How can God forgive you, you do know what you’ve done.
You’ve killed my husband, now you want my son.
-Hazel Dickens
Hellraisers Journal, Monday December 9, 1917
Monongah, West Virginia – Agonizing Scenes of Grief and Despair
From The Pittsburgh Press of December 7, 1907:
James Cain, an inspector, was overcome while working in the mine this afternoon and is in a precarious condition.
Many women are rallying to aid in giving temporary relief wherever possible. Across the street from the mine quarters have been arranged where the distracted widows of the dead miners are cared for…..
AGONIZING SCENES.
With the early dawn of day and rising of the sun, the beautiful little mining village of Monongah was found to be one of sorrow and despair. Throughout the night widows and orphans hovered close together at the mine entrance, despite the coldness of the night, hoping against hope that their loved ones would still be found alive who were entombed.
The concussion was felt all over the country, houses were wrecked, windows broken and many persons near the mines knocked down and injured.
Thousands of people have assembled at the mine entrances.
The scenes about the mine openings throughout the night were agonizing in the extreme. The anguish of wives and mothers who wrung their hands and cried hysterically out of their solicitude for bread winners who were locked up in their underground sepulchre, were painful in the extreme. Women fainted. Strong men gave way. Little children, only faintly realizing what happened, cried pitifully, not for absent fathers and brothers, but because of the distress round about them and their intuitive knowledge that it was an occasion that called for tears…
