A Silent Tragedy at Newcastle Mine
A deaf miner is struck and killed by a coal train while his companion, hoping to join him, arrives at the depot to hear the news.
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.
David Lang, a deaf mute working as a shoveler in the Newcastle mine at Coal Creek, was struck and instantly killed by a coal train yesterday afternoon. An extra train was backing up around a sharp curve at about six miles an hour when it hit him. Lang’s body was dragged 100 feet and horribly mangled. A pathetic incident occurred in Seattle shortly after; another deaf mute who had formerly worked with Lang and was anxious to rejoin his friend applied for a job at the company office. He was given a note to the superintendent in Newcastle, but only five minutes after departing for the train, a telegram arrived announcing his friend’s death. He would arrive at the mine only to find his companion’s remains.
“The poor fellow would reach Newcastle only to find his friend's mutilated corpse.”
Workplace deaths in the dangerous mining and rail industries of the 1890s were a constant, grim reality of the Pacific Northwest's extraction economy. The story poignantly illustrates the isolation and vulnerability of workers in high-risk industrial environments.
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