was a native of Scotland with relatives at Port Hawkesbury, Cape Breton Island. The coroner's jury brought in a verdict that the death was due to the deceased's own negligence and carelessness, exonerating the Northern Pacific Company. Acting coroner D. J. Zent turned the body over to the sheriff for burial in the county's lot at the Hill Cemetery.
“The middle of the body was mashed to a jelly, two or more wheels of the caboose having passed over it.”
Railroad accidents involving transients were a grim, common reality in the late 19th-century West, reflecting the dangerous mobility of labor during the boom years. Today, this account serves as a somber reminder of the anonymous lives lost while traversing the Pacific Northwest in search of work.
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