Blog - LOST IN HISTORY

Mother Jones, the Mother of Labor Unions

You may know the name Mother Jones from the progressive news magazine & website. But its namesake, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was a fearless fighter for the working class and a tireless labor activist. Her opponents in industry and congress labeled her “The most dangerous woman in America!” Jones combined radical organizing methods and energetic speeches to mobilize thousands of lower-class workers into unions between 1872 and 1924. She literally shaped the way civil disobedience could be used to fight for economic justice.

The fiery Mary Harris Jones actually started her life quite humbly. She was born in County Cork, Ireland in 1837. Her family was one of the starving thousands that fled the Irish Potato Famine and emigrated across the Atlantic. They landed first in Canada, where her father worked laying railroad tracks, and eventually settled in the United States. She went to school in Toronto, then moved to the US to begin a career as a simple dressmaker in Tennessee.

Young Mary Harris experienced far too many tragedies in her early life. In Memphis, she married George Jones in 1861, an iron worker and active member of the Iron Molders’ Union. He fought for workers’ rights at a time when unions were still in their infancy. In rapid succession, they had four young children together. But a devastating yellow fever epidemic in 1867 killed her husband and ALL FOUR children. She was only 30.

“One by one, my four little children sickened and died. . . I sat alone through nights of grief. No one came to help me.”

In shock and heart-broken, Mary moved to Chicago and opened a seamstress shop, sewing clothes for the wealthy residents of the North Side. It has here, watching workers slave away in factories, that Mary’s resentment for economic inequality began to bubble. But then suddenly, tragedy struck again. She lost both her home and shop in The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (see related blog post).

With all her possessions in ashes, Mary sought shelter with the Knights of Labor. There, she slowly began to see the labor movement as her new family, and started working as an activist. She would commit the rest of her life to the struggle for humane wages and working conditions.

Mary found her voice and began giving inspirational speeches to encourage workers to unionize. She traveled to numerous strikes, helping coal miners in Pennsylvania in 1873 and railroad workers in 1877. From 1880 onward, Jones participated in hundreds of strikes across the country. The way in which she genuinely cared for any and all workers earned her the well-deserved nickname “Mother” Jones.

They also called her the “Miner’s Angel,” but rejected that label, saying bluntly, “I’m no angel.” Mother Jones became an active campaigner for the United Mine Workers Union in West Virginia. In the 1890s, she mobilized miners’ wives to march with brooms and mops in order to block company strikebreakers from entering the mines.

She once proudly said of herself, “I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a hell-raiser!”

Her movement assisted both the United Mine Workers and the American Railway Unions, which launched major strikes for living wages in 1894. For Jones, it was about more than just a fair union contract. She argued that miners should be able to direct their own economic destinies, a radical idea at the time.

Mother Jones even encouraged militant action when warranted. While the militias and the strikes were often brutally crushed, they helped perfect Jones’ methods for mobilizing struggling communities. She emerged from these skirmishes undeterred, inspired by the new labor and socialist movement.

She was considered by the authorities (both corporate and political) to be a dangerous radical. Five-feet tall, now with snow-white hair, and in an all-black dress, Jones was indeed a confrontational presence. When she was mocked as the “grandmother of all agitators,”

Mother Jones replied that she would someday be known as “the great-grandmother of all agitators!”

She believed in organizing at the community level to demonstrate to workers their capacity to manage their own destiny. Wherever she went, she entered into the lives of the toilers and truly became a part of them. She put women and children at the center of struggles, making it a family-based movement.

One of Jones’ key contributions was building unions that bridged racial and ethnic divides. She believed that unskilled immigrants and blacks should be included as well. She condemned white supremacy and argued that black and immigrant workers were some of the best union members.

Oddly, Mother Jones opposed Women’s Suffrage. She feared that focusing on the vote was diverting working-class women from more important economic justice. She saw the suffrage movement as only a rich women’s distraction. “You don’t need a Vote to raise Hell!” she proclaimed.

A political progressive, she was a founder of the Social Democratic Party in 1898. Jones also helped establish the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, and published numerous articles in the International Socialist Review.

When asked where she lived, Mother Jones replied that her home was “wherever there was a fight.”

Jones insisted that the government address social injustice as well. Demanding child labor laws, she organized children textile workers to march on President Theodore Roosevelt’s Oyster Bay home in 1903. In 1914, the Colorado militia massacred 20 women and children in a miners’ tent colony. Jones persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to intervene and negotiate a truce.

Mother Jones with President Calvin Coolidge, 1924 — **Mother Jones with President Calvin Coolidge**, **1924**

At other times, the authorities were not so tolerant of Mother Jones. When violence broke out during a 1912 miners strike in West Virginia, the court convicted her, at age 82, to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder. Nationwide rallies and protests led the governor to quickly commute her sentence. Undeterred, she returned to organizing workers. Nothing it seemed could dissuade Mother Jones from her work.

Mary was also a global organizer who believed in a world-wide labor revolution. By 1910, she was fighting for Mexican labor rights against the country’s dictatorship and its US supporters. When she finally traveled to Mexico City in 1921, workers showered her with red carnations and blue violets, calling her “Madre Juanita.”

Newspapers of the day called her a “Folk Hero” or “the most well-known woman in America.”

Mother Jones lived her last years with friends in Silver Spring, MD. In 1930, her life was celebrated with special labor events across the country. She even gave her last speech for an Edison moving picture camera. She died in November of that year at age 93. A friend of laborers to the end, she asked to be buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Illinois, next to victims of an 1898 mine riot. Her funeral was attended by thousands.

Mother Jones was truly an inspirational folk hero to generations of American laborers for over six decades. Many of her dreams were not realized in her lifetime, but they did in fact come to pass after World War II, when our grandfathers returned home as GIs. They took jobs in countless factories and mills scattered across the U.S. and, yes, joined countless labor unions. These unions ensured fare pay, benefits, and pensions to millions of American men and women of the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

Lost in History

Krakatoa Volcano: the Eruption that Shook the Globe

**Depiction of Krakatoa volcano eruption, 1883**

The eruption of Krakatoa island in August 1883 was THE most deadly volcanic explosion in modern history. More than 36,000 people in over 300 coastal villages perished in the most ghastly ways imaginable. Many died of burns and suffocation from the super-heated pyroclastic blasts that blew the peaks off the island. Thousands more drowned from the 4 tsunamis that followed when the volcano collapsed into the sea.

The Indonesian island of Krakatau (Krakatoa) sits in the narrow Sunda Straits between Sumatra to the north and Java to the south. Before the 1883 eruption, the uninhabited tropical island had no less than 3 volcanic peaks: Perboewatan the most active, Danan in the middle, and Rakata the tallest. Krakatau and its two nearby islands were remnants of a previous eruption that left an undersea caldera simmering beneath the sea.

Our story however starts 3 months before. Early in the morning of 20 May 1883, an 11 kilometer high cloud of ash and pumice plumed above the normally silent Krakatau, the first eruption in over 2 centuries. Over the next 2 months, it would deliver similar spectacles, all of which brought churning clouds of incandescent ash high into the hot tropical skies. People living in the nearby Dutch colonies on Java & Sumatra actually held parties celebrating nature’s spectacular fireworks. These awe-inspiring displays however were a prelude of far worse things to come.

Celebrations would come to a tragic halt in late August.

At 12:53 pm on Sunday 26 August, the eruption’s first major blast sent a cloud of hot gas, ash and pumice 24 km into the afternoon sky! Debris from the smaller summer eruptions had plugged the neck of the cone, allowing pressure to build in the magma chamber. This initial blast generated an eardrum-rupturing barrage accompanied by a black churning cloud that quickly turned daytime into night. Villagers and Dutch colonists covered their mouths and fled into houses and huts to escape the raining storm of hot ash and pumice. This was but the opening salvo to a climactic eruption the next day.

The first of 4 stupendous eruptions began at 5:30 am Monday morning, climaxing in a colossal blast at 10am that literally blew Krakatau Island apart. The noise was heard over 4600 km away, throughout the Indian Ocean – from Sri Lanka in the west, to Australia in the east. TWO-THIRDS of the island collapsed beneath the sea, into the now vacated magma chamber. 23 square kilometers of the island, including all of Perboewatan and Danan, fell into a caldera 6 kilometers across.

The explosive force was estimated at 200 megatons of TNT. By comparison, the 1945 atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima was a mere 20 kilotons. When the northern half of the island dropped beneath the ocean, it generating a series of devastating pyroclastic ash flows at sea level. Black clouds blasted across the waters of the Sundra Straits at speeds up 100 kph. Dazed villagers had barely enough time to take in the destruction of Krakatoa. Blistering pyroclastic flows struck southern Sumatra and western Java with a vengeance, hot enough to incinerate entire villages.

1000 alone died in the Sumatra town of Ketimbang, over 40 kilometers away. Dutch Controller Willem Beijerinck lived and worked in Ketimbang with his wife Johanna and their three children. He seriously contemplated killing his wife and children to spare them the hideous death of suffocation by hot ash. The family managed to survive by heading to high ground early in the eruption.

Still Krakatau was not finished, as the worst was yet to come.

The collapse of the island into the sea generated immense tsunamis that ravaged the coastlines on both sides of the strait. Thousands that survived burns from the hot ash were now killed by a tidal wave 120 feet tall. Completely unprepared, survivors scrambled fanatically for higher ground. Most of the closest islands, after first being overwhelmed by the hot ash, were totally submerged, stripping away of all vegetation, washing helpless people out to sea, and removing all signs of human occupation.

The steamship Berouw was carried a mile inland on Sumatra and beached in a river bed; all 28 crew members died. The Loudon was anchored in Lampong Bay, near the village of Telok Betong when the first wave approached. The ship’s captain Lindemann raised anchor and turned its bow to face the tsunami. The ship somehow managed to ride over the steep crest. The wave continued past them and the shocked crew watched as the waters consumed the town until nothing remained but the open sea.

All told, the explosions hurled 45 cubic kilometers of debris into the atmosphere darkening skies 440 km away. The sun was not seen over Sumatra and Java for three days. The shock wave was recorded around the globe as far away as London, and circled the planet seven times. Within 13 days, a layer of volcanic gas had circled the Earth, making for spectacular sunsets over Europe and the Americas. Average GLOBAL temperatures were up to 1.2 degrees C COOLER for the next FIVE years! Mother Nature had indeed put on one of her better shows.

Nobody knows how many souls were washed out to sea by the tsunamis.

For months, the Sunda Straits were clogged with so much debris that it looked like solid ground, peppered with decaying corpses. Relief ships were unable to reach devastated coastal communities like Telok Betong for weeks. The official number of dead, calculated by the Dutch East India Company was 36,417, 90 percent of which were directly killed by the tsunamis. Truer estimates including native populations and the aftermath are over 100,000 dead.

In 1927, fishermen in the strait were shocked when a column of steam began spewing from the old collapsed caldera. Krakatau had awakened after 44 years of silent slumber. Within weeks, a small, new cone appeared above sea level. Within a year, it grew into a small island, named appropriately Anak Krakatau, Child of Krakatau. The new peak continues to grows on average 7 meters every year. Krakatoa Jr. is up to its old tricks yet again, and erupted as recently as 2020, spewing ash and lava into the air and causing a 5 meter tsunami. Let us hope that is the worst it has to offer the South Pacific.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

Lost in History Menu

The Cuban Missile Crisis – the Day Russia Blinked

Kennedy, Castro and Khrushchev — **President John F. Kennedy, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev**

For 13 nerve-wracking days in October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the earth close to a nuclear WORLD WAR III. It was a direct confrontation between 2 major superpowers, United States and USSR (Soviet Union) during the so called Cold War. It was the worst clash since the construction of the Berlin Wall a year earlier in 1961.

The US Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 spectacularly failed to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. So in 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a secret agreement with Castro. The Soviets would place nuclear missiles on the Caribbean island to deter any future invasion. The Soviet Union also disliked the number of nuclear weapons pointing at them from Western Europe’s NATO. They saw missiles in Cuba as a way to level the playing field.

So the secret construction of Soviet missile sites on Cuba began.

In September, President John F. Kennedy issued a public warning against the introduction of any offensive Soviet weapons into Cuba. Despite this, in October, a U–2 spy plane took aerial photos. It clearly showing construction of a medium-range ballistic nuclear missile site in Cuba. The Pentagon rushed these images to the White House on October 16th, beginning what would be called the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cuba was a mere 90 miles from Key West, Florida and the range of these missiles included Washington DC!

Kennedy quickly summoned his security advisers to the West Wing, a group called the Ex Com (Executive Committee) to consider options and a course of action. The Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for an immediate air strike, followed by a U.S. invasion of Cuba! Non-military advisers recommended only stern warnings and sanctions to the Soviet Union. Kennedy and ExCom all agreed that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. The challenge was to get them removed without triggering a nuclear world war.

In tense deliberations that stretched for nearly a week, they came up with a variety of options, including diplomacy, a bombing attack, and a full-scale invasion of Cuba. In the end, President Kennedy decided upon a middle of the road course. On Monday, October 22nd, he ordered a US Naval “quarantine” of Cuba. Calling it a “quarantine” technically meant this was not a “blockade,” which assumed a State of War existed.

That same day, President Kennedy sent a strong letter to Premier Khrushchev.

In it he declared the U.S. would not permit offensive weapons of any kind in Cuba. He demanded the Soviets dismantle the missile bases under construction, AND return all offensive weapons to the Soviet Union. President Kennedy then went on national TV that night and informed America and the world of the threat to national security these Cuban missiles represented. He explained the naval quarantine he had ordered, and the global military consequences if the crisis escalated. His stern message was clear:

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba anywhere in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
President John F. Kennedy

The Joint Chiefs of Staff moved the USA to DEFCON 3 as naval ships began to surround Cuba, preparing for a military strike. People around the globe nervously worried and waited. WHAT WOULD THE SOVIET RESPONSE BE? Many feared the earth was finally at the brink of nuclear annihilation and looked for the nearest bomb shelter.

Believing their country was on the brink of nuclear war, Americans began hoarding food and gas in their basements.

cuban missile crisis headline 1962 — **Cuban Missile Crisis Headline, October 1962**

In schools around the country, teachers ran daily Duck and Cover drills in their classrooms. In duck and cover, students drop quickly to the floor and scramble under their desks. Then they lie curled up in a ball, face down, and cover their head with their hands. The goal being to protect against a nuclear blast where the force of the explosion could shatter glass windows and create an immense blast of heat.

On Wednesday, October 24th, Khrushchev responded with his own statement. He said the US “blockade” was an “Act of Aggression” and that Soviet ships would proceed. The crisis had reached a superpower stalemate. A crucial moment arrived later that day, when Soviet ships neared the line of US Navy vessels enforcing the quarantine outside Cuba. Any attempt to breach the blockade would spark a military confrontation that could escalate to a nuclear exchange. But the Soviet ships stopped short of the blockade!

Meanwhile, US spy planes showed the Soviet missile sites were nearly operational. The Pentagon placed military forces at DEFCON 2—meaning war was imminent. Kennedy and the ExCom prepared for an attack on Cuba. On October 26th, Kennedy told his advisers it appeared that only a US attack on Cuba would remove the Soviet missiles, but he insisted on giving diplomacy a one last chance.

“I thought it was the last day I would ever see.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

That afternoon, the crisis took a strange turn. ABC News told the White House they’d been approached by a Russian agent. He suggested the Soviet Union would remove their missiles from Cuba, IF the US would not to invade the island. While the Pentagon scrambled to validate this “back-channel” offer, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a communication in the middle of the night, October 26th. It was an emotional message raising the specter of nuclear holocaust, and proposed a resolution that matched what ABC had heard!

“If there is no intention to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.”
Kremlin message to the White House

The next day, Saturday, October 27th, Khrushchev sent a second message, indicating that any proposed deal must include the removal of US missiles from Turkey. That same day, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba. 35-year-old pilot Major Rudy Anderson was killed. Kennedy decided to ignore the 2nd message and respond only to the 1st. That night, he sent a communication to Khrushchev proposing the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba under supervision of the United Nations, and a guarantee that the US would NOT invade Cuba.

It was a risky to ignore the 2nd Khrushchev message. So Attorney General Robert Kennedy (the president’s younger brother) met with Soviet Ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, in Washington. He said the U.S. was planning to remove the missiles from Turkey anyway, and that it would do so soon, but this could not be part of any public statement. The next morning, October 28th, Nikita Khrushchev issued a statement that Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed from Cuba!!

The planet and its anxious population took a collective sigh of relief.

By the end of November 1962, the U.S. was satisfied with the removal of Soviet missiles and ended its naval quarantine of Cuba. U.S. quietly removed their Jupiter missiles from Turkey the next year, in 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis strengthened President Kennedy’s image both in the U.S. and internationally. It also helped turn the negative world opinion surrounding his failed Bay of Pigs Invasion a year earlier.

In an effort to prevent this from ever happening again, a direct telephone link between the White House and Moscow’s Kremlin was established in 1963, known as the famous red “HOTLINE” phone. So a direct verbal conversation could take place between the U.S. President and Soviet Premier when needed, and avert World War III.

The tense Cold War between the East and West was far from over though. It would last another 29 YEARS, until the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Of course the world’s nuclear arsenals, though greatly diminished by treaties, still contains thousands of warheads, and remains under the control of the U.S., Russia Federation, Britain, France, and many other countries, including China, Israel, India and Pakistan. Let us hope another such nuclear crisis does not evolve between any of them.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

Lost in History Menu

Bhopal India was the World’s Worst Industrial Disaster

**Union Carbide plant, Bhopal, India after explosion**

How soon we forgot. Over 30 years ago, on the night of December 3, 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, released 30 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate gas into the air. Primarily into the poor slums surrounding the factory, exposing more than half a million souls to the deadly cloud.

The thick, heavy gas stayed low to the ground, causing victims throats and eyes to burn, inducing vomiting, internal bleeding, and death. Estimates of the death toll vary from as few as 3,800 in the early days to as many as 16,000 over the years.

How could this have happened in today’s modern age?

In the 1970s, the Indian government lured Union Carbide (UC) to build a pesticide plant in Bhopal in central India. The government itself would keep a 22% stake in the company’s Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited. The plant would produce the pesticide carbaryl using methyl isocyanate (MIC). The densely populated Bhopal site was unfortunately not zoned for such a hazardous industry.

In 1984, the factory operated with safety equipment and procedures far below the standards found in its sister plant in the US’s West Virginia. The local government was aware of the safety issues. But they were unwilling to burden the owners with pollution regulations for fear of the economic impact and the loss of such a large regional employer.

At 11 pm on 2 December 1984, a million Bhopal resident slept in the nearby slums. An operator at Plant C noticed a leak of methyl isocyanate gas and growing pressure inside storage tank #610. A faulty valve allowed water meant for cleaning pipes to mix with 40 tons of MIC. The vent-gas scrubber, which neutralized toxic emissions, had been turned off 3 weeks earlier. A refrigeration unit that cooled the storage tank had been drained of coolant for use elsewhere. The gas flare tower was out of action for 3 months. Pressure and heat from the MIC + water exothermic reaction continued to build for 2 hours.

Finally, at 1 am, December 3, a loud explosion rumbled through the plant as a safety valve blew away, sending a plume of methyl isocyanate gas into the night air. Within minutes, a toxic gas cloud flooded the surrounding streets of Bhopal. Within hours, those same streets were littered with human corpses and the carcasses of cows, dogs and birds. An estimated 3,800 people died that night, mostly in the poor slums adjacent to the plant. As a cool morning breeze picked up, it carried the poisonous yellow gas to the rest of the city, killing even more.

The Union Carbide plant’s alarm system was not triggered for hours. The factory managers raised no alarm to the city. Suddenly, thousands of people awoke choking. Those that could, started running to Bhopal’s 2 local hospitals. They were soon overwhelmed, a crisis exacerbated since doctors didn’t know what gas was causing the odd symptoms they were seeing. Victims were coughing up blood, unable to breathe, fainting from dizziness, suffered blistering skin rashes, and sudden blindness. Bhopal’s doctors had no experience in dealing with an industrial disaster.

“I woke up suffocating! It felt like someone had thrown hot coals in my eyes.”
Quote from Bhopal victim

In the neighborhoods closest to the plant, the gas caused internal hemorrhaging, pneumonia and death, leaving bodies in the streets as they tried to flee their homes. The government later estimated over 3,000 people died within a few hours. The two hospitals treated over 50,000 patients in the first 2 days.

Methyl isocyanate is extremely toxic and, if its air concentration reaches 21ppm (parts per million), it causes death within minutes. Near the Bhopal plant, the level was several times higher! Bhopal had a population of about 8,500,000 souls that night. Approximately a half a million people were immediately exposed.

Overwhelmed with the dead, mass burials and cremations began within days.

Officially, the government stated the gas leak was contained in 8 hours. It’s estimated that about 40 tons of methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide factory. Estimates of the dead in the first few days run as high as 10,000, with 20,000 premature deaths reported in the subsequent 20 years.

Immediately after the disaster, UC began to distance itself from responsibility, shifting blame to its Indian subsidiary. It also spread sabotage theories that it was perpetuated by Sikh extremists, but no evidence existed to substantiate that. At every turn, Union Carbide attempted to manipulate and withhold data. To this date, the company has never stated exactly what was in the deadly cloud that enveloped the city that December night.

The toxic plume had barely cleared when the first multi-billion dollar lawsuit was filed in a U.S. court. This was the beginning of years of litigation in which the affects of the tragedy on Bhopal’s poor were largely ignored.

The Indian government sued Union Carbide in a civil case.

In a 1989 settlement agreed by the Indian Supreme Court, UC finally agreed to pay $470 million to the Indian government, to be distributed to Bhopal victims as a final settlement. The figure was based on the disputed claim that only 3000 people died and 100,000 suffered permanent disabilities. The Indian government, notorious for its corruption, has yet to distribute all of the settlement. Had compensation in Bhopal been paid at the same rate that victims were awarded in US, the liability would have been greater than $10 billion!

By 2003, over 500,000 people were awarded compensation. The average amount to families of the victims was between only $550 to $2,200, which could not pay for the chronic lung ailments, life-long eye problems, and birth defects survivors developed.

Victims Wall in Bhopal, India, 1984 — Victims Wall Of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India, 1984

As a final insult, Union Carbide closed its Bhopal plant and failed to completely clean up what was now a hazardous waste site. Today, the rusting, deserted complex continues to leak toxic chemicals and heavy metals into the soil and aquifers of Bhopal. Thousands of tons of hazardous waste remain buried underground. In 1999, Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide for $9 billion in stock. In 2009, the Delhi based Centre for Science and Environment monitoring lab reported that pesticide groundwater contamination was still detectable 3 km from the factory.

As its legacy, the Bhopal tragedy became the worst chemical catastrophe in global history to date. The name ‘Union Carbide‘ is today synonymous with industrial mismanagement, disaster, and death. In 2023, Netflix released a mini-series on the heroes of the Bhopal disaster entitled, “The Railway Men.“

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

Lost in History Menu

Japan’s Horrific Minamata Disease was a Man-made Disaster

**Japanese mother comforting son with Minamata Disease**

Minamata Disease is a sobering reminder of the dangers of unregulated industries in modern times, a purely human-created disease. It was first seen in 1956 in the children living in Minamata City on the coast of Japan’s southern island of Kyūshū. Medically it’s a severe neurological syndrome with symptoms including loss of muscle control and weakness, loss of feeling in hands and feet, tunnel vision, loss of hearing, and speech abnormalities. Within a few weeks of onset, extreme cases tragically end with paralysis, insanity, convulsions and eventually death. In pregnant women, it can also lead to birth defects.

But what exactly did humans do to create such a terrible disease?

We have to go back over century to 1908 when the Japanese Chisso Corporation opened a factory in Minamata. First manufacturing fertilizers, the company saw more profit in the chemical industry. So in 1932, Chisso started producing acetaldehyde at its Minamata plant. By 1951, production was up to a whopping 6,000 tons a year. The process unfortunately lead to the production of highly toxic methyl mercury as a waste product. As is the case in such large-scale plants, they produced large quantities of chemical wastewater. Chisso’s solution was to simply dump the wastes, untreated, directly into the surrounding Minamata Bay. They did this for decades until 1968!

The poisonous methyl mercury slowly bioaccumulated in the fish and shellfish living in Minamata Bay and the surrounding Shiranui Sea. Inevitably, Chisso’s pollutants had an environmental impact. Fisheries were damaged with reduced catches. In response to lawsuits, Chisso reached a compensation agreement with the fishery cooperative in 1943. While that was good, the population of Minamata still relied heavily on the bay for a substantial part of their diet. So when fished and eaten by the locals over the years, it resulted in mercury poisoning.

The first case of what would be called Minamata Disease was recorded in 1956. A 5 year-old girl was brought to the Chisso factory hospital. The doctors there were puzzled by her odd symptoms which included convulsions, difficulty walking and slurred speech. Two days later, her younger sister also began exhibiting the same symptoms and was hospitalized as well. The girls’ mother then told the doctors that her neighbor’s daughter was also sick!

After the city conducted a house-to-house check, 8 more patients were found and hospitalized. By May, the hospital’s director officially reported an epidemic of an unknown illness of the central nervous system, calling it Minamata Disease.

Because the disease was confined to Minamata, they suspected it was contagious, quarantining all the patients.

Unfortunately, this only led to the fear and stigma towards the victim’s families from their own community. As the investigation continued, the doctors heard alarming stories of the strange behavior of animals as well. For several years, cats had been convulsing, ‘going mad’ and dying. Locals called it the “dancing cat disease” due to their odd seizures. Crows often fell from the sky and died, seaweed no longer grew in the bay, and hundreds of fish routinely floated dead on the surface of the Shiranui Sea every day.

Researchers from the Kumamoto School of Medicine flocked to Minamata to investigate. Slowly, a more complete picture of the disease was revealed. It began with severe headaches and a loss of sensation and numbness in patient’s hands and feet. They became unable to grasp cups or simply fasten buttons. Then they could not walk without stumbling, their voices changed to an odd pitch. Finally they had difficulties seeing, hearing, tasting and even swallowing. The symptoms quickly worsened and were ultimately followed by severe convulsions, coma and eventual death.

By the end of 1956, 40 people had been hospitalized, 14 of whom eventually died: a shocking mortality rate of 37%. Researchers then began to focus on what could be the cause of the strange disease. Epidemiologists realized that the victims were all clustered in fishing districts along the shores of Minamata Bay. The staple food of those families was mainly fish and shellfish caught from the sea. The local cats and dogs tended to eat scraps from family tables and died with symptoms similar to humans.

This led the researchers to deduce the outbreak was caused by heavy metal food poisoning.

The Chisso plant’s wastewater was immediately suspected as the source. The company’s own data showed that its wastewater contained heavy metals like lead, mercury, and arsenic in high enough concentrations to cause serious environmental damage. Throughout the next 2 years, many theories were proposed, until a British neurologist Douglas McAlpine realized that Minamata Disease closely resembled mercury poisoning.

In 1959, the mercury in Minamata Bay was finally measured. The results shocked the researchers – 2 kg mercury per ton of sediment. Large quantities of mercury were detected in fish, shellfish and the sediment from the bottom of the bay. The highest concentrations centered near the point where the Chisso wastewater canal entered the bay, clearly identifying the factory as the source.

Now, Chisso had always been a boon to the local economy. Over half of Minamata’s tax revenue came from Chisso and its employees. And the company was responsible for supplying over a quarter of all jobs in the city. This fact, combined with the lack of other industries in the area, meant that Chisso had great power and influence in Minamata’s city government. One plant director had even been mayor.

Even after Chisso was identified as the culprit, it did not stop production or dumping for 9 more years, until 1968.

Researchers collected hair samples from the victims and the general Minamata population. In patients, the average mercury level recorded was 705 ppm (parts per million), indicating heavy exposure. In healthy residents, the level was 191 ppm, compared to an average “safe” level of 4 ppm for the rest of Japan.

In 1959, the Ministry of Health and Welfare published its results: Minamata disease is a poisoning disease that affects the central nervous system, caused by the consumption of fish and shellfish living in Minamata Bay and its surrounding sea, the causative agent being organic mercury. The disease is not contagious or transmitted genetically. There is no cure.

The contaminated sludge in Minamata Bay was dealt with partly by land reclamation and partly by dredging at a cost of 49 billion yen over the next 14 years. Ironically, Chisso set up a subsidiary to reclaim the mercury recovered from the sludge and sell it on the open market! Minamata Disease broke out again in 1965, along the banks of the Agano River in Niigata. The polluting factory this time was owned by Showa Denko.

Minamata Disease Map of Outbreaks — Japan’s Minamata Disease Map of Two Outbreaks

2,265 victims have been officially recognized in Minimata. In 1971, American photojournalist Eugene Smith spent 2 years documenting the effects of Minamata disease in a book, bringing worldwide attention to the tragedy. Finally in 1973, over 17,000 Minamata residents finally received financial compensation from Chisso amounting to 86 million (in US dollars).

The Governor of Kumamoto declared Minamata Bay safe in 1997, allowing fishing again. In 2004, 48 years later, Chisso was finally ordered by the Japanese government to pay for the clean up of its contamination. As you can imagine, additional lawsuits and compensation claims continue to this day.

In 2016, Japan ratified the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a global treaty to reduce mercury emissions. Those children who survived the disease are now in their sixties, continuing to receive regular treatment to this day. All along, their greatest wish was simply to not be ostracized by their own community. Even after it was determined that mercury was the cause, and the disease was not contagious, victims were still reviled as threats to Chisso and thus their economic way of life in Minamata.

A movie titled, Minamata, was released in 2021, starring actor Johnny Depp as photojournalist Eugene Smith.

So what were the hard lessons of Minamata and Chisso? Harder lessons were still to be learned in further industrial disasters like Bhopal, India in 1984 and Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986. But for one, it teaches us that we human beings, in our endless quest for profit above people and all else, can be both the victims and the perpetrators of its consequences.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

Lost in History

Podcast : An Irish Immigrants Welcome – No Irish Need Apply

Given this centuries massive migrant refugee crises around the world, it’s not hard to fathom the intense Irish immigrant bigotry of the mid-1800’s. The great Irish Potato Famine lasted nearly a decade and brought massive numbers of Irish refugees to America, Canada and England. Faced with eviction and starvation, hundreds of thousands of Irish emigrated across the Atlantic to the U.S. and Canada. To say these Irish immigrants were not welcomed by Americans is a vast understatement. They were in fact treated like unwanted criminals.

No Irish Need Apply sign in business window — Common “No Irish Need Apply” sign in business window

To Read the Blog version: Click Here

Lost in History Podcast menu

Middle East Peace- the Egypt-Israeli Camp David Accords

Egypt's Anwar Sadat, America's Jimmy Carter and Israel's Menachem Begin sign the Camp David Accords 1978 — Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, America’s Jimmy Carter and Israel’s Menachem Begin sign the Camp David Accords 1978

Middle East peace seems like a utopian fantasy. But there are true examples of lasting success. The best by far is the Camp David Accords signed at the White House in 1978 by Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and US President Jimmy Carter. It laid the groundwork, after 3 decades of wars, for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel that lasts to this day. The largely forgotten accords, were fleshed out during 13 days of intensive negotiations lead by President Carter at the Camp David Presidential Retreat in Maryland. The final peace agreement – the first ever between Israel and an Arab neighbor – was then signed at the White House.

This seems unimaginable today given the powder keg that is the Middle East. A state of war had basically existed between Israel and Egypt since Israel’s formation in 1948. Jews had achieved an independent homeland, but the Arab world claimed that same land for a Palestinian state. Three wars followed – the 1948 Arab Israeli War, 1967 Six Day War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In them, Israel successfully defended itself and in fact expanded its territory by occupying the Sinai Peninsula.

By the late 1970’s, Anwar Sadat had enough of wars and wanted to finally make peace AND recover the Sinai. But after Israel’s victories in the wars, they had little reason to include Sinai in any peace terms. Menachem Begin, the new conservative Israeli Prime Minister appeared immovable on the very idea of exchanging land for peace.

By 1977, Sadat, frustrated by the lack of movement made a dramatic announcement. He said that he would be willing to go to Jerusalem! Begin complied, inviting Sadat to visit Israel, where he historically spoke before the Israeli Knesset – the 1^st time ever for an Arab leader! Sadat then invited Begin, who reciprocated with a trip to Cairo. These 2 visits led to direct talks, but unfortunately, not much came of them.

Then along came U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

From the start of his presidency, Carter pursued intensive negotiations with both Egypt and Israeli to achieve peace once and for all. During the summer of 1978, Carter attempted to find common ground. He realized that without direct U.S. mediation, the 2 sides would simply go on arguing, blaming each other for failure. Carter ignored advice to stay out of the Middle East mess and chose instead to commit the US to trilateral negotiations.

Jimmy Carter decided the solution was to call for a Summit, but not just any summit. He invited Begin and Sadat to the Presidential Retreat at Camp David. This meeting would bring Sadat, Begin, and Carter himself together at the secluded retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland. They both agreed.

It was a huge risk and daring act for Carter to stick himself into the hornet’s nest of the Middle East. He placed both his presidential capital and political future on the line for a summit that might very well fail. Carter decided it would be best, win or lose, to go all out, in an all-or-nothing gamble on peace.

So in September 1978, Jimmy Carter welcomed Sadat and Begin to the forested retreat in the middle of nowhere, away from the public’s and press’s eyes. Here peace accords would be hammered out under the direction of President Carter himself. He preferred informal diplomacy and felt it best to shield them all from public and media scrutiny, to allow a more relaxed atmosphere for negotiations.

The Camp David Summit, lasted 13 days from September 5–17th, 1978.

Rarely had a U.S. President devoted as much attention to a single foreign policy issue as Carter did. The core issues centered around Egypt demanding the Sinai back and the creation of an independent Palestinian homeland on the West Bank. In turn, Israel insisted Egypt remove its troops from its border and allow for access to the Suez Canal.

As the first 3 days ran on, the talks melted down, especially when both leaders sat in the same room. The debates were often heated between Begin and Sadat, breaking down into shouting matches while Carter played the role of mediator. The two leaders did not like each other on a personal level, let alone a political one.

So instead, Carter and his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, decided to meet with each delegation separately over the course of the next 10 days, acting as go-betweens. This was exhausting, but Carter was tireless, and with his perpetual optimism, shuttled back and forth between the 2 delegations. He often rode a bicycle between the cabins of the 2 heads of state.

Each leader threatened to walk out on numerous occasions.

President Carter played the role of strategist, mediator, ally and even therapist. He effectively used the promise of American aid as leverage to induce flexibility and accept concessions. For 13 days, Carter did something unprecedented, he set aside his other presidential duties to work exclusively on Middle East peace. And it worked!

Carter wisely separated the Sinai issue from the Palestinian issue, resulting in 2 agreements. The first was ‘A Framework for Peace in the Middle East Agreed at Camp David.’ It stated that Israel would evacuate the Sinai in exchange for full access to the Suez Canal. In exchange, Egypt would greatly limit its military activities on the Israeli border.

The second agreement was the ‘Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel.’ This one was to discuss the future of the West Bank and Gaza, and the creation of a future Palestinian state. The CAMP DAVID ACCORDS were signed in the East Room of the White House on national TV on September 17, 1978.

Sadat, Carter and Begin sign the Egypt-Israeli Middle East Peace Treaty, 1978

The Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty was formally signed 6 months later on March 1979 on the South Lawn of the White House . Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize that same year. The treaty ended the state of war between the two countries and established full diplomatic and commercial relations that lasts to this day!

Peace between Egypt and Israel was a truly historic accomplishment that wouldn’t have been achieved without the tireless efforts of U.S. President Carter. Jimmy Carter. He accomplished something that had eluded the Middle East for 3 decades and the decades since. He himself received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. The sustainable Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty has remained unmatched by subsequent administrations around the world ever since. Sadly, there has not been similar Middle East peace ever since. Wars routinely erupt today between Israel, Palestinian Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and various Islamic extremist groups.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

Lost in History

The Rise and Fall of the Germany’s Infamous Berlin Wall

Prefer an Audio Podcast? [Click Here]

THE RISE – 1961

The fortified Berlin Wall and No Man's Land — The fortified Berlin Wall and No Man’s Land in East Berlin

By 1961, the Cold War raged between the U.S. and USSR. The fortified ‘Iron Curtain‘ border wall had been raised; national borders dividing Western & Eastern Europe. ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) with nuclear warheads were pointed at Moscow and Washington alike. Berlin however, though divided as well, still allowed free movement of its citizens between the Communist East and Democratic West halves. The Berlin Wall would change all that.

It therefore provided an “escape route” via which suffering East Germans could defect to the booming West, in pursuit of freedom and a better way of life. Since the end of World War II, 2.5 million people had fled to the West, reducing East Germany’s population by more than 15%. The country was rapidly losing its most skilled workers and educated professionals. During the summer of 1961, the East German exodus reached record, critical levels. In July alone, some 30,000 people fled East Germany through West Berlin!

So on a fateful summer weekend, the Communist Party in Moscow’s Kremlin decided upon the unthinkable -plug the leak and completely seal off West Berlin from the surrounding East Germany. Just past midnight on Saturday 12 August, hundreds of trucks crowded with soldiers and construction workers rumbled through the dark streets of East Berlin . They worked quickly and quietly, stringing up a 100 mile long barbed wire fence completely surrounding West Berlin. While most Berliners were happily sleeping, the crews then began tearing up the streets that entered into the West.

Just before dawn, they cut the East Berlin telephone wires to the West.

When they woke Sunday morning, Berliners on both sides were stunned by the shocking sight in their city. No longer could East Berliners freely cross the border for plays or soccer matches. No longer could the 60,000 commuters head to work in West Berlin for better-paying jobs. No longer could families and friends cross the border to hug their relatives and loved ones. Whichever side of the border one went to sleep on August 12th, they were stuck on that side for the next 3 decades. East German armed patrols, under shoot to kill orders, made sure of that. The few East Berliners that attempted to charge the fence were shot dead on the spot. Sunday, August 13th, became forever known as Stacheldrahtsonntag Barbed Wire Sunday.

In just two weeks, the East German military and an army of construction workers replaced the simple wire fence with a 12 foot high concrete block wall topped with more barbed wire and guard towers. Roads, subways, canals and bridges were all cut off from West Berlin. That half of the city was basically a democratic island in Communist East Germany. The Soviet Politburo dubbed it the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” though it would be known as the Wall of Shame to the rest of the world.

Over the years, East Germany widened the zone on the East Berlin side. It became a heavily fortified, perpetually guarded, and booby-trapped barrier, dividing the city in two. Entire city blocks on the East side were demolished to create a carefully guarded NO MAN’S LAND in front of the wall. President John Kennedy denounced the Berlin border Wall and visited West Berlin in 1963 to give his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, standing before the wall and the Brandenburg Gate. Over the next 28 years, hundreds of escape attempts, either over or under the wall, would be made by daring, desperate East Berliners. A few succeeded, but most ended fatally.

THE FALL – 1989

Ironically, the fall of the Berlin Wall happened nearly as suddenly as its rise. There had been signs that the Communist bloc of nations was weakening, but the East German Communist Party insisted their country just needed modernization rather than any drastic revolution. Communism began to give way to democracies in early 1989 in countries like Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. This opened new border exodus points to East Germans who still wanted to finally flee to the West. East Germany responded by closing the borders to those once Communist nations. East German citizens did not agree and for the first time in decades began to mount demonstrations in Berlin’s plazas chanting:

Wir wollen Raus! Wir wollen Raus! (We want out!)

In October, the long-time East German president abruptly resigned. The new leader, Egon Krenz, appeared to be more in step with his neighbors and tolerant of round trip travel between countries. Would the borders finally be re-opened? people wondered. German citizens on both sides held their breath. Then suddenly, on the evening of November 9th, 1989, around 7pm, a Politburo spokesman announced at a press conference broadcast on TV and radio:

“Permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints between the GDR (East Germany) into the FRG (West Germany).”
Gunter Schabowski

When asked by reporters if this included Berlin, he shrugged and said, “Yes.” The official blundered however when asked “WHEN?” Since the order he was given failed to mention the timing, he hesitated for a second and said “Immediately.” If fact, it was suppose to take effect late the next day, which would have allowed orders to reach the surprised border guards.

People on both sides of the wall heard the news on television and were in shock. Were the borders really open? Hundreds of East Germans left their homes and marched to the 6 checkpoint border crossings, demanding to be allowed to cross. “Tor Auf! (Open the Gate)!” they shouted. No officer among the overwhelmed guards was willing to give a kill order to maintain order, so instead, … they allowed people to cross to the West with little to no identity check.

Very quickly, thousands inundated the Berlin Wall from both sides. West Berliners greeted East Berliners with flowers and champagne. There were huge impromptu celebrations, with people hugging, kissing, cheering, dancing, and crying. Many began climbing to the top of the wall, chipping away at it with hammers and chisels. More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that unbelievable weekend. One journalist called it, “The greatest street party in the history of the world!”

Fall of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989

Over the next few weeks, people slowly chipped away at the Berlin Wall and cut it into smaller slabs, and removed by bulldozers and cranes. In the end it produced 1.7 million tons of rubble. Crowds around the world cheered every single moment of it. Some of the larger pieces toured the world and have become museum pieces and collectibles.

It would take 3 years to completely removed all of the hated border wall. German reunification was officially complete less than a year later in October 3rd, 1990 after 45 years of separation. Over the decades since, the property once covered with the Berlin Wall has been redeveloped. A simple row of bricks remains in the streets, marking its once foreboding presence.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

Lost in History Menu

Podcast: An Immigrant’s Ellis Island Fate Depended on 29 Questions

For a vast number of Americans, their great-grandparents arrived in the U.S. as immigrants in the early 1900’s. There were no airports back then, just a cold, grey ocean to cross. So all the Poles, Russians, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Swedes, and Germans arrived in New York by steamship. Poorer immigrants in third class “steerage” were ferried by barge with their meager belongs to Ellis Island, sitting in the shadow of Lady Liberty. There, with a ship’s manifest number pinned to their clothes, their fate would depend on their answers to 29 Questions.

**Ellis Island Immigration Station, New York Harbor, circa 1900**

To Read the Blog post: CLICK HERE

Lost in History Podcast menu

The Santiago Church Fire was the Deadliest in History

La Iglesia de la Compana de Jesus, Santiago, Chile, 1863 — **La Iglesia de la Compana de Jesus fire, Santiago, Chile, December, 1863**

The deadliest fire disaster ever recorded is not where you might think. Not the Great London Fire, not the Great Chicago Fire, not New York City. It occurred at The Church of the Company of Jesus in Santiago, Chile on December 8^th, 1863. The horrible Santiago Church Fire consumed the church during a Catholic Mass, killing over 2,500 people, mostly women and their families.

La Iglesia de la Compania de Jesús was a huge Jesuit cathedral that stood in downtown Santiago. The terrible fire occurred during the Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception no less. The congregation celebrated this popular Holy Day by decorating the church’s interior with hundreds of flowers, candles, oil lamps and ornate, cloth wall coverings. A statue of the Virgin Mary was moved to the main altar, surrounded by a half-moon shaped candelabra.

It was Santiago’s custom to celebrate this Holy Day with great pomp and passion.

The congregation’s curate had begun a ladies religious society, known as Las Hijas de Maria (the Daughters of Mary) who organized the celebration. It always ended with a grand illumination of the Church’s interior for a mass on Tuesday evening, December 8th.

That fateful year, determined to outdo all prior celebrations, they adorned the interior with long garlands of flowers and an unprecedented number of candles and paraffin oil lamps. The ladies had spent the year weaving ornate cloth tapestries with images of the life of the Virgin Mother. The Archbishop expressed concern over the extravagance, but reluctantly gave his consent.

Towards dusk, a stream of mostly women, both old and young, garbed in their best dresses and gowns, poured into the church until every seat and aisle was packed. The side doors were then closed, except for the main entrance, so the sound of the hymns and prayers could be heard in the courtyard outside. At a little before seven o’clock, the attendants began lighting up the church. It was truly an amazing site to see the cathedral’s dark interior aglow with thousands of flames and hundreds of intricate tapestries.

The Santiago Church Fire started in the middle of Mass, a few minutes before 7:00 pm.

One of many oil lamps on the main altar ignited one of the cloth wall hangings behind it. An attendant jumped up and attempted to smother the flames with another wall cloth. He knocked over the lamp, spilling its flammable oil. This caused the fire to jump to the flanking wall hangings. From there, flames curled up the garlands of flowers to the church’s wooden roof. All this happened rapidly in a few shocking minutes.

The first few moments were filled with the shock and shrieks of the attendees at the destruction of their beloved altar. They quickly changed to thousands of screams as the flames shot up the walls to the wooden roof. It was clearly time to run for your life! The crowds rushed to the closed side doors only to find they swung inward and were impossible open with the crush of bodies pressing forward. They had been closed in order to create more space for extra worshippers to stand. Loud screams of horror burst from the panicked masses.

The crowd of mostly women, rosary beads still clutched in their hands, rushed next for the main exit, a single set of doors. Chilean women of 1863, like those in Europe, wore large hoop skirts. These dresses contributed to the crush of people in the aisles, and the tripping and trampling that ensued as the throng rushed to escape the fire behind them. Soon the main doors too became blocked by a growing mass of bodies, trapping all the poor souls behind them.

The great wooden dome over the altar caught fire next.

Traveling along the dry ceiling, the flames ran like hissing serpents down the length of the church roof. The lamps suspended from the roof by ropes, snapped and dropped, exploding among the mass of women beneath. Burning embers and firebrands rained down on the compacted crowd. Clothing soon caught fire. Smoke quickly filled the cathedral, making it harder and harder to breathe.

Those out in the plaza stood paralyzed by the horrible sight. The lurid glow inside illuminated the thousands of struggling women, some with faces elevated in prayer, others with hands stretched out towards the door. The scorched and injured sank to the floor, while the stronger battled over them, climbing in desperation. Mothers clasping their little children close, shielding them from the flames, already blistering their own skin. Children clung back in fear.

Outside the church, men desperately tried to chop down the thick side doors. Rescuers at the main doors were seized by dozens of outstretched hands. Imagine seeing those fearful faces and hearing the screams of thousands behind them. They continued to drag out hundreds of the burnt living, until falling roof timbers halted any hope of saving more. The entire floor of the church was now a sea of fire. Thousands of women, from the white-haired to hairless infants, madres, abuelas, hermanas, and hijas began to die.

Gradually, the terrible screams from within grew fainter and fainter.

Soon an awful silence filled the plaza, with only the angry roar of the hellish furnace, that just minutes before been their beloved iglesia. The two bell towers followed the roof within the hour. The belfry fell to earth with an awful crash, burying the scorched bodies and ending their suffering. Many in the plaza knelt silently to pray.

The plaza was filled with the rescued, spread out on the ground. Hundreds of husbands and fathers rushed about, calling the names of loved ones. All the physicians of the city rushed to the plaza, ministering to the burned survivors. Hundreds were taken to Santiago hospitals. Many of those only lived a few hours however, due to their severe burns.

In hindsight, even the most common-sense precautions had not been taken. The absence of any fire brigade at that time contributed to the devastation. Santiago, a city of a hundred thousand, possessed only 3 three steamer engines, all out of order that night. Of the 3,000 persons within the church, only five hundred escaped, and most of them wounded or severely burned.

By midnight, 5 hours later, the flames finally began to subside.

At dawn, the church had been reduced to a smoldering heap of black rubble, surrounded by 4 stone walls. By the light of day, the spectacle was indescribably horrible. 2,500 corpses, in every stage of combustion, lay in agonizing mounds inside around the exit doors. The layers of the bodies were disfigured beyond recognition.

All the officiating priests escaped through the vestry door with the holy relics in hand. The vestry door was then closed to keep the fire from spreading to the rectory mansion next door. No doubt hundreds of victims could have found safety through that door. Vocal outrage fumed in the press and public at the near criminal indifference of the priests to the safety of their largely female congregation.

Around 2,500 perished in La Iglesia de la Compania de Jesús fire, about 2 to 3 percent of Santiago’s entire population of 100,000 at the time. Entire families were killed. Santiago was a city of mourning with the entire Chilean Republic joining in their grief. Clean up of all the victims took 10 gruesome days. Most bodies were so badly burned they could not be identified. Those poor souls were buried in a mass grave at the Cemetario General de Santiago.

Virgin Mary statue at the site of la Iglesia de la Compana de Jesus — Virgin Mary statue at the former site of la Iglesia de la Compana de Jesus, Santiago, Chile.

The remains of The Church of the Company of Jesus were eventually destroyed the next year. A garden was planted in its place, which is now a part of the grounds of the Ex Congreso Nacional (former National Congress) on the Calle Compania de Jesus. A white statue of the Virgin Mary was erected where the main altar had once stood.

The garden and statue still exist today. Should you visit Santiago, Chile, pause a moment at its base. Ponder the tragic loss of life during the Santiago Church Fire and say a prayer for the fallen women and children.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

Lost in History