A Near-Fatal Industrial Accident at the Oregon Improvement Mill
A mill worker is struck by a spinning iron collar, highlighting the constant physical risks faced by laborers in Seattle’s early industrial landscape.
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.
Mr. W. C. Hawthorn was seriously injured while at work at the Oregon Improvement Company’s mill yesterday. Shortly after commencing work in the morning and while near one of the numerous pulleys which the belts ran, he was struck down by the collar of the pulley, which was torn from its place on the shaft by one of the nuts becoming loosened and displaced. The iron collar was making about 900 revolutions a minute when it struck him and cut his scalp, the wound assuming the shape of a letter Y. He was carried to his home at the residence of his brother, Horace Hawthorn, at the corner of Box and Union streets. A physician was summoned, and at last accounts he was not well, though great fears were entertained that a fever would set in and the case prove a fatal one. He is not conscious.
“The iron collar was making about 900 revolutions a minute when it struck him and cut his scalp, the wound assuming the shape of a letter Y.”
This 1885 account of a workplace injury reflects the brutal conditions of early industrial Seattle, long before modern OSHA regulations. The precarious nature of mill work reminds us that the city's early economic engine was built on the backs of laborers who often faced life-altering accidents with little safety infrastructure.
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