News Items from The Kansas City Journal ~ Old News That's New to You from Vintage Kansas City.com

December 7, 1909

BOILER KILLS FOUR,

RIPS BUILDING OPEN.

DRIVER THROWN FROM PASS-

ING WAGON, DIES.

Explosion Occurs While Steamfitters

Are at Work -- Other Men In-

jured -- Pickets Blown Off

Fence Across Alley.

EXPLOSION WHICH COST FOUR LIVES.

By the explosion of a boiler in the basement of the six-story building at 908-10 Broadway at 11 o'clock yesterday morning, Michael Frawley and James Cox were killed outright, and Andrew Meyer and Essie Williams, a negro porter, so badly burned and otherwise injured that they died before nightfall. Two others were badly hurt, and three stories of the rear portion of the building were wrecked. Considerable damage also was done to adjoining structures.

Within two minutes business men and pedestrians in the neighborhood ventured to enter the front door of the building bent on rescuing those who were hurt. The flooring on the first and second stories had been splintered and a heavy partition in the middle of the building had toppled over. Every window glass on two stories had been blown out. Heavy timbers, torn from their places, hung over overhead, and for a time a general collapse of the rear section of the interior of the structure was feared.

The cause for the explosion is not known. Steamfitters employed by Val Wagner & Co., 3918 Main street, were adjusting a steamcock on the boiler, and were preparing to clean out the pipes. They had started to work last Saturday and yesterday morning they put fire under the boiler in order to do the cleaning. There was no forewarning of anything being wrong with the apparatus, and when the explosion occurred Michael Frawley, one of the steamfitters, was on top of the boiler. The boiler had not been in use for some time, and it is supposed that this is accountable for the very bad condition it was in when the workmen began the repairing.

ONE DRIVER IS KILLED.

James Cox, a driver for the Stewart Peck Sand Company, happened to be driving through the alley and had just reached the building when the explosion occurred. He was thrown bodily from the wagon and dashed to death against the brick pavement. C. R. Misner, another driver in the employ of the same firm, sat beside Cox. He too was hurled from the seat, but escaped with a fractured shoulder. Essie Williams, a negro porter, was in the boiler room at the time of the accident, and he was scalded from head to foot by the escaping steam. H e was hurried to the General hospital and died at 3:45 o'clock yesterday afternoon.

Andrew Meyer and W. H. Straubmeyer, plumbers, were at work on the boiler. Both seemed at first to have received minor injuries but Meyer was suffering from shock so he was sent to St. Mary's hospital. He did not rally, and it later developed that he was internally injured. He died at the hospital at 5:40 o'clock.

WHO THE DEAD MEN ARE.

Michael Frawley, 2040 Madison avenue, was unmarried, an orphan, and 28 years old. He has lived in this city all his life. Two brothers, John and Emmett and two sisters, Mary and Kate Frawley, survive. His body was taken to the Wagner undertaking rooms.

Meyer, Forty-third and Hudson streets in Rosedale, was well known in Atchison, Kas., where he had worked as a steamfitter off and on for many years. He came to Kansas City recently and went to live with a brother at the Hudson street address in Rosedale. He was 45 years old and unmarried. His body was also taken to the Wagner undertaking rooms.

If James Cox, 1416 Central street, has relatives living they were not found last night, and it is almost certain they do not live in this city. He was about 35 years old. It is said he was single, but there is another rumor that he has a wife and child somewhere.

Edward Booker, business manager of the local steamfitters' union, said last night that none of the men killed or injured bore union cards. Frawley, he said, was merely a steamfitter's helper. He had once applied for a card in the union, but did not keep up with the requirements, and his membership was finally cancelled.

Essie Williams, 505 East Sixth street, the negro porter, was also a fireman. The whereabouts of his survivors have not yet been ascertained. His body was taken to the Countee undertaking rooms.

The wrecked building is the property of the Homestead Realty Company and is in the charge of David Bachrach, who as the agent, had the renting of the rooms. The block had been unoccupied recently, but the H. K. Mulford Company of Philadelphia was preparing to move its stock in on the third floor.

"It was a terrific shock which seemed to shake the foundation of our building from under us," said C. M. Lyon, president of the Lyon Millinery Company, which occupies the building adjoining on the south. "Several plate glasses crashed and I ran to the front door and out on the street fearing that possibly a second explosion might occur. the damage we suffered was comparatively small, but the fright we were given was large."

The picket fence surrounding the home of Mrs. Thomas E. Moran, 916 Bank street, just across the alley from the wrecked building, was partly demolished by the concussion and many pickets were torn from the fence and blown several feet away.

Labels: accident, Bank street, Central street, death, explosion, hospitals, Madison avenue, Main street, Rosedale, Sixth street, undertakers

December 1, 1909

DRANK HIS WAY TO JAIL.

Court Is Lenient With Mechanic

Who Pleaded Guilty.

A. R. Davis, a machinist, pleaded guilty yesterday in the criminal court to having broken into a machine shop at Sixth and Bank streets.

"I didn't break into that place to rob," said Davis. "I was merely looking for a place to sleep.

"I am a trained machinist. Ten years ago I was earning $2,000 a year, now I am broke, without a job and blacklisted by the railroads. I have been foreman of machine shops in this city and railroad shops in other places.

"Ten years ago I began drinking. This is my end."

Judge Latshaw did not sentence Davis. He said after the trial that he would keep the prisoner in jail for three or four months, until he got the whisky out of his blood, then parole him. Davis pleaded guilty to a penitentiary charge.

Labels: alcohol, Bank street, criminal court, Judge Latshaw, Sixth street

November 18, 1909

MOTHERLY HEART STILLED

WHEN "PEGGY" HEALY DIED.

AGED WEST BOTTOMS SQUATTER SPENT

MUCH OF HER LIFE IN WORK FOR

OTHERS.

A motherly old heart was stilled last night when Margaret Healy died in St. Joseph's hospital. She was a charity patient and left no money with which to bury herself. But in life that thought never troubled her.

"I always have friends," she used to say. "Sure, haven't I always been friendly?"

And she had been. Her friendship for all that was human was shown in her adoption of a parentless family of boys and raising the two youngest from her scanty earnings as charwoman and washwoman. It was shown, too, in her working half the night doing washing and household work for neighbors, when the mothers of families were ill, in the many acts of kindness when the stork visited neighbors or when death crossed their thresholds.

A simple, artless old woman she was, who passed her last days in the companionship of a woman who befriended her and gave her shelter. No one who knew her ever heard her moan at fate. She was as full of laughter at 75 years of age as many women in their teens, with the same keen enjoyment of life and interest in the small things of the town and her neighborhood.

Mrs. Healy was about 78 years old. She came to Kansas City several years after the war. She was twice married. Her second husband, John Healy died a year after their marriage. Never in her life had the income of her family been more than $10 a week, but she saw only rosy prisms. Her first husband was a laborer. So was the second. But there always was a bit of meat and bread for the hungry to be found in the family larder and a bit of heart left for the weak and sometimes the undeserving.

Until the flood of 1903, Mrs. Healy was a "squatter" in a shell of a home near the Loose-Wiles factory at Eighth and Santa Fe streets.

She and Mr. Healy were married in the Church of the Annunciation by Father Dalton. They lived in several places in the West Bottoms. Years after his death, Mrs. Healy became one of the great colony of "squatters," whose huts were scattered on unused ground from the Armour packing plant to the West bluffs. Mrs. Healy was known from one end of the bottoms to the other.

Mrs. Healy's home in the West bottoms was destroyed in the flood of 1903. She was forced to leave and found a home with Mrs. Ellen Hughes, a widow, at 630 Bank street, a mere lane down upon which the rear of huge factory buildings on Broadway frown. She lived with Mrs. Hughes until seven weeks ago, when Mrs. Hughes found her in her room unconscious and ill. She was taken to St. Joseph's hospital.

"Mrs. Healy was very happy here," Mrs. Hughes said last night. "We two lone women became great chums. She was great company. We used to go to 5 o'clock mass Sundays and sometimes we would walk up the hill again to the chapel at St. Joseph for high mass. I went to call her one Sunday and she didn't answer. Her door was locked, but she had left the window open. I crawled in and found her. She had fallen in a wood box.

"All the Irish knew Mrs. Healy; the McGowans, the Burnetts, the Moores, the Walshes, the Pendergasts, all of them. She'll never lack decent burying. From the time she came into my house dripping to the arms with flood water, she never lacked friends and I know she won't lack them now."

In younger days, Mrs. Healy was called "Peggy," a nickname usually given only to Irish girls of vivacious temperament. She looked on her deathbed little like that stout, buxom "Peggy" Healy that the West Bottoms knew at St. Joseph's, but the still, warn face wears the calm of good deeds done. She will rest in Mount St. Mary's cemetery at the side of her adopted son, George Traynor. The funeral arrangements are still to be made.

Labels: Bank street, churches, death, flood, hospitals, ministers, Seniors, West bottoms, women