Farmer is Seriously Injured on Rushville Line.

Fred W. Claffey, 45 years old, driving near New Palestine, Ind., was thrown from a covered farm wagon five miles out on the Rushville division of the Indianapolis & Cincinnati line at 7:15 o’clock last night when an inbound express car, No. 403, struck the horse attached to the wagon and instantly killed the animal. Claffey sustained injuries to the right leg which necessitated amputation last night at St. Vincent’s Hospital after he was brought to Indianapolis by the crew of the express car.

According to the crew of the Rushville car, Motorman Clyde Clarkson, 817 East Twenty-third street, and Conductor Harry Stricker, Rushville, the car was going at the rate of twenty miles an hour at the time it struck Claffey’s rig. Motorman Clarkson said last night that he whistled for the road on which Claffey was driving, and before he reached the crossing whistled again for a curve just the other side of the road. Clarkson said the car was but ten feet away from the wagon when he saw it and that the car struck the vehicle full force.

The shock as the car struck the body of the horse, standing partly on the track, bent and broke the big headlight of the express. Pieces of flying glass from a front window, broken by the impact, sailed over the head of Conductor Stricker, who was sitting on the right side of the car, near the front windows. It was miraculous, according to the crew that Claffey was not killed instantly.

The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, IN 22 Sept 1910
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Transcribed by Loraine Jordan. Thank you, Loraine!