Owen T Haley, or Oney, as he was called, was a coal miner and frequenter of the Bloomington jail. A little before midnight on July 3, 1883, as he was getting off his shift at the coal mine, Oney was riding out of the shaft with two other men in a "bucket" when the bucket hit the wall and knocked Oney off his perch. He fell an estimated 60 feet in the shaft, hitting some timbers and then landing lower down in the mud. He was brought up and said to his workmates, "Boys I am done up now" and "For God's sake don't take me to my mother's."
He was taken to Asa Hill's house on Grant Street which was just a few doors from his mother's. Oney was laid up for a few days, and it was thought he had received internal injuries that would end his life. Dr. Guthrie examined him and found that he had several burst blood vessels and bad cuts on his head. But he was a large man, "robust and powerful." By Saturday however, Oney was out drinking "forty rods" with his mates. A police officer who knew him well said that "he was too tough to be hurt badly and were there an election within a week, he would be out to vote."
Oney was a twenty year old man at this time and had been working in the mines since he was twelve years old. In the 1880 census his mother was married to a man named Lynch, so his father had either left or died.
Oney was very well known to the police. He was frequently arrested for fighting and being drunk. After this incident, he was arrested and convicted for stealing (once from Asa Hill!) twice and spent some time in the Joliet prison doing hard labor.
Owen did have a moment of glory however, when there was a great fire in the Bloomington coal mine. On September 4, 1893 there was a very dangerous fire in the coal mine, and thirteen men in the mine.
Mr. Owen Haley, who was at the top of the shaft doing valiant work to prevent the fire from spreading then showed a wonderful amount of courage. When he saw the flames could scarcely be checked He asked the engineer if he had better not go down and notify the men. The engineer consented. It was a risky thing to do and might mean death, but Mr. Haley clambered into the cage and was hurried to the bottom. He had just reached terra firma when the cable fell with a terrible collapse. It had burned in two. Mr. Haley then rushed to the men and informed them of their danger. They hurried back to the foot of the shaft and found the straw in the stables on fire. They put it out, rescued the mules and headed for the escape shaft but the fans were forcing the air downward so strongly that they could not climb the stairs against it. Not until the fans were stopped could they come up.
The fire fighters were hampered by the fact that the water pressure was low due to a drought. The fire was very alarming and caused buildings all around to catch fire. With great effort the Trotter lumber yard was kept from going up in flames and the Hungarian mill was also closely guarded. Sparks from the fire (at Washington Street) caught a building as far away as the 1100 block of W Oak Street on fire.
After this fire, Haley continued in his usual way, facing arrests and brawling. When he died in 1904 at the Jacksonville Hospital for the Insane no one mentioned his heroic acts (or his criminal past) and only said that he was a coal miner and was an usually large man.