Denture Rescue in 1908

The Daily Kennebec Journal reported on an interesting and almost unbelievable tale of denture rescue from the Victorian era.

The Washington County railroad has gone all the other railroads in the country one better in the matter of accommodating its patrons. A passenger one day last week lost a set of false teeth out of the window. The loss was reported to the obliging conductor, who stopped the train, backed to the scene of catastrophe, where the missing molars were found and returned to their owner.

[Source: Daily Kennebec Journal, April 10, 1908, page 6]

This is not the first denture-related Strange Maine story, as those of you who remember the denture-stealing mouse of 2007 will have noticed.

Train tragedy in Maine history

There is an interesting post about Maine Railroad Accident Reports from 1874 over on the MaineGenealogy blog. If this sample is any indication, Victorian era railroads were a bustling and fast-paced environment, and resulted in a wide range of serious injuries, usually ending in amputation or death. A surprising number of these were the result of simple slip-and-fall accidents.

The accounts themselves are quite interesting to read, such as this one:

January 16. The night express train from Boston was thrown from the track near Newport station, and ran along for a short distance, tearing up the rails and badly frightening the passengers. Frank Jackson, a brakeman, was thrown on to the ground with great violence and injured internally. Charles Estes, also brakeman, was thrown off and his ankle sprained. None of the 49 pass[e]ngers on board were injured.

MaineGenealogy blog has a wide range of these reports available in its archives, which can be found at http://www.mainegenealogy.net/blog.html.

If you're curious about current railroad accident figures, the Federal Railroad Administration's Office of Safety Analysis has a page that lets you run reports from railroads all over the country (you can specify time frames, specific states, etc). Click here to peruse their handy report-generating page.