Quincy, MA Train Wreck, Aug 1890

DEAD BY DOZENS.

THE GRIM TERROR REAPS A GHASTLY HARVEST.

FRIGHTFUL DISASTER ON THE RAIL.

SIXTEEN SOULS HURRIED TO ETERNITY AND MORE THAN A SCORE OF PEOPLE SCALDED AND MUTILATED.

Boston, Aug. 20. -- The Cape Cod and Woods' Hole train on the Old Colony railway was wrecked at Quincy, just the tother side of the President's bridge at 1 p.m. yesterday. The disaster was a frightful one, resulting in the death of about twenty persons and the wounding of many others, some of whom are terribly scalded or mutilated. The train was express to Brockton, and from Brockton express to Boston. It left Brockton at 10:40, going at say thirty miles an hour. Just this side of President's bridge (so called because the homestead of President John Quincy Adams is close by) the engineer whistled to "down brakes." The train began to shake as if shivered by the shock of an earthquake. Then came a crash, the engine left the track, turned itself alongside the rails, while the train slid along, leaving the engine about midway of the train opposite the first passenger car from the smoker. In this car most all the harm was done.

In the Fatal Fourth Car.
This fourth car collided with the engine, and was instantly filled with escaping steam. The ill-fated passenger car was completely wrecked. It contained seventy-five passengers -- men, women and children. The windows on the east side were all closed, thereby preventing the steam from escaping. The scenes about the car were of the wildest description. Strong-hearted men fainted as the steamed bodies of a dozen women and children were being taken from the ruins. Some of the occupants, gifted with presence of mind, broke through windows and escaped with slight wounds. Where the engine and the car collided were several women and children steamed to death, while some were badly mangled.
WILLIAM FENNELLY, a carpenter, was in the fourth car. He said: "Our car swept like lightning right on the broken engine and was forced on top of it with a terrific shock. We seemed snatched right up from the earth fifty feet in the air. When the car descended on the engine it had whirled over and wounded passengers were thrown ruthlessly about. As the car struck on its side solidly, the bottom of it was torn away, and thus an opportunity was given us to get out. That was the only thing that saved my life and those of forty or fifty other passengers. Thirty seconds after the car struck I would have given $1,000 for a drink of any kind from whisky to water. I thought I should suffocate.
The death-dealing steam entered the car in dense clouds from the locomotive beneath us, filling every crevice and almost suffocated those whom it did not burn to death."
"Ten women were gasping about me as I tried to shriek and shout, and as they became weaker and weaker as the steam filled their lungs I could see them push their hands or feet through the torn windows, trying in vain to get a breath of fresh air. I don't know how many I saw die before me. I saw them in the car crying out for help, and I did all I could. I saw the flesh burned from men and women as that cursed steam enveloped them, and I saw men groaning and shrieking in their death struggles as the scalding fumes became hotter and denser. I hardly know how I escaped."

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