Raynors HCA 2015-05
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/21/2015
A complete and authentic issue of the Harper’s Weekly, June 5 1869, 16pp., disbound. From the front cover, a large engraving with accompanying report, The Staten Island Ferry-Boat Disaster - The ‘Westfield’ Immediately After the Explosion. VG. The Westfield, came to grief when its boiler exploded while sitting in its slip at South Ferry at about 1:30 in the afternoon of July 30, 1871. Within days of the disaster, some 85 were identified as dead and hundreds injured, and several more were added to the death toll in the weeks following. Jacob Vanderbilt, president of the Staten Island Railway, was arrested for murder, though he escaped conviction. The engineer of Westfield was a black man, which aroused openly racist commentary in New York's newspapers, though Vanderbilt stoutly defended his employee.
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