TERROR BY TROLLEY

A family connection sent me on the trail of a 100-year-old transit accident, writes

Dec. 24 marked the 100th anniversary of one of the most tragic transit accidents in Pittsburgh history. On Christmas Eve 1917 at 3:18 p.m., the Knoxville 4236 trolley, crowded with more than 120 people, crashed onto West Carson Street when the motorman lost control of the car as it descended the steep grade through the Mount Washington tunnel.

The trolley was demolished as it emerged from the tunnel. It crashed into a hydrant, then overturned against a metal telegraph pole, slid 50 feet and collided into an iron fence in front of the P&LE Terminal Annex. The rear end of the car was reduced to splinters and two-thirds of the car’s roof was torn off. Witnesses reported the wreck sounded like a bomb that shook the street and created a cloud of dust. Some bodies were torn to pieces and strewn for 100 yards along Carson Street; others were horribly crushed.

P&LE employees rushed out of the freight house to assist the victims. The gathering crowd made rescue work difficult. Physicians turned the railroad’s offices into an emergency hospital and as fast as the injured could be removed from the debris, they were carried there, given first aid and then rushed to hospitals by private automobiles, delivery trucks, wagons and ambulances. The less severely injured returned to their homes; the dead were taken to the morgue.

Frantic crowds rushed to hospitals and the morgue when loved ones did not return home. Ultimately, 24 died and more than 90 were injured. The casualties included passengers and passers-by who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of those who lost their lives that cold and rainy afternoon were women and children from Knoxville, Beltzhoover or Mount Oliver.

• A dozen years ago, my mother told me that my Grandpa Kuffner’s cousin was killed in a trolley accident in Pittsburgh. She didn’t know the cousin’s name or the date of the accident. Unsuccessful searches of early 1900s newspaper archives at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh revealed that streetcar accidents were common. On Dec. 24, 2011, we found the critical clue to this story in the Pittsburgh PostGazette’s Almanac feature: “1917: Twenty people were killed in a Mount Washington streetcar accident in one of Pittsburgh’s worst transit tragedies.”

Two days after seeing that entry, I returned to the library and found that Aurelia Kuffner Czerny, 45, 438 Althea St., Beltzhoover, was among those who died. The Allegheny County coroner reported her cause of death as “entire body crushed.” Her husband, Leopold Czerny, 48, sustained eye, head and shoulder injuries.

In the days after the accident, newspapers published several stories about the Czerny family. Several described the scene at the morgue when her son Leo, 22, saw his mother. His screams echoed through the building, and morgue employees took him into another room, where he was given water and consoled.

Other stories, stitched together, told that Aurelia and Leopold secretly had trimmed a Christmas tree in a darkened room on the second floor of their home that day, before starting into the city to buy toys for Leona, 3, Frederick, 5, and Angeline, 7, as well gifts for their four elder children, Leo, Theodore, Irene and Marie. The three little ones, left alone in the house, were quiet until long after the supper hour when they began to cry. Their crying attracted a neighbor, Minnie Whitezell, who took them to her home. A short time later she was informed of the accident.

“The children continually cry for their mother, and it is impossible to comfort them,” she said.

Leopold Czerny, a glass pattern maker, worked in Pittsburgh’s glass industry. By 1920, only Theodore remained in Pittsburgh. The three youngest children lived in Detroit with their eldest brother, Leo, while their father moved to Detroit, then Fairmont, W.Va., and Lancaster, Ohio.

Newspapers published many other compelling stories about passengers and bystanders affected by the crash.

Elmer McCoy Jr., 11, and his brother, Matthew, 9, were returning from a morning visit to an uncle’s house in Knoxville. According to their mother, Anna McCoy, the boys “gleefully began the ride … proudly showing other passengers the air rifle the uncle had given Elmer.” Both boys sustained head injuries. Matthew returned home, while Elmer never regained consciousness and died two weeks later.

Marella Dueck, 18, recounted that a man offered to assist her in getting out of the car. She handed him her purse, fur coat and packages. He then left the scene. A soldier home on leave observed the theft and restrained the man until police arrested him.

Howard B. Young, 9, of Beltzhoover, crawled through a hole in the floor of the car and got clear of the wreckage with only a bruise above his eye and a cut cheek. The boy asked someone to call his parents as he hurried up the street. “Where are you going?” someone asked. “My mother told me to get a haircut; that’s where I’m going,” he replied.

George Birmingham and Morris Julius, employees of a South Side express delivery service, were injured when the trolley struck their horse and wagon as it overturned.

M.E. Shipp, a Pittsburgh Railways inspector at the tunnel exit, heard the rumble of the runaway trolley. Shipp spread the alarm and was able to disperse the crowd, except for three women who were standing at Phillip Gallagher’s shop at the corner of the southbound track and Carson Street. One woman, identified as Clara Tanney, became bewildered and didn’t move. The car crushed her against the pole. Her husband, Joseph Tanney, was to meet her at 3:30 p.m. at the corner where the car overturned. For several hours after the wreck, he searched all of the hospitals looking for his wife. He found her at the morgue.

• Within hours of the accident, Coroner Samuel Jamison announced an inquest would be held when witnesses recovered from their injuries. A jury of six Pittsburgh businessmen convened on Feb. 20, 1918, to examine the evidence. Friends and relatives of the victims, members of Knoxville civic organizations, and Pittsburgh Railways officials and employees crowded into the coroner’s office on Diamond Street long before the inquest began.

Witnesses established the facts of the case. The trolley arrived at the south end of the Mount Washington tunnel well above the unenforced 59-person capacity for the car. At 3:04 p.m., motorman Herman H. Klingler and conductor Martin Joyce took control of the trolley. Shortly after the car started moving, the trolley pole came off the rail. Klingler and Joyce argued about who was responsible for reattaching the pole. Leroy Haselbaker, the conductor of the Charleroi trolley, ultimately replaced the pole. H.B. Carroll, a locomotive engineer, stated that Klingler then turned the controller wide open, and the car began to rock when it reached 50 to 60 mph. Klingler applied the air and hand brakes, then the reverse, and the trolley’s speed decreased to about 35 mph before it reached the curve at the north end of the tunnel. The crowded car kept the conductor from operating the emergency brake. As the car exited the tunnel after running out of control for 2,000 feet, it overturned, slid about 200 feet across Carson Street and hit a metal pole.

There were conflicting accounts about Klingler’s possible intoxication. A Boggs Avenue bartender refused to serve him just prior to 3 p.m. because he was in uniform. Two dispatchers earlier in the day refused to assign Klingler a car because he had been drinking. Others from the community and a dispatcher, M. Maley, did not believe he was under the influence of alcohol.

Klingler did not testify. Coroner’s deputies who interviewed him after the accident reported his story changed from an admission of drinking at a South Side saloon at 1 a.m. Dec. 24 to emphatically denying that he been drinking. Klingler also claimed the brakes were faulty.

John P. Dohoney, the Public Service Commission’s chief investigator, certified that the brakes were mechanically sound and implied that the motorman’s carelessness and the car’s overcrowding caused the wreck.

The jury found Klingler grossly careless and recommended he be charged with 24 counts of manslaughter and recommended Maley be charged as an accessory. The jury also observed that Pittsburgh Railways should more carefully select employees, require dispatchers to scrutinize motormen and conductors before assigning them to cars, set standards to improve trolley passenger safety, fix responsibility for passenger safety with the conductor, and keep all brake handles clear for safe operation. The jury also urged enactment of a law to limit car capacity.

Klingler was charged with 24 counts of misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter in March 1918 and and tried on three counts in February 1919. Maley was not prosecuted.

Given the conflicting evidence of the motorman’s intoxication, Allegheny County District Attorney R.H. Jackson’s case focused on the operation of the car’s brakes and consideration of whether the motorman was overexcited and failed to use all the means at his disposal to stop the car. After one hour of deliberation, the jury convicted Klingler for the deaths of Clara Tanney and Ella C. Sheridan but acquitted him in the death of Gladys C. Sheridan, due to the absence of the attending physician who was on military duty in France.

On Sept. 21, 1920, Common Pleas Judge John Evans struck the remaining 21 involuntary manslaughter charges from the criminal court docket. Klingler was released from prison on Oct. 10, 1920, after serving 15 months of a 24month sentence.

• In the early 1900s, accidents involving trolleys were common, and claims against Pittsburgh Railways frequent. In the months following the trolley accident, 68 civil suits were filed in the Allegheny County Court by victims and/or their families for medical expenses and injuries Fifty-four verdicts totaled $253,117 with individual verdicts ranging from $225 to $22,000.

Pittsburgh Railways vigorously and unashamedly fought the claims, as the trial transcript in the case of Elfreda Rosenberger, a 15year-old who sustained facial and eye injuries. The Pittsburgh Railways attorney argued that a comparison of photographs before and after the accident showed that Rosenberger wasn’t very pretty and that her injuries didn’t diminish her appearance. The jury awarded her $10,000.

Part of Philadelphia Co., founded in the late 1800s by George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh Railways was forced into bankruptcy on April 22, 1918. It successfully petitioned the federal bankruptcy court and state Public Service Commission to reduce the outstanding personal injury awards by 23 percent, eliminate accrued interest and extend payments for 10 years.