Thursday, August 14, 2008

LET HIS FEET HANG OUT.

New York, 1895

An Italian Railway Laborer Killed in a Peculiar Accident.

An Italian laborer, whose name is not known, was killed at Farmingdale on Sunday in a peculiar manner. He was one of 250 who had been employed on the new extension of the Long Island railroad at Amagansett and was being conveyed to Long Island City to be paid off. The men were in a train of box cars.

Just before the train reached Farmingdale the man who was killed sat down in the doorway of the car he was in, allowing his foot to hang out. The train was going thirty miles an hour. The man's feet struck the freight station platform and several heavy pickle barrels that were standing on the platform. The man held on to the iron rods that support the door of the car and was not pulled out.

The force of the collision demolished two of the barrels and swept several others from the platform. The man was not killed instantly, and when the train was stopped he still had hold of the iron rods. He died two hours later.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, June 14, 1895, p. 4.

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