Worker Injured in Elevator Shaft Fall
A mortar man narrowly survives a thirty-foot plummet at the construction site of the Cadwell building.
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.
Quinlan Shay, a mortar man employed on the Cadwell building, made a misstep on Thursday while treading the upper joists and fell down the elevator way, a distance of thirty feet. The bones of his left forearm were broken, and he suffered a bad gash to his head and severe bruising. He was carried to the Centennial lodging house where Doctors Heg and Gunn dressed his wounds.
“Quinlan Shay, a mortar man employed on the Cadwell building, made a misstep... and fell down the elevator way, a distance of thirty feet.”
Workplace safety was virtually nonexistent in the 1890s. This story illustrates the human cost of rapid building development in a city desperate to transform from a wooden town to a brick one.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.