A Close Call at the Favorite Mine
A worker is nearly killed at the Favorite mine when a piece of waste quartz thrown from the dump strikes him in the throat.
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.
Ed Gormley met with an accident Wednesday that came in an ace of winding up his earthly career. Mr. Gormley has a contract on the Favorite mine, near Nighthawk, and is getting out ore on the upper workings. Wednesday, Mr. Gormley started to the magazine after powder, going down over the dump. At that time the sorters were at work, and the discarded quartz was being cast out of the way. As Mr. Gormley reached the base of the dump and out of sight, a large piece of quartz thrown out struck him on the left side of the neck. The sharp edge of the rock cut a deep gash from the butt of the ear around under the chin. Several small arteries were severed and the wound bled profusely. So great was the hemorrhage that at first it was feared that the jugular vein had been cut. Mr. Gormley was assisted down the mountain and was immediately brought to Oroville on a hand car by his brother and friends. Dr. Webb put several stitches in the ragged wound, and the young man is able to be around, although pretty sore where he got it in the neck. As bad as it is it might have been worse, for had the rock struck him fairly on the head he would undoubtedly have supplied the chief drawing card for a funeral.
“As bad as it is it might have been worse, for had the rock struck him fairly on the head he would undoubtedly have supplied the chief drawing card for a funeral.”
This vivid account of industrial danger in the early 20th-century mining sector reflects the high-risk environments in which laborers worked. The local response—a rapid transport by hand car—speaks to the improvised nature of medical and safety logistics in the mining camps of the era.
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