The Crushing Case of Giles Newsom
Giles Edmund Newsom, age twelve, was working at the Sanders Spinning Mill in Bessemer City, North Carolina. He and his younger brother had worked in the mill for several months. On August 12, 1912, a piece of machinery fell on his foot. The piece was heavy enough to mash his foot. He fell onto a spinning machine, catching his hand in the spinner’s gears, tearing out two fingers.
The company offered compensation for the injury, but his parents fought to take the money for themselves. His mother tried to claim her boys got the job “on their own hook,” (without telling them) but the company counterclaimed the family let them work there for months before the accident. Newsom’s aunt bemoaned, “Now he’s got to where he could of some help to his ma an’ then this happens and he can’t never work no more like he oughter.”
