A Forty-Foot Iron Rod Bursts Through the Jurgens Mill Wall
A broken carriage rod sends a piston head and forty feet of heavy iron flying through the mill; workers and a lady visitor escape unhurt.
A peculiar accident occurred at the Jurgens Mill Monday when the connecting rod on the carriage broke and the piston head blew out, the heavy rod forty feet long flying out the side of the building and narrowly missing one of the workmen. The carriage flew back with great force, endangering several of the workmen and a lady visitor to the mill, but fortunately no one was injured. The mill was laid up awaiting repairs for two days but is now at work again.
“The heavy rod forty feet long flying out the side of the building narrowly missing one of the workmen.”
Industrial near-misses like this were routine in Newport's timber economy, long before modern workplace-safety rules. The story is a reminder that the machinery behind the region's payrolls could turn a mill floor into a danger zone in an instant.
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