Pearl Bingham 

SCALPED BY A SHAFT.
Horrible Accident at Moro, Lee County.
A Beautiful Child Caught by Her Curls and Dashed to Death.
Helena Yeoman.]
We have just learned of another accident with machinery that occurred a few days since at Moro, in Lee county, which has no parallel in either its horrifying details or its terrible consequences. Mr. Virgil C. Bligham (sic), a prominent merchant at Moro, owns a steam gin and mill in the town where he is doing business, and his little daughter Pearl, a beautiful little child of six summers, walked down to the gin with some of the servants to summon the operatives to dinner. The child had beautiful long, flowing curls which were the pride of her parents' hearts, and had been preserved for years on account of their splendor -- alas! those beautiful tresses were the means of dragging that innocent child to a horrible and untimely death. In passing under a shaft of the machinery the child's head came close to a nut, which projected a little below the shaft, and it caught her hair and by the rapid revolutions of the shaft she was instantly drawn against it, and in the twinkling of an eye she was whirled in the air, and before her screams for help could be heeded by the engineer, her little form had spen a dozen revolutions and been whipped to death by the ponderous machinery. The whole scalp was born from the head, her limbs were broken to pieces and her body torn and mangled in a most horrible manner. Thus is another fireside made silent, and desolate and it is only in heaven that the recompense can come to sorrowing hearts. Let this circumstance impress everyone to be guarded about machinery.


Source: Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock, Arkansas) 22 Feb 1880, Sun Page 1

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