Pemberton Mill, Union Street vicinity, Lawrence, Massachusetts. Source: Library of Congress
Around 4:30 in the afternoon on January 10, 1860, workers at the Pemberton Mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts felt the building shift and then heard a loud crash. The New England Historical Society reported, “Part of the building’s brick wall bulged and exploded, and then within seconds the mill collapsed. Tons of machinery fell through disintegrating floors, bringing screaming millworkers with them.”
A fire quickly erupted and before the day was done a reported 120 workers were killed and another 150 were wounded in the Pemberton Mill collapse.
“Ruins of the Pemberton Mills, at Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Morning after the Fall,” Harper’s Weekly 4, no. 160 (January 21, 1860). Source: Historic Ipswich
Built in 1853, the the five-story, 280 foot tall Pemberton Mill employeed nearly 800 textile workers, including immigrants, women, and children. It was one of Lawrence’s newest and largest mills.
The article Remembering the Pemberton Mill Collapse: Substandard Materials and Company Greed, notes that local UMass Lowell history professor Robert Forrant said,
The Pemberton fell because the people who built it rushed to get it completed and in the end used faulty construction materials. In their rush to make money, mill owners packed the mill with too much heavy machinery. Eventually, the wear and tear on the building took its toll, and the factory collapsed killing scores of young and mostly immigrant workers.
Related Resources
Remembering the Pemberton Mill Tragedy, a lesson created by UMass Lowell graduate student and Methuen High School social studies teacher Stephanie Turmel under the supervision of UMass distinguished professor of history Robert Forrant and Lawrence History Center staff (2019).
The Other Lawrence Massacre: Sectional Politics and the 1860 Pemberton Mill Disaster by Michael E. Woods in The Journal of the Civil War Era
“No Avenging Gibbet”: The 1860 Pemberton Mill Collapse by Robert Forrant in The New England Quarterly, Volume 97, Issue 1, March 2024
The Pemberton Mill Collapse and Changes in Engineering Design by Danna Bell
Find additional resources at the Lawrence History Center.
Watch a video, The Pemberton Mill Collapse Disaster 1860, by Dark Records below.
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