Tragedy at the Gilman Mines
Francis B. Seymour died at the Gilman mines after runaway cars struck him; coroner ruled carelessness.
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.
Francis B. Seymour was fatally injured early yesterday morning at the Gilman mines in slope No. 1 and died a few hours later. Seymour was the night pumpman and hanger-on at the foot of the 500-foot lift. At midnight, he came up for supper, which was against the rules. Returning, he requested two empty cars. As the topman, Edward Dwyer, moved to couple the cars, Seymour shouted 'All right, ring them down!' and pulled the lever for the block, causing the loaded cars to shoot forward at high speed into the slope. Seymour was caught in the path of the runaway cars. Dr. P. W. Harrell attempted to save him, but he died at 4 o'clock. An inquest by Coroner Horton concluded the death was the result of his own carelessness. Seymour was the son of a colonel in the English army, well-educated, and a favorite at the mines.
“The topman shouted to Seymour to jump off, but he did not as far as could be seen.”
Mining accidents were a constant, brutal reality of Washington’s early industrial development. Gilman is now known as Issaquah, where the coal mines that once drove the local economy have long since been repurposed, though the physical hazards of those deep shafts remain a grim memory of the era's labor conditions.
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