On August 4, 1909, a Wednesday, two men died at the St. Joseph's Hospital. Both were employees of Meyer Brewing in Bloomington and both received injuries at work which should not have proved fatal.
On July 31, Saturday, John Wilming was riding on a delivery wagon driven by another employee when the harness on the horses broke. The horses were startled and ran, throwing Wilming from the wagon. His partner, Harm Jaspers, testified that Wilming fell feet first to the ground. Jaspers placed Wilming on a nearby lawn and called for the police (the police ambulance would take Wilming either to the police station for medical care or to the hospital.) At the hospital it was discovered that Wilming's left ankle had compound fractures, and he was operated on. He also had contusions to his head and the rest of his body. The following morning it was found that he had a secondary hemorrhage and a second operation was performed on the ankle.
On Monday Wilming began to act deranged and became steadily worse, finally dying early in the morning Wednesday. It was suggested by the Pantagraph that someone had brought liquor to him and that his derangement was caused by consumption of alcohol. The doctor made no such assumption, but made no diagnosis of his derangement.
Mr. Wilming was a bachelor who had moved to Bloomington from Effingham, so a telegram was sent to Effingham to find any relatives.
On July 31, Saturday, another man working for Meyer Brewery was injured at work. Jacob Joho working in the brewery and when passing between two parts of the building, an eight foot wide sliding door fell from the wall and hit him. Although one employee testified at the inquest that it was not a heavy door, his doctor reported that Joho had severe injuries from the incident. Also, Joho was in very poor physical condition, so poor that he could not recover from his injuries. He died four days later in the evening of August 4.
Joho was a native of Switzerland and had come to Bloomington in 1879. He had four children living in Bloomington, but no note was made of the wife he had married in 1883 in McLean County.
These accidents occurred before workplace injuries were considered to be avoidable, with proper precautions. Maintaining a horse's harness or maintaining a door was secondary to profits, and worker safety was also secondary to profits. Injuries at work, for laborers, was considered a fact of life. The Pantagraph noted the "peculiar circumstances attendant" to these deaths. Why would a man die of injuries of a door falling on him? If that man were already sick, overworked, malnourished he would not have the strength to overcome injuries from a very large door falling on him. A man did not commonly die of a broken ankle, but then no mention was made of treatment given for his head injury, which could have caused his mental derangement rather than an assumed fondness for alcohol.