Fall On Mourners; Hurt One

Guests Drop Through Ceiling and End Funeral Feast.

Hamburg, Pa., May 24. - Three women and a boy plunged through the floor of a second-story room in the home of William Kauffman in Center township yesterday and fell on the dining-room table below at a time when the table was surrounded by guests. One of the diners, Mrs. Elias Balthaser, was bending over the table at the time and one of the women fell on her neck, causing probably fatal injuries.

Kauffman's little daughter had just been buried and the funeral party returned to his house for dinner. Pastor D. P. Derebrich and a dozen others were gathered around the table. A number of women mourners were assembled upstairs.

There was an old trap door in the dining-room ceiling, and the weight of some of the portly mourners caused it to give way. Those who fell through were little injured. The tableware they broke filled two large clothes baskets.

--The Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, May 24, 1909, page 9.

Comment: Derebrich maybe should be Deberich or Derberich. It's interesting in the last paragraph that the mourners upstairs are specifically called portly. And the note on how much tableware was broken.