The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1907-02-19
MANY PERSONS DEAD
IN HARLEM WRECK
New Electric Train of New York
Central Jumps Track.
NEARLY ALL WOMEN KILLED
Train Running at High Speed Had
Just Rounded Curve When the
Rear Coach Snapped Oh-Dead
and Injured Ground to Pieces.

just Rounded Curve When the
Rear Coach Snapped Oh-Dead
and Injured Ground to Pieces.
New York City.-An electric SUI
burban train on the Harlem division
of the New York Central, known as
the Brewster local, which left the
Grand Central Station at G.13 al
night, jumped the track just above
the Bedford Park station in the
Bronx. Four accommodation coaches,
in which were 240 passengers, were
hurled down an embankment, turn
ing over and over.
OF the passengers killed nearly all
were women. OF the others in the
car few If any escaped injury.
Most of the passengers were New
York business men who live at White
Plains, Valhalla, Mount Kisco, Chap
paqua and other points along the
Harlem division and women return
ing from the city.
The train, which was made up of
two electric engines, combination
baggage and smoking car and four
wooden passenger cars, was sched-
uled to run as an express to White
Plains and as a local from there to
Brewster.
The train was in charge of Motor
man Edward r. Rogers and his as
sistant George A. Jacobs. The con-
ductor was L. w. Hopkins.
Rogers, who lives in Wakefield,
was arrested and locked up in the
Bronx Park station. His assistant,
Jacobs, was not arrested, but the
Coroner took his name and address.
Ira A. Mccormick, general superin-
tendent of the railroad, said an exam
ination of the live motor car showed
that a small wheel on the left side
had come off, The wheel was found
alongside the track near 204th
street.
After Motorman Rogers had been
arrested he said there were two men
on the motor car besides himself and
his assistant. The guests were Jeffer-
son Davis, an operating inspector, and
a division superintendent named
Bronson. He said he took the curve
fast, but had no orders to do it
slower.
The entire train with the exception
of the rear car had cleared the curve
when this coach was snapped off the
track. The car turned over on it's
side and went grinding along the
outside track, on which it had fallen,
for 200 yards. Then the pull upon
the other three wooden coaches ahead
of it became so great that one by one
they also left the rails and turned
over
AS these four cars were dragged
along the rails they were literally
ground to pieces and passengers on
tn en- were fairly shaken to death
like rat in the jaws of a terrier
Before the motorman could stop his
train the two motor cars also had
been pulled off the rails, but re-
manned standing, as did the smoker.
The dead and injured were strewn
all the way from 201st street on I'M
der the Woodlawn iron bridge at
204th street, and then to 207th street,
where the train finally came to a
stop. For distance of more than
1000 feet the tracks were strewn
with parts of the bodies of the dead.
Many of the bodies picked up along
the highway were ground to pieces
and nearly stripped.
For 200 yards from the point
where the train first jumped the track
to the rear end of the last overturned
car the trackside was strewn with
twisted figures and scraps of timber
and steel
The police of the fremont station
found lanterns and pushed their way
through the crowd about the wreck
toward the twisted mass on the
tracks. Almost at the same time that
they arrived, flremen came down the
side of the cliff with axes and hand
extinguishers and went to work at
the blaze in the smoking car.
AS fast as the wounded were got
out they were carried up the hill to
the goth street viaduct and there
placed in ambulances, which had re-
sponded to the general call sent in
by the police to six hospitals. The
work of rescue was difficult In many
Instances the police and the volun-
teer workers who were first ON the
scene had to pry the wounded from
under car seats and heavy trucks with
such rough implements as they could
gather from the junk heap of the
wreck.
IN one instance two policemen and
a citizen worked almost an hour to
extricate a woman and her child
from underneath a seat in the last
car. She was Mrs. Charles Gilchrist
and her daughter was Hannah, four
years old Mrs Gilchrist escaped
with only a long rip across her fore
head The baby, whom she had pro-
tected with her body, was absolutely
unframed
Hardly had the procession of
wounded begun to make its way up
the hill when Inspector Richard
Walsh and fifty extra policemen ar
rived The first work that the in
spector set his men to do was to clear
away the crowd that blocked the
gully where the wrecked train lay
The police had to use their clubs and
it was an hour before they had man
aged to push the crowd back up the
icy slope.
With the wounded removed from
Girl Cashier an Embezzler,