First Emergency Phone Call in US

“De Train, De Train!”
First Emergency Phone Call in US, Simsbury & Hartford

Beyond the dubious nature of this claim, it bothers me that Simsbury claims it at all. There’s a very good chance this happened in what is now Bloomfield (but was Simsbury back then) and more importantly, the phone call in question actually happened in Hartford! Ridiculous all around!

So there I was, innocently touring the large complex of Simsbury Historical Society Museums with my lovely tour guide. We entered the Hendricks Cottage which is home to the Society’s rotating exhibits and I enjoyed a collection of historical photographs of Simsbury‘s village of Tariffville. (Ironically, several of the pictures featured places that were later annexed by Bloomfield and I believe this train trestle was one of those places.)

Train crashes were happening all over the place with discomforting regularity in the latter half of the 19th century. That’s not the story here, although there were a lot of casualties. No, the story here is that this event precipitated what is considered the first emergency phone call in the country.

We all agree a huge train crash into an icy river in which 13 people died rises to the level of an emergency. But who’s to say other, perhaps lesser, emergencies weren’t heralded by phone a week prior? Like, some doctor’s open hearth started a fire in Wethersfield and a phone call was placed but the damage was fairly minimal?

Whatever the case may be, this even and the subsequent phone call to emergency personal and medics is considered, at least by state sources, the “first emergency phone call in the US.” Connecticut History has the story, which I’ve stolen here:

On January 15, 1878, at about 10:00 in the evening, a span of the Tariffville Bridge gave way, plunging a Connecticut Western Railroad train into the Farmington River 20 feet below. The train included two locomotives and eight passenger cars packed with people. Many of them were returning from a revival meeting in Hartford where they had heard the popular Protestant evangelist Dwight Moody and singer and organist David Sankey. The accident happened ½ mile west of the Tariffville station as the first locomotive, having passed over the first half of the bridge, approached the western abutment. The span broke, sending the two engines (the Salisbury and Tariffville), the baggage car, and three of the passenger cars into the river. The accident killed 13 individuals and injured 70.

The Western’s superintendent, Jonathan Jones, quickly returned to the Tariffville station and telegraphed the main office for help and within the hour an emergency train with doctors and medical supplies arrived. Jones also appealed for help to the Hartford Providence & Fishkill Railroad’s main office in Hartford, and it, too, dispatched additional doctors and rescue workers. Caleb Camp, president of Connecticut Western, also happened to be on the train as a passenger, and he sought help from local residents as other passengers rushed to the aid of the survivors in the icy water.

Wait. That article doesn’t even mention a phone call! Hm. Back to the museum exhibit.

There were several photos of the Tariffville train disaster of 1878.

The story I got was that a doctor named D.P. Pelletier learned of the train crash by telegram from the railroad’s main office. He knew that a nearby druggist on Capitol Avenue had installed Alexander Graham Bell’s speaking telephone. He rushed over and used the store’s telephone to call other doctors for emergency aid. They organized a special relief train that carried physicians and other first responders. The train that rushed to the scene of the Tariffville disaster was called The Samaritan Special.

Very strange that none of that is in the article above. Other “sources” like Wikipedia say

Residents of Tariffville provided emergency assistance for passengers and provided them with dry clothing and shelter. Dr. D.P. Pelletier was the first Hartford surgeon notified of the accident. He went to a drug store on Capitol Avenue and used the store’s telephone to summon other doctors for a relief train in what is possibly the first emergency telephone call.

Yet other sources like our local NPR still leave out the “US First” claim:

Shortly after 10 PM the train crossed the wooden bridge spanning the Farmington River at Tariffville. Suddenly, with what was described as a sickening groan, one of the two main spans collapsed, dropping one of the two locomotives and several coaches into the icy river. Wooden coaches splintered, killing some passengers, while others succumbed to the freezing water. Relief trains carrying physicians and rescue personnel were sent to the scene, and as word spread, photographers flocked to record the disaster. The final toll was thirteen dead and more than seventy injured, some severely.

I’m far more on the side of the history and news organizations that ignore the dubious claim. But now I’ve added to the lore with this page.

Oh what a tangled web (of mangled train cars) I weave.