Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Back when foreigners were foreign

06.23.2010 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

An Internet-loafer pal of mine stumbled on an article about the Tilly Foster Iron Mine disaster of 1895.

The lead in The New York Times, Dec. 1, suggests a novel solution to the problem of hard-to-pronounce foreign names we're dealing with domestically these days:

BREWSTER, N.Y., Nov. 30 Four more bodies were recovered to-day from the pit of the Tilly Foster Iron Mine, three miles north three bodies yet lie buried beneath tons of rock and ore. Thirteen lives were sacrificed, in all, by the caving in, yesterday, of the north slope of the mine. The bodies taken out to-day were those of James Clark, Joseph Smith, and two Italians, known respectively as No. 13 and No. 312.

I love the "known respectively as" bit. If they're just numbers, what's the diff?

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