From Surgeon to Mill Hand: A Tragic Decline
After a minor workplace injury turns fatal, the tragic end of a former Union Pacific surgeon highlights the precarious nature of life for laborers in the region.
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.
At two o'clock yesterday morning, O. G. Harford died at the International Hotel rather suddenly. Some weeks since, the deceased was employed in a sawmill at Port Gamble and, being unused to manual labor, had the misfortune to crush the index finger of his right hand in the machinery. Nothing was thought of the injury at the time, although it was sufficient to incapacitate Harford for work. It is said, however, that the deceased failed to give it proper attention and dissipated considerably after he was hurt; that he stuck his arm out of the window while asleep and caught cold in the injured finger. Finally, when it was in a bad condition, he reached this city and put up at the International Hotel. A physician who resided in the hotel poulticed the arm, which was swollen badly, and applied the remedies usual in such cases, but blood poisoning set in, and the unfortunate man rapidly grew worse until death ended his sufferings yesterday morning. The deceased was a surgeon by profession and was formerly employed in that capacity at one of the hospitals run by the Union Pacific Company. It is thought that his dissipated habits drove him out of his profession, so that he was compelled to seek employment in a sawmill.
“It is thought that his dissipated habits drove him out of his profession, so that he was compelled to seek employment in a sawmill.”
Harford's story underscores the brutal vulnerability of the Gilded Age workforce, where a single untreated infection could claim the life of even a formerly highly-trained professional. The 'dissipation' (alcoholism) mentioned as a cause of his decline was a common trope in 19th-century reporting to explain sudden downward mobility among the era's transient labor population.
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