James J. Pratt injured during Labor Day ride to the ball park

A look at the businesses along Broadway dates this photo to about 1912, when the Majestic Theater was operating at 217 Broadway, west of the alley. This photo was taken nearly a decade after a Hannibal street car hit a horse-drawn wagon, which is the basis for today’s story. The photo does, however, serve as a good representation of what the street scene would have looked like on Sept. 7, 1903, when James J. Pratt was injured in the accident. At left is the three-story Farrell Building, in which the J.P. Richards Clothing store operated on the first floor. Steve Chou collection.

MARY LOU MONTGOMERY

On Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 7, 1903, James J. (sometimes known as Jackson) Pratt, (1871-1915) a South Main Street bartender, boarded a northbound Hannibal Railway and Electric Company car near Union Depot, in order to ride to the end of Chestnut street to watch a scheduled baseball game at Athletic Field. En route, near Main and Broadway, the car was involved in a non-fatal accident with a two-horse buggy, in which a lawsuit for damages was later filed.

Attorney Charles E. Rendlen, then a 25-year-old bachelor, was counsel for - and held stock in  - the street car company.

The son of William C. (1852-1918) and Albertina Link Rendlen, (1854-1938) Charles E. Rendlen had his office in the Hannibal National Bank building located nearby to the intersection where the accident took place. Contained within Rendlen’s preserved files, were found copies of sworn depositions given by Pratt and others, describing the events that transpired that day.

These sworn testimonies paint a colorful and personal picture of Hannibal, as it was in 1903, when horses shared Hannibal’s streets with electric street cars.

J.J. Pratt, who at the time was working for Frank Shuck at a saloon at 106 Third St., South Hannibal, (which would be renamed South Main Street) said, in his own words:

“It was Labor Day, it was the 7th of September 1903. We took the car to go to the ball game, that was taking place between, I guess, 3 or 4 o’clock; well, the ball game was called at 3:30.

“I opened up the saloon in the morning, and never took a drink as I am not used to drilling in the hot sun, and I did not want to sweat any more than necessary.

“We got on a car at the City Park, and rode over to South Hannibal to meet a car, if it was not loaded too heavy. We met this car at the switch, I believe they call it Courtney switch, in south Hannibal, South Main. The car was going north. (The car) was standing waiting for this other car; we got on at the front. (The car) was well loaded. (The motorman said) ‘pile on any where you can get on.’ I was standing on the running board at the front end.”

Accompanying Pratt, one of his four companions was Jack Higginbotham (a former Hannibal police officer), and “one was Mr. E.A. Malone, the produce man, who opened up a produce house in the west end. I just got acquainted with him, as he sold cheese and lunch articles to saloons and others. There was (Malone’s) hired hand, and the other gentleman I did not know. He was a friend of theirs and I did not know him.”

The motorman for the street car was George H. Cormeny, who had started work as an apprentice motorman for the Hannibal Railway and Electric Company a little more than three months prior to the accident, and the conductor was Markus Cashman.

Once en route, the street car traveled northward, past the Kettering Hotel, the Holmes-Dakin Cigar Co., the Windsor Hotel, Robinson Brothers’ Paint and Wallpaper Co., L. Heiser’s jewelry store and the Courier-Post. Then, when the street car was an estimated 8 to 10 yards ahead, in front of Broughton’s Book and Stationery Shop at 109 S. Main, and near the intersection with Broadway, Pratt heard:

“Stop the car!

“There was two or three women calling to stop. I supposed from that they wanted to get off, I supposed that was what they were hollowering (stet) about. By the time I looked around I was right into the danger, and I had no time to get away. People in the car were hollowering. I looked around, saw the danger that I was in; it was too late to jump or get out of the way.”

Two horses pulling a wagon, driven by a boy, had become frightened by the street car.

“The horses were rearing and plunging. It was a two-horse wagon with a bed on it, spring seat. The wagon cramped across the tracks, and the horses swung around toward the car.

“When (the motorman) seen that he was running into the wagon he turned the crank to stop the car, but it done no good. He run into the wagon and shoved the wagon several feet, with me between the car and the wagon. The wagon was loaded with children, one with a baby in her lap or arms.

“It slid the wagon quite a ways, if you had been in between the car and wagon like I was you would think it hit it pretty hard. The pants on this leg (left) were chewed off, never hurt the leg, it never scratched that leg, but it skinned this one, the right one, on both sides, on the outside from the hip clear down, from the knee down on the inside.

“The car stopped, I was knocked on the ground.

“Mr. Malone hollered ‘Nobody hurt,’ when the car struck the wagon, he did not realize I was hurt at the time, of course he did not have my feeling and did not know.

“A women made room on the front end of the car for me to get on; a lady with a baby in her arms offered me her seat.

“When I got up on the platform and went on out to the park, I did not know I was so sick, until I turned sick at the park, and began to hurt in here (pointing to his chest).

“The way my leg was hurting I thought it was broke, it was hurting me very bad at the time, that was all that was hurting me at that time. My chest did not hurt until I got out to the park.

“I think it was the last half of the sixth or seventh inning, some time along there, along about the middle of the game.

“Mr. Malone said 'you better go home, you are hurt worse than you thought you was.’ I went up in the room to see how bad I was hurt, and my leg was skinned and a big blue spot on my breast, I thought it was just a bruise.

Some time passed before Pratt was examined by a doctor.

“When (Dr. R.J. Heavenridge) examined me he found the seventh rib on my back was broken, about three inches of my rib was bent over. He called it broke, it was resting on my lung at the time. He said I should have come sooner, but it was gone too far now to do anything for it, the only thing that could be done was to open me up in the back and take the end of the rib off, and could do nothing for it now as it had gone too far.”

In addition to the broken rib, Dr. R.J. Heavenridge told Pratt that he “had a rupture on one side, enlargement, which has never gone down. It seems to get worse rather than better. Blood oozed several weeks. Dr. Heavenridge gave me medicine for that.

“He gave me a prescription for medicine when I went to see him, I showed him where I had been oozing blood on my clothes.”

He continued to see Dr. Heavenridge about every other day, but not at the doctor’s office.

“Dr Heavenridge was in the saloon every day or two, he did not always come to see me. Whenever a man gets a pair of black eyes, they send for Heavenridge.”

The saloon  “is my home, I have no other home, I eat there and sleep there and was around there all the time. The work don’t amount to nothing, simply picking up a whisky glass and setting it on the bar. I did not have to tap no beer kegs, or do any lifting at all until I got able to do it; I don’t have to clean up the saloon, the porter does all that.”

Note: Robert J. and William E. Heavenridge were brothers, physicians and druggists who lived and had offices at 125-127 Market.

James J. Pratt was married to Miss Elizabeth Manuel in January 1904, and together they had a daughter, Sarah. He worked as a superintendent for concrete construction for the remainder of his life. He died in 1915, when his daughter was just 9. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery. His widow and daughter then moved to Spokane, Wash. Mrs. Pratt died in 1933 at the age of 49.

Note: Some information for this story came from the files of Charles E. Rendlen, (1877-1957) prominent Hannibal attorney, who was active in civic affairs and Republican politics. The ancient files were recovered from the basement of the old Rendlen law firm at 108 N. Third St., by the building’s current owner, Sally Kintz, of Poole Communications.

This undated postcard shows a street car traveling North in the 100 block of South Main Street. The Farrell Building is a near right. Steve Chou collection.

Mary Lou Montgomery retired as editor of the Hannibal (Mo.) Courier-Post in 2014. She researches and writes narrative-style stories about the people who served as building blocks for this region’s foundation. Books available on Amazon.com by this author include but are not limited to: "The Notorious Madam Shaw," "Pioneers in Medicine from Northeast Missouri,” “Hannibal’s ‘West End,’” “Oakwood: West of Hannibal,”  and “St. Mary’s Avenue District.” Montgomery can be reached at Montgomery.editor@yahoo.com Her collective works can be found at www.maryloumontgomery.com