Trains

Trains played important roles in intra- and inter-county transportation.  Their accounts, such as these from March 12, 1926, often raised more question than provided answers.

MOTORMAN RUN OVER AND KILLED

A motorman on a train was thrown to the tracks and run over when his train “wrecked.”

MAN HURT IN LEAP FROM TRAIN, DIES

T.B. Branham died in the Jenkins hospital after he had jumped from a moving train on February 28.  No reason was given for the jump.

Coal Mining Deaths

Accidental deaths seemed all too common, judging from their frequency of appearance in The Pike County News, and it is not surprising that many of them were associated with coal mining.  These tragedies usually did not involve numerous fatalities, typically one or two men.  The phrase “slate fall” was frequently used in the description.  These two reports were from August 13 and November 25, 1926: 

POND CREEK MINER IS KILLED BY SLATE FALL

Miner Levi Hall was killed in a slate fall in the Fordson Mine at Hardy, Kentucky.

YOUNG MINER KILLED FRIDAY IN SLATE FALL

“Johnny Akers, 28, was killed instantly last Friday afternoon by a slate fall while working in the mines of the Ford Elkhorn Coal Company at Robinson Creek.”

Other coal mine incidents usually involved circumstances not encountered today, such as this one from July 23, 1926.  It’s an open question how a miner would have to opportunity to take a nap, and why it would be done in such a dangerous place:

FATAL ACCIDENT IN HENRY CLAY MINES

A 21 year old miner fell asleep too close to mine car track, and was struck and killed.

This accident report on August 13, 1926 indicates safety did not play an important part in the mines.  The News treated the event as just another mining accident.

MOTORMAN KILLED BY A LIVE WIRE IN MINE

W. B. Caldwell, 26, a motorman at Elkhorn Coal Company, was electrocuted walking into a mine when his head hit a live wire.

Diseases in Early 20th Century America

A fascinating article appeared August 20, 1926, entitled, REVIEWS PROGRESS OF WAR ON DISEASE.  This article provides information from the U.S. Public Health Service for 1924 on disease statistics for the country, and some comparisons to previous years.  It stated progress was significant in many diseases, while some were holding steady and some were actually increasing. 

The leading cause of death today for men and women is heart disease, but it may seem odd that the leading cause of death in 1924 for men and women was also heart disease. 

Tuberculosis was a significant killer.  Reports for 1924 were available from only 35 states at the time of the article, and they totaled over 78,000 deaths.  Extrapolation to the rest of the country would show a total of 112,000.  However, if the TB death rate from 1900 were applied to 1924, the total would have been 233,000.

Based on data supplied from the same 35 states, there were 10,700 deaths from diphtheria.  Again, extrapolating from 1900 rates would have produced nearly 50,000 deaths.

Although no numbers were provided, it says that whooping cough still kills thousands of infants and children.

Typhoid

A reading of the Pike County News over a period of time will leave the reader with the impression that the major disease problem was typhoid.  Typhoid is an illness caused by a bacteria found in human waste.  The disease is spread when the bacteria enter food or drinking water and are consumed.  Today, typhoid is found almost always in countries outside the developed world and is usually treated successfully by antibiotics.  Unfortunately, antibiotics were not developed until the late 1920s.  So it was not rare to see a short article like that on March 21, 1924, which declared that Pike County was in the midst of a typhoid outbreak.  On November 24, 1924, the paper reported that a family of 12 had been reduced to three in a few weeks due to typhoid.  May 21, 1926 had this report in the Jonancy community news:

JONANCY NEWS

“Floyd Hall, the little son of Mrs. W. T. Hall, who has been suffering with hip and shoulder trouble ever since his attack of typhoid fever last October, went to Pikeville last Friday to consult a doctor and to get relief if possible.  The trouble has become quite serious.”

This statement appeared November 12, 1926:

MOTHER DIES OF TYPHOID; 4 ARE ILL

A mother and four of her children were brought to the hospital suffering from typhoid fever.  Mrs. Merlie Branham of Lookout died, and the four children are not expected to live.

War and Disease

The July 4, 1919 edition of the Pike County New presented a box on the front page above the fold just below the masthead, with the title, Our Heroes – Killed, Wounded, Captured.  These were Pike County soldiers serving with U.S. forces in World War I:

OUR HEROES --- KILLED, WOUNDED, CAPTURED

“Below is given a partial list of our noble boys who were killed in action, died of disease and wounded in the recent war.” 

Counts of the named soldiers by cause of death produced these totals: Died in service: 30 – 16 killed in action or died from wounds; 14 died of disease; Wounded: 83; Captured - 1

The population of Pike County in 1920 was under 50,000, so to lose 30 men in a relatively short period was a great sacrifice.  However by comparison, if the percentage of soldiers to perish was the same as that of the entire country in the Civil War, over 800 men from Pike County would have died.

The years 1916 through 1920 were troubled times for this world.  There was, of course, the ruinous World War I, which multiple sources claim was the first American war in which more soldiers died from combat than disease.  That may be true, but I believe it was due to the achieved proficiency of killing more than advancements in the field of medicine.  For example, Britain lost over 20,000 men in one day - July 1, 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.  Aircraft were first used in this war, and the damage from the bombs dropped from them could be horrific.  But something else was going on in the world that would kill more people globally than all wars combined:  the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

Heart disease has been the biggest killer of American men and women every year since 1910, with the exception of 1918-1920 when influenza took over.  Notice above that almost half of the WWI Pike Co. soldier deaths were due to disease.  At Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville, Ky., which provided training for soldiers from all over the country, 1500 soldiers died of the flu pandemic, which ironically was about twice the number of Kentuckians who died in combat.