Background:

According to Historic Pittsburgh, there was a trolly strike on May 10, 1924.  I found a trolly accident report dating a few days earlier on May 6, where a trolly crashed into a building, killing a handful of people.  I wonder what caused the strike and if these two events had any sort of relationship. 

MG 07 Sept 2007

I have noticed an increase in the amount of fatal instances of gun violence, as well as other cases of murder, since the introduction of prohibition in 1920.  This leads me to question whether or not the two are connected somehow, perhaps in the increase of organized crime associated with the time period.  It is quite evident with the consistent number alcohol related deaths (usually acute alcoholism) that alcohol was still present in the city. 

ZB 11 Sept 2007

In July 1925, I noticed that almost half of the case files that I looked at, the deaths were caused by heat prostration. I assumed that the temperature must have been very high throughout the summer. I did a little bit of research, and I found proof that in spring of 1925 there were abnormally high temperatures. The American Metorological Society website has an article with temperature tables from June of 1925 in Washington, DC.  The temperatures were in the high 90s and 100s.  I can only assume that the high temperatures continued into July killing many Pittsburgh residents. 

AL 13 Sept 2007

There seems to be a greater willingness on the part of juries sitting on inquests to hold the police accountable.  Several times there have been initial causes of death of "murder" where someone was shot by the police in circumstances that appear similar to events accounted as justified only five or ten years earlier.  One such death involves the shooting of the "colored" man John Daniels by police officer Peter Patrick; although the claim was that Daniels was resisting arrest the jury found the cause of death was murder. 

BB 13 Sept 2007

The files from 1924-1925 show that the majorities of the deaths from lobar pneumonia are either children (0-10 years) or adults (45 years and older). Also some of the finds show that the onset of lobar pneumonia occur when immune system was weaken due to a fracture bone and the infection set in to the lobes of the lung. Most of the files I processed were during the winter months so the frequency of pneumonia where very high.

AS 14 Sept 2007

I have begun to notice that in red ink on the press reports, that eastern standard time is now documented.  Daylight savings time was used by the military during WWI, but not fully integrated into the US culture until much later.  There were experiments in using DST in the 1920s, which would justify marking what time they were using during the time of the coroner investigation. 

MG 15 Sept 2007