Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

When things get a little slow and I’m stuck for a column idea, one of my favorite things to do is just randomly go through the old newspaper archives and see what comes up. I usually find something good. My personal favorite here is the Clinton County Times, because it was a dramatic and absolutely bonkers newspaper. For fascinating and crazy local stories, nothing beats the Clinton County Times.

For some reason, January 12, 1912 was a treasure trove of amazing incidents. In that one issue, I found a whole bunch of interesting stories. I’ll be writing about them over the next couple of months; if January 12, 1912 begins looking oddly familiar to you before long, that’s why.

The first one, right on the front page, involved the rescue of a lineman working on the phone lines.

It happened the Saturday before—The Times was a weekly. H.W. Watson of Philadelphia, a cable splicer for Bell, was working on lines along Bellefonte Avenue, very near South Jones Street. His foot slipped and he almost fell, and to save himself, he grabbed a cable that was electrified, which is not ordinarily recommended in these situations.

To complicate things, he was dangling at the top of a pole, thirty-five feet in the air.

The line was conducting twenty-three hundred volts. The Clinton County Times, never one to shy away from the most dramatic option, immediately compared this to the electric chair: “When it is remembered that murderers are executed with from 1,500 to 2,000 volts, it will easily be seen what a wonderful escape the unfortunate man had, for he is alive to describe his sensations, due to the quick and brave action of a fellow employee.”

That would have been S.J. Wilson, another lineman, who saw the whole thing happen. Wilspn had already seen three co-workers die on the job and had no burning desire to make it four. On the ground at the time, he climbed up the pole like Spider-Man and grabbed Watson, hanging onto him before he could fall. The gathered crowd on Bellefonte Avenue courageously watched from a distance, afraid to get anywhere near either the electrified lines or the two hundred pounds of falling man.

Wilson then managed to wrap one arm around Watson and hold him as he climbed to the ground. Exhausted, he collapsed for a moment as Dr. John B. Critchfield arrived on the scene.

Critchfield was a local doctor with an office just down the street, near present-day Triangle Park, which he’d opened up just the month before. This put him in a pretty convenient position as the closest doctor, and he treated Watson, which essentially consisted of making sure he was still breathing and sending him home.

Or, at least, to the Hotel Russell on Grove Street, which was where the linemen stayed while they were in town on a job. The Hotel Russell was at 316 North Grove Street, on the corner at Jordan’s Alley. Watson was sent there to rest, and told that he probably wasn’t going to be back at work for several weeks.

“The shock affects the heart most of all,” commented the Clinton County Times.

Watson eventually got back to work. Critchfield later served in World War I and ran for public office before passing away in 1940. And the Clinton County Times went on to continue reporting some of the most dramatic and ridiculous news in the county, including in this same issue. Stay tuned for more.