Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1885 — MINERS CRUSHED TO DEATH. [ARTICLE]

MINERS CRUSHED TO DEATH.

Four Men Killed and Six Badly Injured While Descending a Wilkeabarre Shaft. [Wilkesborre special.] • At the Oakwood shaft, just outside the city limits, the property of the Lehigh Valley Coal Company, the mon employed in tha mine were going down the shaft on the carriage, as usual, to their work, at 7 o’clock this morning. The shaft is eight hundred feet deep aud ten men are letdown at a time. A cage load was descending, and had almost reached the foot of the shaft, when a rattling sound was heard overhead, and immediately after a large rock crashed through the sheet-iron covering of the carriage, killing three of the men outright and so fearfully injuring another that he died shortly • after being taken to the hospital. Several others were slightly injured. The names of the killed are: John J. Martin, a miner, aged about 35, unmarried, and living with his widowed mother in this city. James Kearney, a laborer, aged about 25, unmarried. John Peterson, a miner, aged about 26, married, and living at Parsons. Thomas Jenkins, a laborer, about 28 years old, single, and living at Miners’ Mills. Those injured are: Patrick Smith, bruised inside and on the back; Patrick Pursell, slightly cut in the back; Patrick Kearney, slightly bruised in the hip and on the right leg below the knee. The lastnamed gives the following description of the accident: “Going down the shaft, I was standing almost precisely upon the place where the hole was broken through the roof of the cage by the piece of rock, but when'l heard the noise of the rock coming down against the side of the shaft above, and the smaller pieces striking the roof, I somehow stepped to the center and under the cross-beam which supports the roof. The others were running back and forth to find a place of safety, and all knew what the sound meant. The position saved me, as pieces of the rock struck the roof and crashed down through on the other side. My lamp was put out, and as the carriage struck bottom I made a step and went into the hole that had been broken in the floor. One of the smaller pieces of the stone hit my hip. I got out of the place and half fell off into the gangway. My presence of mind had not deserted me, and my first thought was for my brother Jim. I called to him but there was no answer. Then we searched the wreck, found the bodies of the others all mangled and bleeding, and finally Jim, his feet on the edge of the carriage and his body and head lying over the edge in the water of the sump/dead. ”