Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 29.

[p. 34] consciousness he crawled, bruised and bleeding. A brakeman helped him into the baggage car, and procuring cotton waste from the engine stuffed it into his clothing and partially stopped his bleeding. Arriving at East Cambridge, he was taken home, where the surgeon removed a splinter five inches long, which, striking his thigh-bone was deflected downward. He had never been to the village since that day to make any stop, but looked over the ground somewhat and while there met a man he knew, the late Lorin L. Dame.

One person was fatally injured, Mr. Thomas Huffmaster. Struck by a joist in the breast, he died from its effect soon after. His house was on High street, corner of Allston, later that of his son-in-law, J. H. Norton.

The schoolhouse on Canal street was utterly destroyed, its floor with the seats attached laid upside down across Whitmore brook. School was to have begun on the following Monday. The big Whitmore elm escaped with little injury, but a horse-chestnut at Warren street was so wrenched and twisted as to show the effect thirty years later. Another, near by, blossomed anew in the following weeks.

The storm seemed to have begun its havoc with over $4,000 damage in Waltham, $23,606 in Arlington and $18,768 in Medford.

These figures we gather from the report of a committee chosen by citizens in West Medford during the ensuing week. This report was in a neatly bound volume of seventy-two pages,—forty pages by Mr. Brooks, ‘in the interest of science.’ eleven by the committee, and the rest relative to West Cambridge and Waltham.

Less explicit, but terse, was the reply of one of the sufferers in relating his views: ‘Och! sure the wurrld has coom to an end, the houses are slivered entirely, and o'im kilt.’

In a later edition of the report was a steel engraved portrait of James Sanford. This book is very rare.