The Wood Yard Hurt Him Three Years Ago. This Morning It Killed Him.
William Hackett, 68, never left the hospital after an injury at Cleveland's wood yard — and his body now waits at the undertaker's until friends back East can be found.
William Hackett died this morning at one of the city hospitals, aged 68 years. His last place of employment was Cleveland's wood yard about three years ago. While working at the yard he injured his limb, and has been in the hospital nearly ever since. His body will be held at Metzinger's undertaking parlors until friends in the East can be communicated with. Death was the result of his injuries.
“Death was the result of his injuries.”
Washington passed the nation's first statewide workers' compensation law in 1911, in no small part because of cases like this one: a job injury that maimed a man, kept him in a hospital bed for years, and then finished him off. Today the Department of Labor & Industries would log Hackett's death as a fatality claim — but the three-year gap between the yard and the grave, and an old man dying among strangers, is a reminder of how recently the cost of a workplace accident fell entirely on the worker.
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