The Ghostly Tales of Pittsburgh by Diane Telgen

Author:Diane Telgen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

THWARTING AN ASSASSIN

Henry Clay Frick was not a man to fold easily. He had avoided responsibility for the Johnstown disaster and then survived a personal tragedy. In 1891, his six-year-old daughter Martha swallowed a pin, fell ill, and died. So after the Homestead riot, the tough-as-nails Frick held firm. He staffed his factory with nonunion replacements.

This did not sit well with one man. Alexander Berkman come to America from Russia in 1888. He became a radical after the notorious Haymarket bombing in Chicago, when four labor leaders were executed after a sham trial. Although Berkman wasn’t connected with the Homestead factory’s union, he felt strongly about its cause. And he believed that assassination was an acceptable response to oppression.

On July 23, 1892, Frick returned to his office in downtown Pittsburgh after eating lunch at a posh club. Although Carnegie Steel was one of the largest industrial companies in the world, it had no security guard. Berkman was able to walk into Frick’s office, pull out a gun, and shoot the manager at point-blank range.

The bullet landed in the side of Frick’s neck, and he fell to the ground. While he lay there bleeding, Berkman stood over his body and fired again. This bullet landed in the other side of Frick’s neck.

Although Frick was gravely wounded, he and another executive tackled Berkman. Then the would-be assassin pulled out a knife and stabbed Frick four times—in the leg, luckily. More men came and subdued Berkman, who was taken away by police as doctors rushed in to save Frick’s life.

Blood was everywhere, and Frick was partially paralyzed and on the verge of passing out. But he refused painkillers so he could help the doctors as they probed for the bullets, for two whole hours. When they finished, he propped himself at his desk with a couple of pillows and went back to work, as if nothing had happened!

But something miraculous had happened: he had survived being shot at point-blank range—not once, but twice! Berkman later said he missed because the sunlight coming through the window had blinded his eyes. But Frick’s office faced north. On a summer afternoon, the sun couldn’t have streamed through the window at that time of day. So what exactly happened to save Henry Clay Frick?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.