Lawrence, Massachusetts was the epicenter of two significant events in the history of industrial labor. The first was the Pemberton Mill collapse, which I wrote about yesterday. The second was the Bread and Roses Strike in 1912. The strike began when mill workers realized that the mill owners chose to pay them two hours less…
On a quiet hill overlooking the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts is a monument memorializing the 145 mill workers killed on January 10th, 1860 when the Pemberton Mill collapsed. Another 166 were injured. Many victims were women and children. As recent immigrants to America, the victims were buried at Bellevue Cemetery and this simple monument marks…
There’s a tiny brook that flows from Searles Pond near Holy Family Hospital and feeds into the Spicket River just before it in turn feeds the Merrimack River in Lawrence. It’s name betrays a violent history, long before Lawrence and Methuen become heavily developed urban environments. Google has led me a couple of times to…
Straightening the Spicket The Spicket River flows from New Hampshire into the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The river has changed over the years, particularly during the explosive development of Lawrence and Methuen in the Industrial Revolution. By the late 1880’s the City of Lawrence had enough of the typhoid breeding ground that the river…
Boomtown: Lawrence, Massachusetts In 1845 the land along the Merrimack River that would soon be called Lawrence had a population of 104. Five years later the population had exploded to 8,358. By 1920 the population had swelled to a high of 94, 270. All these people arrived in Lawrence as the river was dammed, canals were…