History
On June 9, 1893, while 490 clerks of the Record and Pension Division of the War Department were working at their offices in the Ford's Theater building, workmen in the basement were removing portions of the building's foundation. The building collapsed. Eighteen employees were killed immediately and several more died later. Many more were injured.
On December 14, 1893, the United States Senate established a select committee to investigate the disaster and report whether the government should compensate the victims. On August 18, 1894, Congress approved the sundry civil appropriations bill, which created a joint committee of the existing Senate select committee and five members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The committee was directed to investigate the disaster and report to the two Houses "whether in equity and justice the government should compensate the sufferers of that disaster for the injuries sustained by them." If such compensation seemed appropriate, the Act required the committee to investigate each case to determine the amount that should be paid.
Upon investigation, the committee unanimously concluded that compensation should be made "by reason of the fact that in the contract for removing the underpinning of said building no provision whatever for shoring up the building during the excavation was made, and the fact that no provision was made for expert superintendence, the building at the time containing about 500 Government clerks."
The committee proceeded to consider individual claims of death or injury due to the disaster, taking testimony and affidavits from claimants and witnesses. The committee referred all claims for permanent injury to a medical board. An abstract of each case was appended to a committee report of May 11, 1896. The committee completed its task on February 25, 1897, with the issuance of its final report, including synopses and recommendations on three new cases and some reconsidered claims.
Read more about this topic: United States Congress Joint Committee On The Ford's Theater Disaster
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)