Luke, Herbert
Death
1891-03-05
(aged 11 years)
Mineral Point, Wisconsin
Cause of Death
Trauma due to accident
Birth
1880
Obituary
Boy Crushed to Death
Herbert Luke, aged about 11 years, son of Mrs Carrie Luke, an esteemed widow resident of this city, was killed in the elevator, ast the Mineral Point Woolen Mills Thursday afternoon, the 5th inst. The boy had carried dinner to Mr. Sherman, engineer at the mill, who is a boarder of Mrs. Luke. After eating his dinner, Mr. Sherman told the boy he had better return home, not wanting him to remain about the mill, and he went out of the building through the engine room door. But he must have reentered by some other way, as he was seen in and about other parts of the building during the afternoon. Discovery of the accident, about 5 o’clock, came through the slipping of a belt and the interruption of operating machinery, which led one of the employes (sic) on the third floor to open the door of the elevator shaft. There the boy was found, held between the elevator platform and the top of the door casing in the shaft. He was taken out at once. His pulses were felt to throb a few times and then ceased forever. Death must have been almost instantaneous, as the interruption of operating machinery occasioned by the clogging of the elevator was but a moment before the shaft door was opened.
The theory of the mill men is that the boy must have got into the elevator on one of the lower floors and pulled the rope that operated it. That finding himself being carried to the top of the shaft he attempted to open the door at the third floor and failing was caught between the moving elevator platform and the door sill, as described. Some of his ribs were broken and the body flattened considerably but there was no mutilation.
The accident is a terrible blow to the widowed mother with whom every parent heart beats in pained sympathy.
The family gratefully acknowledge the kindness of many friends in this great sorrow. Mineral Point Tribune March 3, 1896