17 May 1883
Page 1
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This newspaper page contains 9 articles. Subscribers can read the full text of each article.
Newspaper
Oxford Eagle
Location
Oxford, Mississippi, United States of America
Date
May 17, 1883
Page
1
A long itemized bulletin lists a North Chicago steel mill restart for near 2,000 jobs, a Cedar Rapids depot fire, completion of a 50 mile Western Pacific extension, multiple deaths from mills, accidents, and fires, arrests, court actions, and disasters across the U.S. and Ireland with numerous injuries and fatalities.
Five o clock on the evening of the 13th a destructive cyclone struck Kanxox City Missouri from the southwest carving a path about a block wide through the city. Property worth about 200000 was destroyed. Three persons were killed outright and about fifteen wounded.
President Arthur slightly amends and signs new civil service rules governing appointments. Summary outlines twenty two key directions: prohibit coercion in civil service politics, require open competitive exams, and set age and health requirements for postal customs and other classified services. Six month probation and potential future rules on promotion reform noted.
In a three story brick tenement at Clark and Eighteenth a fire killed two young boys ages three and two. Their mother Mrs William Taylor had left them briefly on an errand and returned to find them suffocated by smoke with some burns on the elder child. A nearby aged man narrowly escaped as residents helped drag him from a room. The cause remains unknown though it is suspected the boys may have ignited watches while unattended.
Early Saturday a blaze at a building owned by Matthew Larkin Jr on Meadow and Chambers streets trapped Moses Rosenburg’s wife and four step-children on the upper floors. The wife and two children jumped to safety while Rosenburg allegedly refused to rescue the remaining two, who perished as flames consumed the home. The nearby Costello grocery and several dwelling units were destroyed. Fire officials arrived as the fire raged and a new rail rule was announced restricting baggage car loads to under 250 pounds effective June 1.
A massive blaze engulfed an oil works near the river as the entire fire department fought the flames. Eleven tanks full or partially filled with oil, two brick storehouses, six barges, a steam dredging machine and extensive plant were destroyed. Several workers are missing, and the total loss is estimated at about $1,500,000 with property damage around $1.5 million.
The Agricultural Department reports spring and winter wheat runs low with frosts and a backward season. Minnesota Michigan Ohio Illinois show declines while California Oregon improve. Overall winter wheat down 77 million bushels with a similar drop in spring wheat. News mentions stock-jobbing claims and a Saint Louis hospital overdose error.
The piece threads scattered items including archival mentions of Rev. James Freeman Smee of Boston, judges in Delaware, Horace Greeley’s long editorship, Mrs. Susan Boylston Treadway’s White House ties, a London designed pig sculpture, and various vocalists described with extreme caution about exposure. It reads as a collage of biographical notes and social curiosities from a late 19th century newspaper.
A collage of lighthearted vignettes and jokes from the era, including a pickpocket joke, a groaner about Jove letters and mail, a cartoonish doggerel about a ship without a sail, and humorous exchanges about trains, pigs, rope around a horse thief, a pupil's multiplication quip, misattributed poems, Western mining banter, a child's prayer about a father’s clothes, a shoe peg dealer joke, and a judge interrogating a rooster theft claim.
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