Many urban people are surprised to learn that farming is one of the most hazardous of occupations.
That fact is nothing new. Newspapers of the 19th century are peppered with reports of serious injuries and deaths on farms.
Today it is power machinery that is the biggest hazard. A century and more ago the dangers were different, but could be just as deadly. Chopping trees and clearing bush claimed many men, as did the building bees organized to build houses and barns.
Some 19th century farmers hired contractors to build their barns, particularly in the years after 1870 when large barns became the vogue. More common was the neighbourhood bee, where 75 or 100 men from a neighbourhood would pool their efforts to erect the main components of a barn, typically in a single day.
The typical barn raising bee was not a free-for-all effort. Rather, a contractor or a farmer experienced in barn construction took charge of the project. The main timbers would be cut and prepared in advance for the big day, and the foundation – usually of masonry construction using the field stones that most farms seemed to have in proliferation, would be ready well in advance.
The fact that some of the men on a job were inexperienced led to minor mishaps and accidents. More serious injuries were all too common. There were often a couple of young men anxious to display their bravado by taking unnecessary risks. At most of the bees a barrel of whisky provided refreshment through the day. Overindulgence led to many slips and misapplied blows of axes and mallets.
Given all the circumstances, it is remarkable that serious accidents were not more common. An unlucky example was David McLeod, of Arthur Township, near Kenilworth. A collapse of a partially built barn on his farm in July 1885 was one of the worst in the history of barn raisings in Wellington.
McLeod scheduled a raising of the framework on his new barn for July 25 of 1885, a Saturday. Most of his neighbours had the time to turn up to lend a hand. Work was light at that time in the lull between haying and harvesting.
Work progressed well during the first few hours of the morning. By 11am, the men had assembled and erected the first bent and were preparing the second one. Bents are similar to trusses, being an assembly of heavy vertical timbers and the framing to support the roof. The framework consists of a series of them at fixed intervals. They are assembled on the ground, then raised into position and fastened to the one previously raised.
Raising the bents is the most dangerous art of the job. Ropes hauled by the workmen pull the bent into a vertical position while a handful of men are on it. When it is vertical they attach it to the previous bent by fastening horizontal timbers into place. The bent can twist or jerk as it is being moved. Ropes can break, and a gust of wind can play havoc with the operation.
As the men at McLeod’s raising tugged the ropes and brought the second bent into position, one of the men riding on it reached out and placed his shoulder under a beam (known as a girth) protruding from the first bent, to move it into the proper position to attach it to the second bent.
A moment later another man knocked away a supporting piece that had held the girth close to its proper position. Without the support, the girth proved too heavy for the first man. It slipped from his shoulder, swung back, and struck the first bent, to which it was attached loosely.
The shock was sufficient to snap a rope that was holding the first bent vertical and in place.
It began to fall toward the second bent, and together the two bents fell to the ground amongst the crowd of workers who were watching the operation. The bents hit several of the men on the ground, while those perched on them fell to the ground.
More than a dozen men received injuries, and for six they were very serious. A pike pole struck John Shaw in the head, fracturing his skull. Another pike pole hit George Sheehy in the leg, almost severing it and resulting in severe bleeding. John Marshall suffered injuries to his back and a leg. A beam hit John O’Donnell in the back, just under his shoulder, and punctured a lung and a major blood vessel. David Brown badly injured a leg, and J.H. Pearce twisted his ankle so badly that he could not move it without excruciating pain. All six were in their early 20s.
A couple of the men present immediately rushed off to the nearby Kenilworth Canadian Pacific station. They sent urgent telegrams to Dr. Cotton of Mount Forest and Dr. Robinson of Arthur, the two nearest medical men. Both doctors were on the scene within an hour.
The construction crew, meanwhile, had placed the injured in the shade of the trees in the orchard, resting on improvised cots.
After a quick examination the doctors realized that John Shaw had the most severe injuries.
There was nothing they could do for the unconscious man. He died a few minutes after they arrived.
Shaw was a very popular young man, and a son of Johnson Shaw, a prominent farmer in Arthur Township. A few years earlier, when he had turned 21, his father had given him his own farm.
The prospects for the other injured men were better. In a couple of the cases the doctors performed some impromptu surgery on the kitchen table.
After a couple of days the doctors expected all the others would recover, but they feared for George Sheehy’s leg, which had become badly infected. In the age before antibiotics, such an infection usually meant that amputation was necessary to save the life of the patient.
Dr. Robinson had faith that Sheehy would survive. When he first arrived on the scene, Sheehy had been lying on his cot eating a plate of dinner, hardly mindful of the fact that his leg was almost severed and was bleeding badly despite a tourniquet applied by a couple of his coworkers.
The doctor remarked that such an injury would have rendered most men unconscious.
Work on the barn ended that day after the accident. McLeod finished the barn later in the summer of 1885, but it was a joyless task for all who worked on it.
The 1885 accident at the McLeod barn raising served as a caution that barn raisings could be dangerous and deadly. It resulted in the death of one of Arthur Township’s most promising young men, and the other five who suffered major injuries carried scars on their bodies for the rest of their lives as a warning that farming and its related activities was a dangerous occupation, and not always the idyllic way of life that resides in the minds of urban residents.