Frederick Paulus: Hazardous Occupation

Frederick Paulus
Born: June 30, 1886, Scranton, PA
Died: March 17, 1934, Dover, NJ
Relation to Author: Great Grandfather

Frederick Paulus died in 1934 at the relatively young age of 47. His death certificate lists the cause of death as "Edema of Lungs" (or pulmonary edema).

However, it seems that silicosis - "respiratory disease caused by breathing in (inhaling) silica dust" - is the more accurate label for his cause of death. I think we can attribute his death to silicosis because we know that Frederick worked as a moulder in a foundry - where iron and steel products are made. Moulders created sand-based (silica) molds of steel or iron products (machine parts, tools, etc) and molten steel or iron was poured into those molds to create the product.

According to Deadly Dust:

To walk into a foundry is to walk through sand. Even today, sand is used in every process in a plant... It is in the air foundry workers breathe. Large plumes of sand dust, created in the myriad of processes necessary to produce a finished product permeate the atmosphere... Sand found its way into every crevice or crease in workers' clothing, on their shoes and in their socks. When workers left after a day's toil, they would spit it from their mouths, blow it from their noses, clear it from their throats--and cough it up from their lungs."

So if Frederick died from lung problems, sand dust is the most likely cause. Symptoms of silicosis include, "shortness of breath, possible fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, chest pain, dry nonproductive cough, and respiratory failure which may eventually lead to death."

Silicosis became an epidemic in the early 1900s in part due to the increase in foundries and in part to changes in the technologies in foundries that increased the amount of sand in the air.

Deadly Dust talks about the expansion of foundries during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1880, there were 145,000 employees in 5,000 foundries. In 1900 there were 350,000 employees in 9,300 foundries. And by 1914 there were 660,000 workers in 18,000 foundries. Frederick Paulus's prime working years would have been roughly from 1904 to his death in 1934.

Efficiency improvements increased the total amount of sand used in a day and also caused more of it to be in the air. New processes allowed the mold mixture to be done more quickly, which increased the amount of sand and dust used in a day. And the introduction in the early 1900s of pneumatic tools to break apart the molds and sand blasting to clean the product sent more sand dust into the air.

These changes - more foundry workers and worse conditions - increased the number of people with serious health conditions and increased the severity as well. So the early death of Frederick Paulus was but one of many at that time. 

Frederick died when his youngest daughter, Elizabeth Charlotte Paulus (married name Cheney), was only 14 years old (something I never heard her talk about). We live in a safer world where we less often have to deal with painful losses so early in life. One way to really grasp that is to see the dangers our ancestors were exposed to.

Sources:
Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the On-Going Struggle to Protect Workers' Health By David Rosner, Gerald Markowitz, Gerald E. Markowitz, 2005, 1991 by Princeton University Press