A Mill Worker's Life-Altering Accident
A young sawmill worker suffered the loss of his hand in a workplace accident, highlighting the lack of industrial safety in 1886.
A short time before noon yesterday, L. M. Van Doren, a salesman in Stetson & Post's lumber yard, met with an accident that will cripple him for life. It seems that in filling an order, it was necessary to trim up a few planks, which he took into the mill to rip up on a small circular saw. While at work, his coat sleeve caught in some unaccountable manner and jerked his right hand against the saw. In less than an instant, the sharp teeth had severed that member from the wrist, so that it hung down by a small piece of skin. Doctors Smith, Minor, and Smart were called, dressed the wound, and made the poor fellow as comfortable as possible. He was then driven to the hospital. Van Doren is an industrious man, about thirty years of age, and was married a short time since, and was just getting fairly underway at bookkeeping, when this terrible accident came upon him.
“A short time before noon yesterday, L. M. Van Doren... met with an accident that will cripple him for life.”
Workplace safety was almost non-existent in the 19th-century timber industry, often leaving workers to rely on public charity after permanent injuries. Today's labor laws and industrial regulations were born out of exactly this kind of human devastation.
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