Caught in the Dynamo: A Tacoma Worker Squeezed to Death at His Post
Edward H. Curran was at his station in the Tacoma Light and Water Company's electric plant when the machinery pulled him through a gap far too small for a man, breaking nearly every bone in his body.
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.
TACOMA, Oct. 12.—Death came to Edward H. Curran in a most violent and horrible manner early yesterday morning in the electric light department of the Tacoma Light and Water Company's plant, while Curran was busily engaged at his post of duty. When life had been squeezed out of his body, it was a revolting sight to behold. Nearly every bone had been broken and the body literally lay in sections. He had made the circuit of an immense wheel among the vast machinery just once and a third, and in doing so was squeezed through a space hardly sufficient for an object one third the size of the body, so that life was fairly squeezed out of the man.
“Nearly every bone had been broken and the body literally lay in sections.”
In 1891 the power plants lighting Puget Sound's cities had little to guard a man from being drawn into their wheels, and industrial deaths were a routine, almost expected cost of work. The machine guards and lockout rules that protect today's electrical and utility workers exist because of deaths like Curran's. His story is a reminder that 'dangerous work' once meant a visible, daily gamble in the very buildings that lit the town.
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