Living With Ghosts

From The Boston Globe, August 17th, 1900:

 

Henry E. Wells of 342 Pearl st. Cambridgeport, employed as an oiler at the Cambridge electric light plant on Western av., that city, was killed while at work at 6 30 last night. He was on top of an iron crane in the dynamo room, when his body came into contact with a live wire. He received 2000 volts and dropped without a sound.

A workman in the same room saw him fall. His body remained on the crane. Assistance was summoned and he was taken to the office and a physician sent for. The doctor, upon his arrival, pronounced life extinct. It is probable that death was instantaneous. The police ambulance, which had been sent for, conveyed the body to Litchfields’s rooms, where it will be views this morning by Medical Examiner Swan.

Mr Wells was 23 years old. He was born in Boson, but his parents, Mr and Mrs Henry Wells, removed to Cambridge when he was 2 years old.

A Globe reporter called on his parents last night at their home on Pearl st. The news of the death of their son had been conveyed to them soon after it happened, but they seemed hardly able to realize it. He left home for work shortly before 2 o’clock and just before passing around the corner out of sight of the house had waved a cheery goodby to his mother, who was watching in the window. He was an only son. His was a very cheery nature and he was distinctively a home body. He was educated in Cambridge schools, spent a year in the Rindge manual training school and three years on the Cambridge Latin.

In 1896 he went on the training ship Enterprise and a year later received his diploma as an engineer. Two months ago he accepted the position at the Cambridge electric light plant. His spare time since then had been spent in the study of electricity.

Besides his father and mother he leaves a married sister, Mrs Charlotte A. Slocumb, formerly a kindergarten teacher in Cambridge, now of Hyde Park, and a younger sister.