THE CURSED LIFE OF MARY LINCOLN

A Story of Sadness, Spiritualism and Sorrow

On November 4, 1842, future president Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois. It was a complicated and often turbulent marriage, but Mary remained devoted to Abraham throughout his entire life – and even after his death.

A young Mary Todd, who Lincoln fell in love with in Springfield and married in 1842

The two met at a Christmas party in Springfield in 1839. They were attracted to each other from the start. Mary’s sister soon noted with disapproval that when Lincoln would call, he would sit in rapt attention to everything Mary said. She believed the young man, who the wealthy family considered to be unsuitable, was paying far too much attention to Mary. Mary seemed to be returning his attentions for a time, but the following year found her still being courted by other men (including Lincoln’s rival, Stephen Douglas) and Lincoln still pining away after her. At the close of the year, he made his decision, he would marry her. Whether or not Lincoln formally proposed to her or not, Mary promised to become his wife. For some reason, though, on New Year’s Day 1841, Lincoln decided to break off the engagement.

Some have speculated that Lincoln was intrigued by the idea of marriage, but afraid of it also. He feared his loss of freedom but was unsure that he wanted to live without Mary. His friend and law partner, William Herndon, noted that Lincoln was acting as “crazy as a loon”. He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, he let his work slide and refused to meet and dine with friends. Another friend, Dr. Anson Henry, suggested that Lincoln take a trip out of town and try to ease his state of mind.

A short time before, one of Lincoln’s closest friends, Joshua Speed, had moved to Louisville, Kentucky and so Lincoln decided to travel there and stay with him for a little while. Unfortunately, things were no better for him in Louisville. Speed was also in the midst of a turbulent relationship with a local woman named Fanny Henning. After a short visit, Speed returned to Springfield with Lincoln and wrapped up his business affairs to move to Kentucky permanently. He would soon be marrying Fanny, but he left his good friend with one piece of advice: either give up Mary for good or marry her and be done with it.

In the summer of 1842, Lincoln again turned his attentions to Mary Todd. A friend cleverly arranged a surprise dinner so the two of them would meet again and it worked. By November, marriage was on Lincoln’s mind again. In fact, it was so much on his mind that on the morning of November 4, he and Mary announced they were going to be married --- that same evening.

Their friends were in great haste to make the preparations, surprised by the announcement. There was no time for Joshua Speed to travel from Kentucky, so Lincoln asked another friend, James Matheny, to stand in as best man. Matheny would later write that during the ceremony, Lincoln “looked and acted like a lamb being led to the slaughter.” While he was getting dressed, his landlord’s son asked him where he was going and Lincoln answered, “To Hell, I suppose.”

Despite the haste in making arrangements and Lincoln’s obvious foreboding, the ceremony proceeded without a hitch and Lincoln was now a husband.

The Lincolns had their honeymoon at the Globe Tavern, where they lived during the first years of their marriage. There was every indication that their marriage was a happy one, despite Mary losing track of her socialite friends and her sister’s warnings that her husband was unsuitable. It was not long before they were expecting their first child and Robert was born just three days short of nine months after the wedding.

During the Civil War and the Lincoln’s years in the White House, their son Willie died, a loss from which Mary never recovered. It was during this time that she turned to Spiritualism and séances began to be held at the White House. Mary seemed to feel great relief from her contact with the dead but later, after Lincoln was assassinated and Spiritualism fell out of popular favor (it would revive again in the early 1900s), Spiritualism would become her undoing.

For months after Lincoln’s death, Mary spoke of nothing but the assassination until her friends began to drift away, their sympathy at a breaking point. She began to accuse her husband’s friends and his Cabinet members of complicity in the murder, from his bodyguards to Andrew Johnson.

Mary lay in her bed for 40 days after the assassination and in the years that followed, she deteriorated mentally and physically into a bitter old woman who wore nothing but black mourning clothing for the rest of her life. Her attachment to Spiritualism turned into a dangerous obsession, reaching a point where she could not function without aid from her “spirit guides.”

Mary had a great fear of poverty. She often begged her friends to help her with money. Unlike the widows of generals and governors, for whom money was easily raised, Mary’s handful of supporters found it impossible to raise funds on her behalf because she was just too unpopular. In fact, she was despised across America. Newspapers wrote unflattering stories about her and she was ridiculed by members of Washington society.

In 1868, she abandoned America and took her son Tad to live in Germany. They lived there in hiding for three years before coming home. In July 1870, Congress approved a lifetime pension for Mrs. Lincoln of $3,000 per year. This pension awaited her when she returned to America, as did an inheritance from Lincoln’s estate. She was finally wealthy woman. This fear was over, but heartbreak soon followed.

Travel and an ocean crossing had dire circumstances for Tad. He developed tuberculosis and his health began to fail. He lingered for many weeks and then died in July 1871. Tad’s death, which followed the death of two other children and her husband, further aggravated Mary’s grief, which was enhanced by her previous history of mental instability.

Mary turned to the only thing that she believed that she had left – Spiritualism. For a time, she moved into a commune, where she began to develop her psychic “gifts,” which enabled her to see “spirit faces” and “communicate beyond the veil.” She claimed to have daily conversations with her late husband. Many took advantage of her, tricking her out of money and using her name to promote their own “abilities.” One of these was so-called “spirit photographer” William Mumler, who produced thousands of blatantly fake photographs of ghosts during his infamous career. Although he claimed not to recognize Mary when she called at his studio, he “miraculously” managed to produce a photo of her and her late husband by deft manipulation of the photographic plates.

The infamous photograph taken by William Mumler, which Mary believed showed the phantom image of her late husband. Although Mumler claimed that he had no idea who the veiled woman was who visited his studio that day -- until the moment she removed the veil, that is -- Mumler was a notorious fraud, who produced thousands of blatantly fake "spirit" photographs.

Mary’s sole surviving son, Robert, a rising young Chicago lawyer, was alarmed as his mother's behavior became increasingly erratic. In March 1875, during a visit to Jacksonville, Florida, Mary became absolutely convinced that Robert was deathly ill. She traveled to Chicago to find him in fine health. On her arrival, she told her son that someone had tried to poison her on the train and that a “wandering Jew” had taken her pocketbook but would return it later.

While staying with Robert in Chicago, Mary spent money lavishly on useless items, such as draperies that she never hung and elaborate dresses that she never wore, due to the fact that she only wore black after her husband's assassination. She often walked around the city with $56,000 in government bonds sewn into her petticoats. She was afraid of banks and still feared losing all her money. After Mary had an “episode” during which it was feared she would jump out of the window to escape a non-existent fire, the family began to feel that she was going insane.

Fearing that his mother was a danger to herself, Robert was left with no choice but to have Mary committed to a psychiatric hospital in Batavia, Illinois in 1875. After the court proceedings had ended, Mary was so enraged that she attempted suicide. She went to the hotel pharmacist and ordered enough laudanum to kill herself. However, the pharmacist caught on to her plans and substituted the drug with a harmless liquid.

On May 20, 1875, she arrived at Bellevue Place, a private, upscale sanitarium in the Fox River Valley. With his mother in the hospital, Robert Lincoln was left with control of Mary Lincoln's finances. By this time, Robert was wealthy in his own right and had no plans for his mother’s money, which Mary refused to understand. She was sure that he planned to steal everything from her.

Three months after being installed in Bellevue Place, Mary Lincoln engineered her escape. She smuggled letters to her lawyer and his wife, who was not only her friend but also a feminist lawyer and fellow Spiritualist. She also wrote to the editor of the Chicago Times, known for its sensational journalism. Soon, the public embarrassments Robert had hoped to avoid were looming, and his character and motives were in question. The director of Bellevue, who at Mary’s trial had assured the jury she would benefit from treatment at his facility, now in the face of potentially damaging publicity declared her well enough to go to Springfield to live with her sister as she desired.

Mary was released into the custody of her sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards, in Springfield and in 1876 was once again declared competent to manage her own affairs. The committal proceedings led to Mary severing all ties with Robert. She called him a “wicked monster” and despised him for the rest of her life. Before she died, she wrote spiteful letters to him, cursing him and telling him that his father had never really loved him.

Mary went into exile again and moved into a small hotel in France. Her eyes were weakened by cataracts and her body was wracked with pain from severe arthritis. She refused to travel back to the United States until several bad falls left her nearly unable to walk. Her sister pleaded with her to come home and finally she returned to Springfield, moving into the Edwards house, the same house where she and Lincoln had been married years before.

Mary lived the last years of her life in a single room, wearing a money belt to protect her fortune. She kept all of the shades in her room drawn and spent her days packing and unpacking her 64 crates of clothing. She died in July 1882 at the age of 63 – a faded shell of the exuberant young socialite that she had once been and a sad victim of the Lincoln assassination who found herself cursed to live for 17 years after the death of her beloved husband.

FIRE ON THE WATER

The General Slocum Disaster

Guest Blog by Rene Kruse

On June 15, 1904 one of the great disasters in American history occurred in the Hell Gate area of New York City’s East River. Although overshadowed by ever greater disasters to come in the city’s history, the burning of the General Slocum and the loss of nearly 1,000 lives, remains one of the most horrific events to ever occur during our nation’s past – and it’s one that left tales of doom, curses, despair, death and even hauntings in its fiery wake.

By the early summer of 1904, the Knickerbocker Steamship Company needed a second passenger steamship to carry visitors back and forth from New York City to Rockaway Beach during the thriving resort season. The SS General Slocum was commissioned and built in Brooklyn to fulfill that need. Before and after the Rockaway Beach season, the General Slocum was an excursion ship carrying visitors around New York City and was available for private charter.

The ship had a 235-foot-long wooden hull, three expansive decks and a passenger capacity of three thousand.  The Slocum was, by design, a “sidewheel” boat. This means her paddlewheels, 31 feet in diameter, were located on each side, just aft of the center of the ship. Launched in 1891, her white hull with brilliant gold lettering and bright orange paddlewheels made her a spectacular sight as she steamed around New York. As an excursion ship, she was one of the most popular and recognizable steaming the New York City waters. At the time the General Slocum burned, at least half of the people living in New York had either been aboard her or had seen her close up.

Many believed the General Slocum was a cursed ship, however that idea never made it into print until after the fire and sinking. In support of these claims, during her fourteen years afloat, she did experience a series of unfortunate mishaps. The first in a long succession of problems that plagued the General Slocum involved the drowning of a young girl, who had been accidentally pushed overboard by an overzealous crowd.

The ill-fated General Slocum

It turned out that 1894 was a very bad year for the ship. In July, while carrying 4,700 passengers, she ran onto a sandbar so hard that her lights were completely knocked out. The New York Times reported, “A panic followed, in which women who fainted were trampled upon, and men fought with each other to get to the boats. Pandemonium reigned for half an hour, until order was restored by the crew. Then it was found that hundreds had been injured in the wild scrimmage.”  In August, she ran into another sandbar off Coney Island during a terrible storm. Panic again ruled the night until the storm eased and the passengers were transferred to another boat. The very next month, the Slocum collided with a tugboat, the R.T. Sayre. She drifted helplessly about the East River, nearly running aground on the rocks off Governor’s Island before another tugboat was able to push her to safety.

The General Slocum suffered only minor scrapes over the next four years; however, in 1898 she collided with the lighter Amelia, just off the Battery. The two ships struck each other so hard that they became locked together and had to be separated by tugs. Then in June of 1902, during a return trip from Rockaway Beach, she again ran aground on yet another sandbar. As it was already dark, the four hundred passengers on board had to camp out on deck all night until they could be rescued the next morning.

On August 17, 1901, a bizarre event occurred aboard the General Slocum. The ship had been hired to take a group of four hundred people, mostly men, to Rockaway Beach. The men, immigrant workers from the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey, were reportedly already drunk when they boarded the vessel. As the ship steamed into open waters, she was met by a storm with heavy seas. The drunken passengers, whom news reports dubbed the “Paterson Anarchists,” for their rowdy behavior and labor union affiliation, panicked and insisted that the captain turn around. When he refused, a group of them stormed the bridge in an attempt to take over the ship. The crew fought the group off successfully and was able to lock them in cabins until the captain could land. At least seventeen of the so-called anarchists were arrested and most of those ended up in jail.

St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church was located in Little Germany, also known as Kleindeutschland, a New York community of eighty thousand German inhabitants located along the Lower East Side near Tompkins Square.  St. Marks held an annual celebration to commemorate the conclusion of their Sunday school year. In 1904, the parishioners chose to charter the General Slocum to take them to Locust Point on Huntington Bay on the North Shore of on Long Island for a picnic. The charter cost them $350 and for most of them, their lives.

On the morning of June 15, 1904, Captain William Van Schaick and his crew of twenty docked the General Slocum for boarding at the Third Street and East River pier. The scene was that of great fanfare with excited parents and children. The Slocum band played German favorites. Because it was a Wednesday and most men were at work, a majority of those boarding the ship that day were women and children. In all, 1,358 souls were on the General Slocum that day. Only 337 were still alive just two hours later.

  

The ship was loaded and underway by 9:30 a.m. One survivor recalled the General Slocum, “glided through the water so smoothly that the children were allowed to move around and play as they wished about the deck.” As it turned out, her smooth sailing was not so fortunate, as families who had wandered apart towards the beginning of the journey would later spend much precious time frantically searching the parts of the ship not burning, trying to find their children.  

Less than thirty minutes after casting off, twelve-year-old Frank Prawdzicki was the first to notice signs of fire.  He tried to warn the captain but was pushed away from the bridge and told not to bother the officers again. Ten minutes later, a general fire alarm spread through the ship. Young Frank Prawdzicki and his mother survived the fire but his four sisters, Annie, age fifteen, Henrietta, age thirteen, Gertrude, age three and one-year-old Johanna, were all lost.

The fire spread through the ship faster than anyone could have possibly imagined. Feeding the flames further was the highly flammable paint with which the ship had recently been repainted. However, the main reason the flames spread with such ferocity was because of what Captain Van Schaick did next. Many believed that he badly mishandled the fire and the situation that followed.

When the Captain was first notified of the fire in the forward compartment, they were steaming past a large set of piers where he could have docked in time to possibly save countless lives. Instead, he steamed ahead at full speed for nearly five minutes before beaching the ship on the shores of North Brother Island. He later tried to explain, “I started to head for 134th Street, but was warned off by the captain of a tugboat, who shouted to me that the boat would set fire to the lumber yards and oil tanks there. Besides, I knew that the shore was lined with rocks and the boat would founder if I put in there. I then fixed upon North Brother Island.”  

Unfortunately, as the ship steamed ahead at full speed, the wind fanned the flames fiercely and caused them to move toward the aft (rear) part of the ship where most of those aboard had taken refuge from the smoke and heat.  The fire ate away at the decks with amazing speed. A flotilla of small boats and tugs followed the raging inferno as she sped down river.

The ruins of the General Slocum, still on the water.

It would not be one single thing that doomed the ship. Even though the General Slocum had experienced a variety of mishaps during her short life, Captain Von Schaick had received a number of safety commendations as he was ultimately in charge of safety on board the ship. Little did anyone know that the Captain had become very lax in regard to safety. In reality, the General Slocum had become a floating deathtrap. The crew had never been trained in the required safety drills or with the safety equipment, most of which was aged and rotted. The ship’s life boats were originally lashed in place with ropes, but as the ropes had begun to rot, they were reattached with wire and could not be released during the fire.  

The times were also a factor in the large number of lives lost. In the early twentieth century, very few people knew how to swim, especially those living in the city. The clothing worn by the women and young girls also proved to be a great hindrance to their survival. Long, heavy skirts and the petticoats worn underneath grew heavy in the water and clung to their legs, pulling them down and making it impossible to for them to swim or even stay afloat.  And these were Victorian times. Devout, church-going women would never have considered stripping down to their undergarments before jumping, even to save their own lives. Also, many waited on the ship too long and were killed when the decks burned through and collapsed. Others were mauled to death by the still-turning paddle wheels as they jumped over the side. 

The first action taken by the crew was to try to put out the fire using the on-board fire hoses. Having never been used before or replaced as needed, most crumbled as they were taken from their racks. The hoses that didn’t crumble into pieces, burst apart when the water pumps were turned on. After this first course of action failed, a majority of the crew abandoned ship leaving the passengers to fend for themselves. One survivor related, “...it seemed to me that the crew of the boat lost their heads -- they were undisciplined, and did not do what sane men would have done to stay the panic and restore order.”

Three thousand life preservers were hung along the interior deck walls near the ceilings. Passengers climbed onto deck chairs and camp stools to take them down but found that many of them were stuck to the walls, evidently put back too soon after the recent paint job. Others simply fell apart in their hands, the fabric shredding, releasing the granulated cork inside. At that time, solid pieces of cork were sewn inside life preservers and maritime law required a minimum amount of cork be placed in each, measured by the weight of the finished jacket. The Nonpareil Cork Works, makers of the life preservers used on the General Slocum, had used useless lightweight granulated cork instead of the required solid cork. It was later discovered that in order to reach the required minimum weight, the company had placed iron bars and pieces of stone inside the jackets.    

A few of the life jackets did stay intact for a while. Mothers strapped their babies and young children into the remaining life preservers, took them to the rail of the ship and dropped them over the side. To their utter horror, they stood and watched as their children hit the water’s surface and immediately sunk from sight, pulled down by the weighted jackets that were supposed to keep them afloat.

Joseph Halphusen, the church sextant described the scene as “pure panic.” He further described how a sheet of flame followed rolling clouds of smoke. A rush began towards the sides of the boat during which women and children were thrown down and trampled. He said that many were pushed overboard and even more jumped into the river.  Mr. Halphusen waited till the last minute before he dropped his two daughters over the side and jumped himself, just as a rescue tug arrived in time to fish all three from the water.

Because this was to be a cheerful family-oriented outing, George Maurer, the Slocum bandleader, brought along his wife. Margaret, and daughters Clara, age twelve, and Matilda, age fourteen. Margaret died a few days after the fire from burns. His daughters drowned, as did Maurer himself. When his body was recovered, his forehead carried the imprint from a boot heel. It was believed that after he was already in the water, someone landed on him as they jumped.

As the General Slocum struck the shore of North Brother Island, Nicholas Balser was at the aft end of the ship, waiting till the last minute to jump. When at last he did jump, to his surprise he landed in water only up to his armpits and walked out onto the shore. “When I finally emerged, I looked back and to my dying day I’ll never forget the scene. Around me were scores of bodies, most of them charred and burned. I helped as many as possible of those still living to land. From the stern of the boat, where hundreds of persons were huddled fighting like mad to leap into the water, I saw dozens of women and children throw themselves over the side.”

Catherine Kassebaum, and the ten family members she brought with her that day, wanted to listen to the music, so they all gathered around the band. A woman’s scream reached them before any smoke was noticed.  Thinking that someone had fallen overboard, she and her family scanned the waters below. Within seconds, the true nature of the problem became apparent when smoke began billowing toward them and they heard general panic on the forward part of the deck. Catherine, realizing that she had to stay calm if there was any chance for survival, called her family together, instructing the strong to care for the weak, but they were soon overtaken by a mass of screaming women and children rushing toward them in an attempt to escape the oncoming smoke and flames. 

Catherine’s family disappeared as the crowd swept past her. She was able to climb onto a rail for a better vantage point, trying to spot any of her family. Her hands and face were scorched and blistered, holes were burning in her clothing; she finally decided to take her chances by jumping into the water. She described the feeling that she would never again surface when she saw a flash of light and something solid above her. She was later found alive, clinging to the ship’s paddle box. Her daughter Nettie had waited until she saw a tugboat approach the burning ship and jumped onto the deck, breaking her leg. Though mother and daughter were reunited, the remaining nine members of their family perished.

The family of Anna Weber was slightly more fortunate than the Kassebaums. At the first puff of smoke, Anna began rushing about the deck searching for her children. The heat was so intense that her face was scorched and her hair caught fire. Hoping that her husband had found their children, she went to the side of the boat and tried to lower herself down by a rope. Her flesh blistered every time her hands or face touched the side of the boat. She finally dropped when her rope burst into flames. Anna was soon pulled to the shore of North Brother Island by an unknown savior where she found her husband with his clothes burned off, wandering about looking for their children.

Frank and Anna Weber lost both their son and daughter, along with her sister. Their friends, Paul and Anna Liebenow, whom the Webers had invited along as a special treat, lost two daughters but their six-month old daughter Adelia was miraculously saved. The following year little Adelia Leibenow (later Witherspoon) unveiled the Steamboat Fire Mass Memorial. She went on to live a full life and was the last known General Slocum survivor. She died in 2004 at the age of one hundred.

The Reverend George Hass, pastor of St. Marks, had been on a tour of the ship as it first got underway. As smoke began pouring up from below he was able to find his wife, Anna, and his sister, Emma. They waited on the middle deck, searching for George and Anna’s thirteen-year old daughter, Gertrude. When they realized that the deck above them was about to collapse, they jumped together into the water.  Rev. Hass described how he thought he must have put on his life preserver incorrectly because it seemed to be pulling him deeper under water. He was able to free himself and floated to the surface, but by that point, had lost track of his wife. Of the entire Hass party, only Rev. Hass and his sister survived the ordeal.  

By the time the General Slocum was beached on North Brother Island, she was fully engulfed in flames. She ran aground in about 25 feet of water, just off the shoreline. Fireboats arrived shortly, along with other small boats and tugs. These smaller boats maneuvered around the bodies and wreckage, plucking any survivors they found from the water. Captain Van Schaick jumped to the deck of an approaching tug, with an injury to his eye that left him blind on one side, but otherwise unharmed and dry. 

North Brother Island was a hospital island for contagious diseases. Many medical personnel and patients watched from the hospital windows as the General Slocum approached. They rushed the short distance to the shore to render any aid they could. City Health Commissioner Thomas Darlington happened to be visiting the hospital that day. “I will never be able to forget the scene, the utter horror of it,” he said later. He described how the patients in the contagious wards “went wild at the things they saw from their windows.” They screamed and beat at the doors until they were finally quieted by a number of staff members. They watched as the small boats were arriving with the survivors, and towing large numbers of bodies.

The island became a “scene of courage and panic.” Many stories of heroism and cruelty were printed in the newspapers over the next week. A tugboat captain risked his boat and crew by pulling right up to the flames and is said to have saved nearly a hundred lives. Some quite ill patients left the safety of their hospital beds and ran into the water, rescuing as many children as they could. One newspaper reporter wrote of the actions of a particular hospital staff member, “A nurse who always wished she could swim ran into the river to grab some children, which she did again and again until she was swept into deeper water, where she discovered that she could swim, and continued saving lives.”

Over the following few days, hordes of souvenir hunters made the recovery of bodies much more difficult as they washed ashore on North Brother Island and other sites down river. Thieves stripped many of the bodies of jewelry and other valuables as they lay at the high tide line. Hospital attendants chased away a man they found stooped over the body of a woman, attempting to steal the gold watch chain that she wore at her waist. Then there was the large and mysterious white yacht that was cursed by many as it lay just yards away without making any attempt to help with the rescue. A New York Times headline screamed from the page that the private captain “Kept His Yacht Back While Scores Perished: White Vessel’s Captain Watched Slocum Horror Through Glasses.”

The bodies that were pulled from the water or washed ashore on North Brother Island were laid out side by side on the grass outside the hospital. They were later moved to a makeshift morgue at the East 23^rd Street Pier. Coroner William J. O’Gorman announced that more than $200,000 in cash and jewelry was recovered from the victims. Eva Eingler’s body was found to have $30,000 in cash, securities and bankbooks on it. It is unknown why she took that much money with her on what was supposed to be a short excursion. The funds, jewelry and personal items taken from the victims were taken to the coroner’s office to be held for the owners’ survivors. A volunteer who was taking inventory of the victims’ personal effects was startled to discover that fifteen-year-old Clara Hartman of East Ninth Street, pulled from the water and thought to be drowned, was still alive three hours after the fire on board the General Slocum.

Bodies of the dead were placed on display on North Brother Island. They were eventually packed in ice so they could be preserved until someone could identify them.

Rescue volunteers and police openly sobbed as they moved bodies hour after hour. As morgue staff worked to lay out the bodies as they arrived, others were sent to search the city for wooden coffins. Still others brought back tons of ice to help maintain the bodies until they could be identified and claimed by family members.  

While still burning, the hull of the General Slocum was washed a few thousand yards down river by the current until it became lodged in the mud. In following weeks the hull remained partially submerged just off of Hunts Point in the Bronx. Divers were sent down into the hull to search for and recover trapped bodies. Police continued to search the riverbanks for many weeks, collecting bodies and debris from the boat that continued to wash ashore.

While the divers were searching the burned-out hull, they discovered many bodies lying at the bottom of the river. Continuing their search they found a deep hole in the riverbed from which they retrieved more than fifty more bodies. All of these bodies were wearing life preservers. The very life preservers that were supposed to save their lives were weighing their bodies down, making the recovery that much more difficult.

When news of the disaster spread, grief-stricken families flocked to St. Mark’s Church to await the news of their loved ones.

When they heard about the disaster, huge numbers of people amassed at St. Mark’s Church to await news of survivors. Still others rushed to the morgue trying to get information faster. Over the next week, thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers walked past the rows of bodies, hoping to find a lost friend or family member. Though many bodies were never recovered, assumed to have washed out to sea, 61 were never identified and were buried in a common grave in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. The tragedy was further deepened as people committed suicide after learning they had lost their entire families. They may have died later but they were killed by the General Slocum as surely as if they had been killed by the flames.

Funerals were held every hour around the clock in Little Germany. With such a large number of dead, all having lived in the same community, nearly everyone in Little Germany had lost a friend or family member or knew someone who had. The deep sadness of the tragedy seemed to permeate the very fabric of the community and people started to leave. Within a few years, only a small handful of the original inhabitants were left and Little Germany was no more.

Of the 1,021 people who died as a direct result of the fire on board the General Slocum, over ninety percent of them were women, children and infants.

Outrage was the order of the day as people wondered how such a tremendous tragedy could occur within a few hundred yards of one of the most modern cities in the world. Someone had to be held accountable for such a great loss. City leaders vowed to bring to justice those who were to blame. Within a few weeks, the main executives of the Knickerbocker Steamship Co. were indicted along with Captain Van Schaick and a safety inspector. Also indicted were the top executives of the Nonpareil Cork Works, makers of the deadly life preservers. They were never convicted.  

During the trial, it was revealed that the Knickerbocker Steamship Company had falsified records, covering up its lack of concern for passenger safety. In return for their complicity in the tragedy, they received only a small fine. 

Captain Van Schaick’s story ended differently. Though he tried to explain his actions on that terrible day, the jury was not convinced. In the end, the captain was the ultimate authority for safety on his ship and he was held accountable. Convicted of criminal negligence and manslaughter, Captain Van Schaick was sentenced to ten years hard labor at Sing Sing Prison. Though he appealed for his release directly to President Theodore Roosevelt, a native New Yorker, he was repeatedly refused. After serving three and a half years, he was pardoned under President William Howard Taft and spent the rest of his life in seclusion, a broken man, until his death in 1927.

The cause of the fire was quickly discovered. The night before the General Slocum’s final trip, deck hand Dan O’Neill violated fire regulations by storing a barrel of packing hay on board. He placed the hay in a closet with a stash of oil lamps. This proved to be the deadliest of mixtures.

Just one month before the fire, Henry Lundburg, Assistant Inspector of Hulls, performed a safety inspection of the General Slocum. During this inspection, he determined that the life preservers were “up to date and of good quality.” When inspecting the water pumps and fire hoses, he didn’t seem at all concerned that no water came out when he turned the valves on and off. Another part of the inspection required him to climb up to the lifeboats to check them. Instead, he merely glanced up and checked the box for “in good condition” on his form and walked on.

The great tragedy that occurred aboard the General Slocum, resulting in the horrific deaths of so many innocent men, women and children were in large part due to the illegal actions and corrupt behaviors of Henry Lundberg and Dan O’Neill. Neither of these men spent a single day in jail.

In 1906, a memorial fountain to the victims of the fire was erected at the north end of Tompkins Square Park.

The remains of the General Slocum’s hull were recovered and rebuilt into a barge named the Maryland, which sank off of Sandy Hook, New Jersey, during a December storm in 1911. The curse, some said, continued.

Captain Van Schaick lived for twenty years after he was released from prison, though he didn’t get much rest during that time. He privately told friends that his nights were frequently interrupted by the screams of women and children. His days were filled with shadows in the corners and the smell of burning flesh. In the end, it was said that he welcomed death. Was he being haunted by the victims of the great tragedy in which he was at least partially to blame, or was his tormentor his own conscience?

So many suffered to learn such harsh lessons. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of this disaster is that so much is left without rest, so many lost forever. But many were left witness, to remember the flames, to remember the screams, to remember the horror. 

"TOWN OF THE LIVING DEAD"

THE HAWK’S NEST TUNNEL TRAGEDY

The small community of Gauley Bridge, West Virginia looks like a picture postcard of small-town America. An old rusty railroad bridge stretches out over the water where the New River merges with the Gauley. Houses dot the steep hills and line the banks of the river. A few stores can be found along the town’s main street. A renovated old train station serves as the town hall. The speed limit is just 25 miles an hour through town. Children ride bicycles and play in the yards. People smile and say hello to one another as they pass on the sidewalks. A farmer’s market in the middle of town sells fresh vegetables in the summer and pumpkins and bales of straw in the fall.

But on May 20, 1931, a local newspaper attempted to tell the secret that lies under the sunny surface of this little town – but publication of the story was stopped by a local judge. It’s a dark secret that has become a terrible memory of death, an almost forgotten horror of one of the worst industrial disasters in American history: the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Tragedy. The disaster occurred during the years of the Great Depression, when times were hard and a man would do just about anything to feed his family. Taking advantage of this fact, powerful and wealthy men started a dangerous project that would claim the lives of an unknown number of men and cause the community of Gauley Bridge to become known as the “Town of the Living Dead.”

A haunting image of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel as a worker emerges from the mist caused by the drilling of the stone – the same fine mist of silica that was destroying the lungs of the men breathing it.

The Hawk’s Nest Disaster resulted from the construction of a tunnel through the mountain near Gauley Bridge. The three-mile-long passage was designed to divert water to an electrical power station by Union Carbide, the sponsor of the plan. However, the subcontractors on the job failed to follow standard safety precautions during the drilling operations, which ended with at least 764 dead workers. None of the companies involved were charged with criminal negligence.

Union Carbide (the company that would later be involved in the chemical explosion in Bhopal, India, in 1984) was formed in West Virginia by the merger of several companies in 1917. By the late 1920s, the company created the New Kanawha Power Co. in order to produce power that would be used in the production of ferro-metals, like aluminum, at a site below Gauley Bridge. The proposal required the damming of the New River just below Hawk’s Nest, a spectacular overlook on the river, and the construction of a three-mile tunnel through Gauley Mountain. This tunnel would carry the rushing water to electric generators downstream.

New Kanawha Power contracted with Rinehart & Dennis Co. of Charlottesville, Virginia, to build the tunnel and the dam. Tunneling began on March 31, 1930 and progressed at breakneck speed until it was completed in December 1931. No one knows for sure why the tunnel had to be completed at such a fast pace, but it was believed that uncertainly about the Federal Power Commission’s control over the New River was one of the reasons. If the project could be hurried through, the government would have little say over what could, or couldn’t, be done during the project. Management drove the workers hard to make sure that the tunnel was completed on time.

Finding workers in Depression-era Appalachia, where numerous coal mines had closed, was an easy task. Word spread through the region, and through the rural south, that jobs were available at Gauley Bridge. Men walked, drove and hopped freight trains to be first in line for the promised work. Rinehart & Dennis hired mostly black workers from outside West Virginia for the project. Reportedly, 75 percent of the 1,494 men who worked inside the tunnel as drillers and mockers – who removed rock debris – and their assistants were African-American. There were another 1,488 workers, also mostly black, who held jobs that involved tasks inside and outside the tunnel. The reasoning behind this is grim in hindsight – in the early 1930s, black workers were seen as expendable.

A group of workers on the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel. Like the man in the front of the photo, the majority were African-American, laboring under unsafe conditions because they were considered largely “expendable.”

Workers labored on the tunnel project for ten hours a day, always under the watchful eyes of bosses who used guns and clubs to force ill or unwilling men to start each day’s work. Black workers were paid in company scrip instead of cash, always at lower rates than white workers. When they were dropped from the payroll, they were evicted from company housing, which consisted of overcrowded, segregated boxcars, and run out of town by the Fayette County Sheriff.

   

Neither Rinehart & Dennis, nor the Union Carbide engineers overseeing the projects, followed even minimal safety precautions during the drilling operations. Workers tunneled from 250 to 300 feet per week through 99 percent silica. Experts knew that miners who inhaled silica dust stood a good chance of contracting silicosis, a deadly lung ailment. But the company ordered that the workers use a dry drilling technique that would create more dust because this method was faster and cheaper. The high-velocity drills that bored cavities in the rock for the insertion of dynamite charges did not spray water on the stone, which was a standard technique to reduce dust. Air ventilation was inadequate. No measurement was taken of dust levels in the tunnel. Ventilators and masks were not issued to tunnel workers, but they were supplied to company executives during inspection tours of the project.

Not surprisingly, few workers stayed on the job for long. Sixty percent of the African-American migrant workers worked less than two months on the project. However, this was long enough to pay a deadly price for signing on at Hawk’s Nest.

The men emerged from the hole in the mountain each day with their dark skin covered by clouds of white dust. They looked like phantoms as they came out of the cloud-filled tunnel, blinking and coughing from the dust that filled their eyes and lungs. They began dying two months after they first entered the tunnel. Their deaths were painful. As the silica they inhaled created fibrous nodules in their lungs, their lungs grew stiff and the men found it harder and harder to breath. Eventually, they strangled to death, writhing and choking until they drew their last punishing gasp. It was reported that a man named Cecil Jones struggled so hard for breath that he kicked the wooden slats out of the baseboard of his bed before he died. Silicosis could not be cured, but doctors knew what it was. Rather than diagnose it, a company physician told tunnel workers that they had a new disease called “tunnelitis” and gave them worthless pills.

 

On May 20, 1931, the local newspaper, the Fayette Tribune, tried to break the story of the sick and dying tunnel workers and their unsafe working conditions, but a gag order issued by a local judge stopped publication. But even without the story, local residents knew something was wrong. Gauley Bridge was being dubbed with a nickname – “town of the living dead.” A Congressional report from February 4, 1936, described the scene: "The men got down so they had no flesh left on them at all. As they express it down there, the men got so they were all hide, bone and leaders, which means he is just skin and tendons and looks like a living skeleton."

 

A problem arose as the black workers died. There was no “colored” burial ground in the area. Handley White, local funeral parlor owner in Summersville, located a field on his mother's farm and was given a contract to open a burial ground on the Martha White farm in Summersville. Handley was paid $50 per body with the promise of "plenty of business." Lieber Cutlp, a local resident and friend of White’s son, later recalled the days of the burials. White contacted him and asked if he wanted to make some extra money with his flatbed truck. Cutlp, anxious to make any extra money he could, quickly agreed. The dead workers were stacked in rows and strapped on the back of the flatbed truck, he remembered. More of the dead workers were arranged in an upright sitting position as if they were alive for their ride to their final resting place. For years rumors spread about workers buried in mass graves on the Martha White farm, but White family members deny this accusation.

Between July and December 1932, local attorneys filed dozens of lawsuits on behalf of workers who had suffered acute silicosis. The disease had wreaked havoc on the workers, ravaging their lungs and making them susceptible to secondary infections, such as tuberculosis. Silicosis had been recognized as an industrial disease in America since the early 1900s. The United States Bureau of Mines had published warnings in the 1920s about the dangers from it while using high-speed drills. Acute silicosis, from which death could occur within months of exposure, however, was not a recognized disease in 1930. West Virginia did not classify silicosis as an industrial disease at all and the state rejected worker’s compensation claims from men who claimed that they had contracted it at Hawk’s Nest.

When faced with more than 250 suits that sought more than $4 million in damages by the middle of 1933, Rinehart & Dennis settled out of court, agreeing to pay $130,000, half of which went to attorneys’ fees. In accepting these settlements, the plaintiff’s attorneys agreed not to file any further suits and to surrender all case records to the defendants. The contractor brokered two additional settlements based on subsequent suits and paid out $200,000 in awards and attorney fees. The average plaintiff received $400, while the defendant took possession of the damning evidence, including x-rays and medical records. Reports circulated that Rinehart & Dennis and Union Carbide bribed witnesses and tampered with juries during the trials prior to the settlements. Few records of the sick workers remains today, most were apparently purposely destroyed.

How many workers actually died in the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel? The real number will never be known. This is partly because Union Carbide wiped out the historical record and partly because most of the tunnel workers were dismissed at the end of 1931 and scattered throughout the South. Many of the men did not become sick until later, so their deaths never became a part of the official numbers.

It was also discovered at trial that the field at the Martha White farm was not the only burial ground for black workers. Apparently, Rinehart & Dennis had hired another local undertaker to dispose of the bodies of unclaimed workers and he had buried them in a field near Gauley Bridge. The location of this burial ground remained a mystery until 1972, when the West Virginia highway department stumbled onto 45 of these graves. Martin Cherniack, a medical doctor with a master’s degree in public health, attempted to reconstruct the epidemiology of the Hawk’s Nest tragedy. After painstaking historical research, his “conservative estimate” was that 746 men who worked in the tunnel had died from acute silicosis, which translated into a mortality rate of 63 percent. African-American workers made up 76 percent of the deaths.

The tragedy forced recognition of acute silicosis as an industrial hazard and a brief and ineffective congressional hearing in 1936, helped focus national attention on the condition. By 1937, all states had adopted laws recognizing the disease in some form – although West Virginia’s statute was worthless since it was written solely in the interest of corporations.

The Hawk’s Nest tragedy remains a haunting incident in American history today. Dismissed as a product of “mountain gossip” in the 1930s, it has come to be recognized as one of the nation’s worst industrial disasters and a chilling reminder of the fact that no man is ever expendable.

"BODIES AND SCREAMS"

THE CLEVELAND CLINIC FIRE OF 1929

On May 15, 1929, about 300 patients were inside of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio when an explosion took place in the rooms where x-ray films were stored. The room and the surrounding corridors filled with flames, but worse, the x-ray films began to produce a deadly gas. The tragedy that occurred that day claimed more than 120 lives and remains one of the most terrifying medical disasters in American history – but one that is barely remembered by anyone outside of northern Ohio today.

 The Cleveland Clinic around the time that it opened in 1921.

In his dedication speech at the opening of the Cleveland Clinic in 1921, Dr. George Washington Crile said that the purpose of the clinic was “to give assistance in solving the problems of the patient of today and through its investigations, its statistical records and laboratories to seek new light on aiding the problems of the patient of tomorrow.” It was a medical facility opened with a dream and a plan to provide the future of healthcare to the people of Northern Ohio. The clinic had been founded by four renowned Cleveland, Ohio, physicians. Three of the founders, George Washington Crile, Frank Bunts, and William Lower, were surgeons who had worked together in an army medical unit in France during World War I. When they returned to the United States, they decided to establish a group practice and invited an internist, John Phillips, to join in their endeavor. The concept of group practice in medicine was relatively new at the time. Only the Mayo Clinic and military units were known to follow this model. The founders established the clinic with the vision: “Better care of the sick, investigation of their problems, and further education of those who serve.”

The clinic saw rapid growth in its early years but suffered a major setback in 1929 that almost closed its doors permanently. On May 15, 1929, a fire started in the basement of the hospital caused by nitrocellulose X-ray film that spontaneously ignited. The fire claimed 123 lives, including that of one of the founders, Dr. Phillips.

Dozens of people had come to the clinic for healing, but found death instead.

On May 15, 1929, about three hundred patients were within the walls of the Cleveland Clinic, an institution that everyone in the city had reason to be proud of. Some of them lay on operating tables, others rested in beds and some sat nervously in waiting rooms, unsure of what diagnosis awaited them. At 11:30 a.m., a resounding explosion occurred in the basement where the clinic’s X-ray films were stored. The films immediately burst into flame. Several theories were later advanced to explain the initial explosion. A leaky steam pipe, authorities reasoned, overheated and caused the highly combustible X-ray films in the room to catch on fire. Others believed that a carelessly discarded cigarette or match caused the fire. No one was ever blamed – the impact lay in the tragedy itself.

The Cleveland Clinic at the time of the fire.

When the X-rays caught fire, they began to release deadly fumes. The poisonous yellow gas penetrated to the waiting room on the floor above and then swirled throughout the clinic. The hollow center of the building soon filled with gases as the intense heat from below sent the fumes upward. Before anyone had an opportunity to escape, a second blast blew out a skylight. Every corner of the clinic filled with a deadly bromide gas.

People were quickly overtaken by the gas. They ran for the windows, seeking oxygen, but few were able to reach them. They were enveloped in the fumes and collapsed. The fire in the basement burned up the air supply and combined with the choking gas, began to claim victims. The fumes poured in through ventilator shafts, up stairways, through halls, and then the fire found the woodwork in the stairways and began to devour it, climbing upwards into the building. Windows burst and passersby on the street in front of the clinic were also overcome by the fumes. Witnesses on the scene after the explosion said that they could hear terrified screams from blocks away.

The first explosion in the clinic was heard by police officer Henry Thorpe, who was walking two blocks away. He immediately turned in the alarm and ran towards the building, which was located at Euclid Avenue and 93rd Street. Thorpe was still a block away when he was blinded by the gas.

  

Firefighters arrived within minutes of the call. They turned in a second alarm and police, hospital and county morgue ambulances soon began to arrive. Meanwhile, firefighters were trying to enter the building. Battalion Fire Chief James P. Flynn, with his driver, Louis Hillenbrand, were the first to go inside. They found 16 bodies packed in the space between the elevator and a stairway, where occupants of the clinic had tried in vain to escape. One of the people found near the elevator was Dr. J.L. Locke. He was taken outside and revived. Five of the others, who were still breathing, were taken to the roof, where firefighters were hard at work.

Rescue workers and volunteers scaled the building, trying to help the people inside escape from the flames and from the deadly x-ray fumes.

Flynn directed his men to scale the roof and enter the hospital through a skylight. They lowered themselves from the roof, but it was not an easy entry. From the skylight, the firemen suspended themselves and then swung their bodies to gain momentum in order to drop with minimum injury inside the mezzanine rail that encircled the fourth floor. The firefighters then searched the trap door that allowed access to the roof. While searching for the door, they found a mass of bodies of people who had attempted to make it to the roof on their own. One of the firefighters was horrified by the sight:

“I hope to never have to look at anything so horrifying again. Lord help me, as far down the stairway as you could see were bodies, bodies, bodies. Twisted arms and legs, screaming men and women. Bodies and screams.”

The firemen managed to lift out 15 survivors from the top of the pile of bodies. The jam at this failed escape route was so great that many of those at the bottom of the pile were crushed to death. Oxygen tanks were rushed to the roof, but for many of the survivors, it was too late. They did not live for long. Battalion Chief Flynn lowered himself into the building and was appalled at the condition of the people his men found, most of them barely alive. He ordered the firemen to concentrate all of their efforts on saving the trapped and getting people out of the clinic. They could hear screaming coming from the third floor and crews went down the stairs. By now, the flames had reached the third floor and the men had to battle the fire while their comrades worked to revive those who had been overcome by the smoke and fumes.

Some of the firefighters described their efforts on the lower floors of the building as “a descent into Hell.” Many victims were found collapsed at the windows, unable to find fresh air. Both entrances to the street were blocked by tangles of panic-stricken patients and personnel. The doorways had simply not been wide enough for everyone to exit at the same time. Trapped, they were overcome by the fumes and then burned to death by the fire. The fire had done its damage to the clinic, too. The woodwork and masonry walls were charred and blackened by the heat.

Hardened plaster was blistered and peeled from the walls. Fumes that had filled a hollow compartment between the balcony roof and the roof of the building exploded and ripped apart the brick and mortar. The casings of the skylight above and buckled and warped under the force of the explosion and broken glass had rained down on the waiting room, three floors below. The suction of the explosion shattered glass doors reinforced with steel. Compression in the hollow center of the building packed air into the halls and staircases and when this force was released by the blast of air rushed back into the center of the building, smashing doors with the force of a battering ram.

Heavy fumes hung about the building for almost two hours after the blast. Rescuers were unable to stay inside for long intervals and frequently had to use the oxygen tanks that had been brought for the victims. All of them firemen continued to go back inside and look for survivors, though, risking their own lives.

The clinic’s front lawn was soon covered with the dead and dying. Any available vehicle in the area, including taxicabs and personal automobiles, was commandeered by the police to be used as a transport from the burned-out clinic to other Cleveland hospitals. It took almost three hours to lift the bodies, one by one, through the damaged skylight. One police officer, a war veteran, described the scene as worse than his experiences on the front lines. He personally carried out 25 bodies from the building.

The poison gas from the X-ray films did not claim all of its victims immediately. Some people walked out of the building healthy and even aided firefighters in their rescue work, only to collapse and die hours or days later. A professional football player, Ben Jones, helped with the rescue efforts at the scene, felt fine and considered himself fortunate when he returned home. He died 48 hours later from the gas that he inhaled. Several firemen were also hospitalized because of ill effects from the gas.

Other, personal tragedies, occurred.  Dr. Carl Helwig, a doctor at another hospital, came to the scene to aid in the rescue effort and discovered that his wife was at the clinic that morning for a routine check-up. She died as he worked to save her. One of the clinic’s founders, Dr. George Crile, helped in the aid and rescue and later, visited fire victims at the city’s hospitals. His close colleague, Dr. John Phillips, another of the clinic’s founders, was in critical condition. Dr. Crile donated blood to save his friend, but Dr. Phillips died despite all of the efforts to save him. 

The clinic, founded by these two men and dedicated to the welfare of its patients, was witness to 123 deaths on May 15.

  

What could have been the end of the clinic turned out to be only the beginning. The remaining founders responded to the tragedy with brave optimism and within days, they resumed operation of the clinic in the temporary quarters of an old school. The Cleveland Clinic was rebuilt and regained momentum to become nationally recognized as a leader in the fight against cardiovascular disease. In the decades since World War II, the clinic has grown to become internationally prominent and is currently the second-largest medical group practice in the world, after the Mayo Clinic.