A Logging Accident Leaves a Bothell Family in the Balance
A flying limb drives a lumberman's hat into his skull at a shingle camp near Derby, and a wife and three children wait for word.
A man named Donahue, from Bothell, met with a terrible accident yesterday while working at a camp about one mile from Derby. In falling a tree he was struck in the head by a flying limb. It drove his hat into his skull, causing a hole out of which the brain protruded. He was still unconscious at a late hour and the chances for his recovery are doubtful. He leaves a wife and three minor children. The camp is run by Armstrong, the owner of the Clipper Shingle Co., of Bothell.
“He was still unconscious at a late hour and the chances for his recovery are doubtful. He leaves a wife and three minor children.”
Logging was among the most dangerous trades in the nineteenth-century Northwest, and the region's shingle and lumber camps exacted a steady toll. The story's grim detail—a hat driven into the skull—is a reminder that workplace safety was largely a private matter before modern labor regulation. For a Bothell family, an ordinary workday turned catastrophic in an instant.
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