Thrown Seventy Feet While Loading Coal
A Seattle teamster sued the Seattle, Shore & Eastern railway after a switch train smashed his wagon at Battery and Vine—and sent him flying.
Thomas R. Brown and John H. Bryant, as receivers of the Seattle, Shore & Eastern railway, were sued in the superior court yesterday by George Carey, who seeks damages for personal injuries. Carey, who is a teamster, was loading his wagon with coal from cars on a switch at Battery and Vine streets November 28, 1896, when he claimed to have been run into by a train owing to the carelessness and incompetence of the engineer. The train, he says, was running at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and striking his wagon, broke it in pieces and hurled him into the air. He landed seventy feet away on his head, back, shoulders and limbs, and claims to have been permanently injured.
“He landed seventy feet away on his head, back, shoulders and limbs, and claims to have been permanently injured.”
Before workplace safety rules, a teamster's body was the last line of defense between a coal car and a moving train. The lawsuit reads like a reminder that Seattle's waterfront and rail corridors were once ordinary places to get killed or maimed on the job—and that workers had to fight in court for the cost of that risk.
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