On January 10, 1860, in Lawrence, MA, the unthinkable happened. In the early evening dark, a rumble, a heave, a shake, and the Pemberton Mill collapsed with nearly 700 workers inside! Ninety-eight of them died that night, including fifteen under the age of fifteen. “The catastrophe that destroyed the mill is almost unparalleled in our history,” said Harper’s Weekly. “We doubt, indeed, whether in any age, so many human beings have ever perished so terribly by an accident of ordinary life,” The London Times reported. Was it an accident? Was it preventable? At a hurried coroner’s inquest, they assessed blame. Were the wealthy Bostonians involved in the mill’s construction to blame? Was it worker carelessness? UMass Lowell history professor Robert Forrant will discuss these questions and more in his talk on the mill’s collapse.

Robert Forrant is a distinguished university professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The author of numerous articles and books, he taught courses there for 34 years on labor, immigration, and U.S. history. Before completing his graduate degree, he worked as a machinist and union business agent at the now-closed American Bosch plant in Springfield, MA, and ran a community-based economic development program.