History's A Disaster
Bloody history and bloodier crimes. Andrew takes a weekly look at all things bloody. From natural disasters to man made atrocities
History's A Disaster
The Fall Of The Pemberton Mill
The thunderous crash of collapsing floors, desperate screams rising from beneath rubble, and the horrifying spread of flames that turned rescue into tragedy – these are the sounds and sights of the Pemberton Mill Collapse, one of America's deadliest industrial disasters that has somehow faded from our collective memory.
Against the backdrop of the booming American Industrial Revolution, the Pemberton textile mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts stood as a monument to progress and profit. But on January 10, 1860, as workers toiled in the five-story building, the rearrangement of heavy machinery on the upper floors triggered a catastrophic structural failure. Without warning, the entire building pancaked down upon itself, trapping hundreds of workers beneath tons of brick, timber, and machinery.
What followed was both heroic and heartbreaking. Over 2,000 volunteers worked through the night, desperately digging through debris to reach survivors. For hours, they made progress, pulling the injured and dead from the wreckage. Then, around midnight, a rescue lantern fell and shattered, igniting cotton scraps and pools of machine oil. The fire spread rapidly through the rubble, turning the disaster site into an inferno. Many survivors who had communicated with rescuers just moments earlier perished in the flames, their voices silenced forever.
The final toll would reach approximately 145 dead and 166 injured – victims of an era when profit margins outweighed human safety and industrial regulations were virtually non-existent. The subsequent investigation revealed faulty cast iron pillars, substandard materials, and flawed engineering, yet no one was ever held criminally responsible. The Pemberton Mill disaster stands as a stark reminder of the human cost of unchecked industrialization and the long struggle for workplace safety that would follow.
Join us as we unearth this forgotten tragedy and honor those whose lives were sacrificed on the altar of industrial progress. Their story deserves to be remembered not just as a historical footnote, but as a crucial lesson about the value of human life in our continuing quest for economic advancement.
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Special thank you to Lunarfall Audio for producing and doing all the heavy lifting on audio editing since April 13, 2025, the Murder of Christopher Meyer episode https://lunarfallaudio.com/
By the late 19th century, the American Industrial Revolution was in full swing. The country was rapidly transitioning from an agricultural society to an industrialized nation. Driven by thoughts of profits and the lack of regulations, the revolution would be far from bloodless. Safety practices were seriously lacking, if they even existed at all. Child labor laws Not a thing. Death tolls would reach an annual high, estimated at 35,000 from just industrial accidents. One of the worst accidents happened in Lawrence, massachusetts, at the Pemberton Mill Tragedy struck that would claim the lives of over 100 employees in 1860. So what happened? I'm Andrew and this is History's A Disaster. Tonight we are taking a look into the Pemberton Mill Collapse of 1860 in Lawrence, massachusetts, and tonight's episode is brought to you by Larry Berry's Cherry Shake Shack. If you got a hankering for a cherry shake, then come on down to Larry Berry's Cherry Shake Shack For a shake. So cool it'll make a fire scene.
Speaker 1:Chilly 1860 started out. Chilly Snow filled the streets of Lawrence, massachusetts. Teams of men and their horses worked to clear the streets so the hundreds of mill workers could make their way more easily to the five mills just over the bridge across the North Canal. Day in and day out, monday through Saturday, they stomped across the bridge, kicking off the snow from their boots before dawn and making their way back home hours after dusk. Most of them, making their way to the Pemberton Mill, lived just across the canal in a huge boarding house.
Speaker 1:Things were looking up, business was booming and the mill was extremely busy. The economy was recovering from the panic of 1857 that threw the nation into a depression. They were looking forward to another record-setting year and plenty of income for the mill owners. Anyways, 1859 had been a record-setting year for the mills in the area, and these mills were some of the biggest in the world. While the mills were generating plenty of income, the workers not so much. Income, the workers not so much. They got paid once a month and some were barely squeaking by, so poverty was really kicking a few of them in the ass, with some newly arrived families living eight to an apartment with a single bed. They'd have to work a whole month before they would see any kind of income from the mills, and what they did make wasn't much. New employees, mostly children, earned $3 a week, and some of the top earners, mostly men, since the wage gap between men and women was in full effect, was around $50 a month, which is roughly the equivalent of just under $2,000 today, and this was fairly typical of the time. Mill owners were pushing for more profits. The nation as a whole was pushing for more industrialization and was starting to dominate the textile markets on a global scale.
Speaker 1:The morning of Tuesday, january 10th started out like any other, with the workers stomping through the slushy snow and over the bridge to work. Before dawn the weather was turning milder than the previous week, bringing about melting snow. Both owners, george Howell and David Nevins, were touring the factory. This was a common occurrence and a point of pride that they stopped in often to visit the mill. At least once a week they were there. The mill was at full production and they were looking to expand operations to the sixth floor attic. During his morning rounds, david Nevins got to watch as machines on the fourth floor were being moved.
Speaker 1:During the relocation of the machines, no one gave a thought to the weight of the machines and there was even some difference in opinions on what the machines weighed. There was roughly 40 card frames weighing roughly a thousand pounds apiece and eight fly frames which some assumed weighed about 3,500 pounds apiece, although later estimates put them at over 6,000. Captain Bigelow, the architect and engineer who originally designed the mill, reasoned since it was safe enough when the machines were put in, then them moving them should cause no harm to the building, because you know, physics were different in the 19th century and you didn't have to worry about things like oh I don't know, proper weight distribution. Just stack it all up in one corner, it'll be fine. All this moving around made a few of the people on the third floor a bit nervous, to say the least. All the banging and pounding going on during the move caused the whole building to shake and rattle. As 4.30 approached, the light coming in from the large windows was growing dim. Asa crew of men went about lighting the gas lamps throughout the mill so they could keep working on into the evening. They didn't get very far.
Speaker 1:Less than five minutes after the men on the fourth floor quit moving equipment, at roughly 4.47, a crash was heard on the fourth floor, followed by a louder explosion as the mill began falling in on itself, one floor falling down on the next and the next. A wall dropped into the courtyard as dust was launched into the air and less than a minute the Pemberton Mill had fallen. The sound was heard across Lawrence, followed by the screaming. The dust was mistaken for smoke and the fire department was quickly on the way, as well as most of the townsfolk, to see what happened. Everyone was drawn in by the strange noise of the collapse. The first on scene were horrified at the sight. They expected a fire and found nothing but rubble, rubble and the screams of the hundreds of workers trapped beneath it. Witnesses across the street would later describe the building as swaying before the collapse started on the south end of the fourth floor, where the building began to fall in on itself. The floors dropped one by one, nearly unbroken, on top of the next one down. Mill workers lived and died by where they stood. As the mill collapsed, some tried to jump out nearby windows. Others took refuge under nearby looms and machinery. The arches of the looms held back the weight of the falling timbers and machinery, creating a safe haven for those lucky enough to be close by. Some of those who remained unharmed or lightly injured managed to dig their way out of the rubble. Others would remain trapped until help could arrive, and it wouldn't take long for that help to come.
Speaker 1:Over the next few hours, over 2,000 people turned up to help in the rescue, and their task was daunting. They had to clear out heavy machinery, large timbers and sections of brickwork and mountains of rubble to dig through. While they had tons of help, they had no leadership. They were disorganized and going about it all willy-nilly, making the effort not nearly as effective as it could have been. By 5.30 pm the darkness was growing, so bonfires were lit around the buildings so the rescuers could see what they were doing and continue working throughout the night. They worked all through the night clearing rubble, tearing apart equipment to rescue survivors, removing the wounded and the dead from the rubble. They used ropes and pulleys to move wreckage aside. Food and coffee was lowered to trap survivors to help them make it through the night.
Speaker 1:Six hours after the collapse, the hundreds of volunteers were working their way slowly through the debris. With time and effort a body, living or dead, was pulled out and sent to City Hall. It was dark and they were having to work by firelight or by the light of lanterns. Mr Saunders, the mayor, made sure that kerosene oil lanterns were swapped out for sperm oil lanterns, which were less likely to cause a fire. It was already something of a miracle that the gas lamps throughout the mill had not started a fire and they did not want to take any more chances in an area covered in highly flammable material, from the dry cotton to the machines that had leaked oil all over them. They had spread and covered the fallen timbers.
Speaker 1:Even with their precautions, the inevitable happened A lantern being lowered through the rubble to attract a group of survivors fell and broke. The flame from the broken lantern quickly jumped the nearby cotton and from from there it was unstoppable, jumping from scraps of cotton to the pools of spilled oil on the floor, to the dry timbers in the wreckage. The fire raced through the rubble. The once safe spaces, all the nooks and crannies people hid in to escape the collapse, became flues for the fire, letting in air and pushing the fire forward. Rescuers were pushed back by the blazing wall of flames. Survivors, just feet from rescue, were lost to the flames.
Speaker 1:As fire burnt through the rubble, firefighters already on hand abandoned the dig and raced to retrieve their equipment where they had left it. Soon streams of water from various hydrants poured onto the fallen mill, to little effect. The rubble worked against their efforts. The way the floors fell and laid at odd angles redirected most of the water away from the flames. More streams of water started pouring in, but the fire raged unchecked, spreading further and further through the debris. More rescuers were driven back by the flames, forced to abandon the trapped survivors below.
Speaker 1:By midnight a second wall had fallen the west wall of the main mill, the northern half that ran from the bathroom tower to join with the wing jutting to the west. This wall carried tons of bricks onto the Blue House and the freight cars on the railroad siding nearest to the Washington Mills. The bathroom remained standing until later that Wednesday. The force of the falling wall was so strong it crushed several rail cars that had brought cotton to the mill. In a short time they would catch fire and eventually be destroyed. By 1230, the last living survivors were pulled from the wreckage.
Speaker 1:City Hall was turned into both a temporary hospital and a morgue. The severely injured and unrecognizable dead were brought into different rooms of the city hall. One corner of the great room was dubbed the dead room and quickly filled with the broken and mangled corpses pulled out of the wreck. More than 50 doctors from Lawrence and the surrounding communities were on hand to help with what they knew would be a growing number of casualties. Women from the area stepped up to help tend to the injured and dying.
Speaker 1:The main hall was turned into a hospital. Donated mattresses, blankets and sheets were placed in rows along three of the walls and by 1230 Wednesday morning more than 50 wounded were put there. Other local gifts arrived from nearby druggists and homeowners, including bandages, cordials and medicines. Within hours, other donated goods were coming in from all over the region. The owners of the steamer Minimon Sanford sent 125 sheets and a supply of lint. And if you're thinking dryer lint, like I was, well, you're not too far off. Lint in 1860 was a soft, fuzzy material used as an absorbent padding, mostly used in treating wounds.
Speaker 1:Cops guarded the door of the temporary hospital as the crowds outside got bigger and bigger. Spectators were coming in by the train loads. Wednesday saw over 4,000 come from nearby Lowell alone, and more would continue to pour in over the next few days. The city of Lawrence would be a giant mass of humanity by the week's end. Everyone wanted to help out or see the site of the disaster. It's like a train wreck. Who can resist looking? When the streets and sidewalks were filled, people stood in the ice-covered canal to watch the smoke still pouring from the mill.
Speaker 1:By Wednesday afternoon, the extent of the damages were being made clear. Still standing were the river building, repair shed and cotton house. The river building, also known as the picker and die house, had undamaged turbines within it. 2,000 bales of cotton valued at $100,000, had been untouched in the cotton house. $100,000 had been untouched in the cotton house, which would help make up for at least some of the companies lost when B&M freight cars loaded with undelivered cotton were destroyed by fire. And of course there was more bad news, though. Fire had destroyed many of the administrative and archival records.
Speaker 1:When the building collapsed, the paymaster and clerk had been working on the December payroll. Clerk Henry Newhall had left the envelopes and list of employees in his desk. As he fled the building, the only thing left was to hope this sturdy company safe, which would hopefully be recovered, would contain an old payroll. The newest intact list of employees anyone could remember existing was over five months old, dating all the way back to August 1859. While not great and far from being accurate enough to date, it would at least make a good starting point for a new payroll to pay out what employees had been owed. By now Pemberton managers had taken control of the site, derricks were brought in to lift heavy machinery Poor Derrick. Anyways, a hundred men were hauling rubbish away. The growing crowd stood out in a second night watching the few volunteers fresh to the efforts as they slowly lifted charred material in their grim search.
Speaker 1:Thursday, dr Lamb, the county coroner, called together jurors to start an inquest into what caused the mill to collapse. Outside, the rain had turned to snow as firefighters still poured water down into the mass of rubble, and what was now largely a massive cleanup operation continued to clear out the wreckage. The company's safe was found and opened that afternoon. They found some paperwork to point them in the right direction for compiling a new payroll, but it was way far from complete. The biggest find in the safe, though, was the original architectural plans for the mill, which were quickly turned over to the coroner's inquest. Neighboring mills were forced to shut down as either workers refused to return to work from fear of another mill collapse or shut down completely.
Speaker 1:After incidents which led to people fleeing in fear of a collapse, people that had been reported as missing came forward to let the mayor know they were okay and be removed from the missing list. A mass funeral was held for the bodies and partial remains of nine unidentified dead, who were placed into two boxes and the receiving tombs of the city cemetery. The city would be filled with the shrieks and cries of mourning for days. By Saturday some semblance of normalcy had returned. All but one mill had reopened. A road had been cleared through the rubble to allow travel through the area. The fire was contained, except for burning embers deep within that would flare up with intense heat when exposed to the air With an increase in the workforce.
Speaker 1:13 more bodies were found in the rubble. Only six would be identified immediately. Black dust from the badly charred bodies covered everything. The dead room floor was pitch black from all the ash Churches and cemetery workers prepared for the coming onslaught of funerals. Coffin makers worked tirelessly to meet the demands for coffins and boxes for unidentified remains. Most of the crowds started to thin out as onlookers returned home and families came forth to claim their dead and wounded. And families came forth to claim their dead and wounded.
Speaker 1:As night fell, a call to cease the dig was made. They were afraid if they kept going in the dark bodies would be unnecessarily mutilated in the attempt to retrieve them in the dark. Sunday, most of the churches in town were filled. Side altars were filled with candles covered in black in memoriam of the victims. The ruins had cooled sufficiently by Sunday afternoon and workers were able to scour the main building and pulled out three more bodies from the rubble. On Monday, the man in charge of clearing the wreckage, th Dolliver, claimed no more bodies were to be found and that prediction wouldn't last long. At 8 pm, workers removing debris at the Blue House came upon one of the final bodies to be found.
Speaker 1:The days following the collapse, newspapers around the nation ran sensationalized headlines proclaiming hundreds dead in the fire. As they raced to sell more papers than their competitors, the 19th century version of clickbait sold a lot of papers. Lawrence was still counting and trying to identify the wounded and dead, so nobody had a fucking clue how many people were actually dead. They were just making shit up, which sounds about right. By 6 pm Wednesday night, the count was up to 50 dead and counting. A group was sent out to canvas the city and take up a census. By Sunday the count was up to 117 dead, 89 missing and 119 seriously injured.
Speaker 1:Financial support was pouring into Lawrence. Boston kicked it off by sending $2,000 on Wednesday and another $3,000 the following day. That first Sunday after the collapse, the city. Clergy's fun drive for the poor, originally meant for something else, was redirected to Pemberton Mills victims. Grace Episcopal Church alone raised a thousand dollars. Tons of gifts were being arranged by categories and distributed from City Hall.
Speaker 1:Two weeks after the fall of the mill a newspaper recorded the day's count as hundreds of outside garments, undergarments, articles of bedding and bottles of liniment. Former employees and surviving relatives and friends were informed early in the week that management had compiled a final payroll and set up a distribution schedule. Wages would be given to cover 38 workdays from December 1st to January 10th. This would be paid out over a three-day period in town. After digging through available records and reports, based on what the people canvassing the town came up with 930 pay envelopes were prepared.
Speaker 1:At 9 30 am on Wednesday Paymaster Clark faced the line of former employees and of course there had to be at least one person trying to profit off the death of another. The company notice had said the money due to those who were killed would be paid to the relatives. So a woman showed up and claimed to be Ellen Roach. Ellen had at first been reported killed but was then claimed to be found among the uninjured because a relative who came for the sum due. Ellen, upon the payroll of the mill, called herself by her name and was supposed to be the same person. Ellen had been buried in Dorchester, massachusetts, and her next of kin had been given $75 as a death benefit. There's no record of punishment for the woman, nor what happened to the $10.93 that was stolen. So, basically, this woman claimed to be somebody she wasn't and made off with 11 bucks. A total of just over $22,000 in payroll had been paid out over the three days.
Speaker 1:As a coroner of Essex County since 1854, william Lamb had wasted no time in ordering an inquest into the deaths at the mill. He convened a jury on Thursday, january 12th, less than 40 hours after the building's collapse. At a time when women were not permitted to provide civic services, the jury appeared otherwise to generally represent the community. Five of the jurors worked in the building trades, most likely recruited for the jury due to their expertise and knowledge. The foreman, william Wright, who was the service chief interrogator of witnesses, was an attorney and an up-and-comer in Massachusetts North Shore politics. The inquest clerk was Caleb Saunders, the mayor's brother. The younger Saunders maintained a transcript of the hearing, which was supposed to be over 40 pages long. However, the only surviving record of the hearing comes from the newspapers.
Speaker 1:By the end of the inquest, charles H Bigelow, the architect and engineer behind the building, was found at fault due to insufficient testing and defects in the hollow cast iron pillars supporting the mill's floor. There was also some concerns over only using two rows of pillars and not three, along with substandard mortar and supports being used on the walls of the mill. The verdict concluded that these failures, along with insufficient testing and design flaws, led to the collapse, and also that the foundry manager, albert Fuller, was also to blame for the faulty cast iron pillars. The jury's findings have been criticized in the following years for not explaining why a faulty pillar broke in and, in domino fashion, all 270 cast iron columns went down, taking with them the mammoth building they helped hold upright. The reasoning generally held that the factory had stood more than six years without failing, poorly, cast columns or not.
Speaker 1:Several investigations have included the possibility that an unexplained event created a condition that set off the collapse of the Pemberton's weight-bearing pillars. Machine breakage and vibration have been suggested, but what caused the fall is as much a mystery today as it was back in 1860. Now I have a little bit of an issue with this. They know from eyewitness accounts. The collapse started on the fourth floor, the same floor they were moving heavy machinery about without much of a care as the proper weight distribution. Hell, they couldn't even reach a general consensus on the right weight of some of the machines.
Speaker 1:It seems pretty obvious to my non-engineering brain that they overloaded one of the pillars supporting the fourth floor. When that pillar collapsed, it would have caused a domino effect spreading out in three directions Going upwards, the loss of the fourth floor would have meant the fifth and sixth floor were no longer supported, so those sections of the flooring would have started to drop. Going outwards along the fourth floor, the loss of one pillar would have put a greater strain on the other pillars supporting the floor. That would now have sections of the fifth and sixth floor coming down on it and adding more weight to the pillars, causing them to collapse. And finally going downwards, when the first part of the fourth floor fell, its weight would have slammed down on the third floor, causing the pillars to collapse and dominoing from there as the defective pillars were being tasked with supporting more and more weight until they inevitably failed and the entire building fell.
Speaker 1:But that's just my interpretation, but what the fuck do I know? There would be no criminal charges filed and no one would end up being held accountable for all the deaths and injuries caused in the collapse. For all the deaths and injuries caused in the collapse. The original mill would never be reopened and officially closed down in March, after the owners sold off everything they could. Within a year of the collapse, nevins bought out Howe and had a new mill constructed on top of the original foundation, a mill that is still standing over 100 years later.
Speaker 1:While some lawmakers would try to pass legislation to push for better safety standards, nothing would ever come of it. It would take more deaths and more disasters going into the early 20th century before laws regarding worker safety and better working conditions would be passed. Safety and better working conditions would be passed, and that was the fall of the Pemberton Mill. Thanks for listening and if you liked the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your app of choice and reach out to the show at historiesanddisaster at gmailcom with questions, comments or suggestions, as well as following the show on social media like Facebook or Instagram and a few others TikTok, youtube, whatever and share the episode. Your friends will love it. Take care of yourself out there, chase that dream. Live for today, because tomorrow is never guaranteed. Thanks and goodbye.