———-
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 28, 1910
Princeton, Illinois – Jury Reaches Verdict in Great Cherry Mine Disaster
From the Duluth Labor World of May 28, 1910:
PRINCETON, Ill, May 27.-The coroner’s jury, which began last November to investigate the cause of the Cherry mine disaster, which resulted in the death of 265 miners in the St. Paul Coal company’s mine, has reached an agreement, and 250 separate verdicts have been returned.
The jury says the mining laws were broken with the knowledge and consent of the mine inspector.
The verdicts were in three sets, one set fixing the cause of the death of the twelve men in the rescue party who perished on the cage in the mine shaft, another set for the 187 men who were suffocated in the second vein and the third for the 51 men who were trapped in the third vein and died of exposure and suffocation.
The verdict of the coroner’s jury is a vindication of John Cowley, the engineer who was in charge of the cage on which the twelve rescuers lost their lives. The verdict says the twelve rescuers lost their lives “indirectly by a confusion of signals regulating the movements of the cage.”
———-
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Wake fr Slumber, AtR p2, Oct 23, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/091023-appealtoreason-w725.pdf
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-May 28, 1910
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78000395/1910-05-28/ed-1/seq-1/
IMAGE
Cherry MnDs Murders by JO Bentall, Orphans, ISR p585, Jan 1910
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA585
See also:
Tag: Great Cherry Mine Disaster of 1909
https://weneverforget.org/tag/great-cherry-mine-disaster-of-1909/
Story of the Great Cherry Coal Mine Disaster
https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/cherry.htm
Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad
St. Paul No. 2 Mine Fire
Cherry, Bureau County, Illinois
November 13, 1909
No. Killed – 259
Rescuer deaths:
Six times, Mine Manager John Bundy went down in an iron cage to rescue trapped miners. He emerged six times, black and sweating, lifting survivors into the sun. But on the seventh trip, Bundy and eleven volunteers were burned alive. When the cage was hoisted, it held a charred and flaming pile of bodies.
In all, twelve miners were posthumously bestowed the Carnegie Hero Award for their efforts to rescue trapped miners. Included were:
John Bundy, 53, mine manager
J. Alexander Norberg, 38, mine boss
Robert Clark, 28, miner
John Flood, 49, merchant
Dominick Formento, 32, merchant
Isaac Lewis, Jr., 34, liveryman
Andrew McLuckie, 31, miner
Joseph Robeza, Jr., 22, driver
James Speir
Henry Stewart, 28, miner
John Szabrinski, 29, cage operator
Charles Waite, 43, mine examiner & boss
Successful Rescue
One group of miners, 500 feet underground, had built a wall of mud, rocks, and timbers to block off the poisonous gases. They were in total darkness with only a pool of water leaking from a coal seam to drink. After 8 days of confinement, they could bear it no longer. They tore down the barricade and began crawling through the tunnels. Finally, they heard the sounds of a search party. Twenty-one men still alive from this group were rescued.
Two miners given the Carnegie Hero Award for their efforts directing these miners were:
George Eddy, 48, mine examiner
Walter Waite, 41, assistant mine manager
Duluth Labor World-May 28, 1910
UMW Urges Nine Additional Mine Rescue Stations
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dream Of A Miner’s Child – Johnson Mountain Boys