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38th
Regiment Virginia Volunteer Infantry
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38th
Regiment Virginia Volunteer Infantry
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Real reporting
Last Upated: 09/12/2002
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They don't write obituaries like they use to. Below is the obituary of Joesph Laidley taken from the Richmond Dispatch, July 4, 1861. It makes today's reporting seem kind of tame. |
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"Richmond Dispatch" (04 July 1861, page 2)) Horrible Catastrophe. Mr. Joseph Laidley, the well known chemist, came to an untimely, sudden and horrible death about 20 minutes to one o'clock yesterday, by the explosion of a quantity of detonating powder, which he and an assistant named Robert Clayton, of Manchester, were preparing for the use of the Confederate Army. Mr. Laidley was found lying on his back, one of the most horrible objects of mutilated humanity which it is possible to conceive. Within a few yards of the body was found a portion of the poor man's brains, looking as if they had been torn by a superhuman agency from the skull and splashed upon the floor. The entire head, except the lower jaw, had bee blown off, and nothing remained to mark the features of a man, except a pair of whiskers ad a portion of the neck. The right arm was torn off below the elbow, and from the bloody stump hung the fragments of nerves, veins and sinews which were left behind. The hand was afterwards found about two hundred yards from the place of explosion, in the yard of the State Armory, a portion of the face was likewise found (it is said,) three hundred yards distant, near the banks of the river. The search for the remainder proved unavailing. | |
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Last Edited: 03/28/01 09:31:59 PM |
